The Expansion of Islam in Africa

STATES AND SOCITIES IN SUBSAHARAN AFRICA HIST 1301 | History The Expansion of Islam in Africa By the beginning of the seventh century, Egypt and the Maghreb appeared to be heavily Christianized. However, when Islam spread over the region by the end of that century, the situation had drastically changed. After being founded in the early seventh century, Islam quickly amassed soldiers that solidified its hold over the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. They also created a bridgehead in Byzantine Egypt from which to begin their invasion of North Africa. Muslim conquerors created villages along their advance, which later grew into the towns and cities that would ultimately house the officials of the Islamic Caliphate, the region governed by the caliph, the head of the Islamic state. The Umayya dynasty of Mecca took over the caliphate in 661, combining the earlier conquests to create a functional state with its capital located in Syria's Damascus. Under their leadership, the role of caliph shifted from being a close companion or member of the prophet Muhammad's family to becoming a dynastic post that was passed down from father to son. Through military conquest, the Umayyad dynasty expanded the caliphate's domain to include the whole Mediterranean coast of North Africa. Between 642 and 709, the Muslim conquest of Byzantine-controlled lands in the Maghreb region of North Africa took place in three phases, with Egypt serving as its starting point. The oldest Arab narratives of the conquest are sparsely described and go back around two centuries, yet they provide the framework for our comprehension of these events. After the conquest of Egypt, the more than a thousand miles of desert that separated the Nile delta from the Byzantine province of Africa, which was centred on Carthage, caused the Islamic march into North Africa to stop. However, the march to the Maghreb by tens of thousands of Muslim warriors had started by 647. They faced and destroyed the Byzantine governor's soldiers at Tripolitania (modern-day Libya) in the same year. A second invasion of North Africa had begun by 665. Tens of thousands of Arab warriors advanced from Egypt once more, this time with the intention of capturing Carthage. In modern-day Tunisia, the Islamic assault established a beachhead at Kairouan, subsequently reinforced by forty thousand warriors from Damascus. As the hub of Islamic operations that drove Arab forces into the heart of North Africa, encompassing Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria, Kairouan became the capital of the Islamic province of Ifriqiya. Following protracted battles against native tribes and the Byzantine provincial government's armies, Carthage was ultimately overrun by a third Arab invasion in 698. Arab troops advanced over North Africa after conquering Carthage. African troops increased their numbers along the route. A planned invasion of Spain in 711 resulted in many being compelled to join the Arabs and others volunteering in the hopes of sharing in the riches. The Iberian Peninsula was attacked by Umayyad Caliphate soldiers that year after they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar. After a few years, Islamic soldiers had marched as far north as Narbonne, France, and had taken control of all the peninsula's important towns. Islam transformed from a new religious movement based on the Arabian Peninsula to an empire spanning from Iraq in the east to the Atlantic coast of North Africa in the west in less than a century. But despite its astounding achievements, the Umayyad monarchy was overthrown by a revolution in 750. In that year, the Meccan Abbasid line took over the Islamic Caliphate and moved its capital from Damascus to Baghdad, where it remained for the next 500 years. The ninth century may have marked the end of Islamic military conquest in North Africa, but Islam's expansion continued. It was mostly via traders, academics, missionaries, and merchants that Islam spread over West, East, and sub-Saharan Africa. The concepts of Islam were brought from North Africa by Muslim Berbers (Amazigh) via the numerous transSaharan trading routes they travelled. Thus, the concepts of the faith made their way over the parched desert to West African commerce hubs like Gao and Koumbi Saleh, the capital of the Ghanaian Empire. As exposure to it expanded over time, certain governing elites in subSaharan Africa started to accept it, sometimes incorporating it into their traditional beliefs. The Ghanaian rulers accepted Islam despite not becoming Muslims because they saw how important the Muslim-led trans-Saharan commerce was to their country's economy. They gave Muslim businessmen and merchants a second town in their capital as a gesture of recognition for this reality. Mosques in this region attest to the fact that it developed a distinctly Islamic character. By the eleventh century, Ghana in western Sudan was included in the wider Islamic realm that included North Africa and the western Sahara. Even at this late hour, Islam had not had much of an influence on West Africa, and many Amazigh communities mixed Islamic customs with indigenous African religious rituals. This was not to the satisfaction of some more traditional Muslims in the area, so they attempted to address the issue. West African Islamic kingdoms that were reforming arose. The first, which emerged in the eleventh century, was the Almoravid state. Under the leadership of a radical Islamic scholar and based in Morocco, the Almoravid empire expanded quickly via military victories and Islamic fervour. The Almoravids ruled over a sizable chunk of West Africa by the 1070s, extending from Morocco's Mediterranean coast to the boundaries of the Ghana Empire. Numerous groups in these locations became more fully Islamized as a result of the process. During this time, Islam started to spread among Ghanaians. The religious fervour of the early Almoravid conquests had completely subsided by the middle of the twelfth century. The early founders' descendants favoured settled life in Morocco's tranquilly and comforts over jihad, or fighting for Islam. Some of the Amazigh were uneasy with this state of affairs, so they started a successful war of religious reform against the Almoravids and founded the Almohad Kingdom, a reformist nation in West Africa. But the Almohad Caliphate's rule was short-lived, and by the thirteenth century, internal uprisings had mortally crippled it. Ghana was no longer at the centre of the regional economy as the West African kingdoms' geopolitical arrangements evolved. The kingdom of Mali emerged as the leading political and economic power in the area by the thirteenth century. The aristocracy of Mali, including the mansa, or monarch, converted to Islam, in contrast to the rulers of Ghana. When Mansa Musa, arguably the most well-known monarch of Mali, travelled to Mecca in 1324–1325, observers from Arabia turned their attention to Spain. Known for his royal wealth, Mansa Musa reportedly gave away so much gold on his visit to Cairo that the Egyptian economy experienced severe inflation for nearly ten years. Mansa Musa sent books, Muslim academics, and architects to Mali upon his return, all of which strengthened the country's Islamic heritage. For instance, Timbuktu's establishment of the Djinguereber Mosque and the establishment of colleges and institutions devoted to the study of the Quran helped to solidify the city's rising reputation as a centre of Islamic knowledge and learning worldwide. Sub-Saharan Africa was completely encircled by Islam by the end of the fourteenth century, when West African kings from Mali to Hausaland (modern-day Nigeria) converted to Islam. East Africa saw the rise of Islam as well, while established Christianity in the Ethiopian Kingdom of Aksum and the kingdoms of Nubia hindered its advancement. However, this opposition had significantly eroded by the 1200s, and many Christian countries had converted to Islam. The Kingdom of Abyssinia, the Christian successor state of Aksum and Zagwe, was a significant exception. The Muslim sultanates of Ajuran and later Adal arose in the African Horn, further to the east. South of here, Islam had less competition. Muslim traders from Arabia and Egypt started to establish cities and commercial hubs along the Swahili coast in the seventh century. The Swahili coast is the portion of eastern Africa that borders the Indian Ocean. It was now the site of several established Bantu villages, many of which thrived as a result of their connection to the expanding local and global trade. In an urban, trade-based civilization, the Bantu peoples interacted and merged with the Arab incomers, resulting in a distinctive composite language and culture. The Swahili coast was recognised as a significant trade hub by the ninth century. Al-Masudi, an Arab traveller, wrote in 915 about the thriving trade in the region. He mentioned imports of glass vessels, Islamic pottery, and stone bowls, as well as exports of everything from gold and leopard skins to ambergris and ivory. By the 1200s, a unique Arabic-Bantu dialect-speaking Swahili culture had arisen, with a focus on the sea instead of the interior of Africa, autonomous city-states engaged in trade, and an Islamic religious system. The settlements along the east African coast were greatly influenced by the Swahili language and culture. Even nevertheless, Islam had very little effect on the interior peoples of East Africa until several centuries after its popularity along the coast during the Middle Ages. There were several avenues via which monotheistic religion systems, such as Islam and Christianity, expanded over Africa: military conquest, trade, and cultural dissemination. The procedure was never simple and easy, and both merchants and conquerors faced different difficulties. The mediaeval era of African history saw a transformation in the nature of belief, even though individuals joined these faiths for a variety of reasons, such as a strong conviction in a better afterlife or the monetary rewards that came with conversion. This is not to argue that prehistoric African belief systems vanished. The acceptance of Christianity or Islam in Africa was frequently the result of adaptation to the customs and rites of the African peoples, despite the fact that Christian missionaries and Muslim instructors showed little regard for traditional religious practice on the continent. Naturally, the Africanization of these religions was mostly incidental. For instance, Islam permitted a man to have many wives, whereas Christianity stressed monogamy. Therefore, African communities that already engaged in polygamous marriages—which the Christian tradition forbade—would be more open to the teachings of Islam. Religious traditions from different cultures have influenced one another, allowing traditional African belief systems to survive in both rural and urban areas. Indeed, the Swahili coast's Africanization of Islam gave rise to a particular strain of the religion that involved ancestor worship, spirit appeasement, the adoption of special grave-marking customs, and the insertion of customary contributions into mosques.