islamization of africa ii

Islamization of Africa II:

Sept. 24“North Africa: conversion and conquest

Spread of Islam Into Africa:North Africa and the Sahara

Arab and Swahilitraders spreadIslam: 8th-19thcenturies C.E.

7th -15th centuries

Almoravids 11th C.

Islam in North Africa and Sahara

Story of spread of Islam into North Africa:- narrative of armies sweeping across land, establishing Caliphates

- took the names of family leaders (eg Umayyads, Abbassids, Fatimids, Almoravids…)

-- dynasties falling like dominos to more powerful armies

- mostly about movement of Arabs, not of Islam per se

- conquest is not conversion: describes government not people

Complicating Robinson’s ‘gateway’ approach (again):

- North Africa – combination conquest and integration with Berber economics, culture, religion

- Sahara – combination conquest and rooting of religious movement/network: the Almoravids


Islam in North Africa

Islam and North Africa

Across North Africa, what unifies historical study is agreement on:

- early Arab conquest (‘by the sword’)

- gradual attraction of Berbers to Arab military power and Islamic religion/culture

- unevenness of sources (creating biases, gaps): combination archaeology (local), ‘texts’ (mostly Arab)


Archaeological work limited:

- few excavations

- emphasis on Roman rather than Islamic era

- predominance of French academic influence/politics (determines what projects receive funding)


Work (to date) shaped by interest in:

- Trans-Saharan trade (commodities, markets, change-over-time)

- patterns Arab settlement (not always shaped by trade, also by agricultural interests)

- where trade is major interest, settlement oriented to major commercial markets- otherwise scattered in hinterland


Market orientation:

-markets, trade in hands of indigenous animist Berbers

- archaeology can trace where ‘Arabs’ settled vis-à-vis Berber quarters: architecture, tools, household utensils etc)

- can trace cultural exchange, with respect to material culture (eg. burial sites)


Islamization:

- can trace process of Islamization into Berber areas through building mosques [as we saw in East Africa]

- limited evidence to date shows process ‘mixed’

- archaeology does not explain ‘why’


Findings:

- Non-muslim Berbers continued to co-exist with Muslims, especially in interior (Mountains, desert)

- Even converts (Muslim Berbers) did not always ‘adapt’fully to religion:

- retained some animist gods- often transposed ritual of worship onto Islamic ‘saints’


Muslim Berbers accepted religion but resisted cultural conversion:

- continued local ‘shrine’ architecture/worship- ‘incorporated’ tombs, shifted worship to Muslim saints- retained Berber as language- retained Berber dress, custom, culture (music, literature, crafts etc)

Islam and North AfricaTunisia

Local Berber Shrine (above)

Shrine of Sidi Mhammed(right)


Ibn Battuta (Moroccan): Berber by ‘ethnicity’; qadi (jurist) by training; major ‘source’ for historians:

- experienced many ‘forms’ of Islam in his travels across North Africa:

- formal ‘official’ Islam of cities - ascetics, marabouts of countryside- witnessed centrality of ‘tombs’ and associated medersas (Qur’anic schools)

[see ‘Ibn Battuta – North Africa’, Additional Readings]


In the Wake of Conquest:- Morocco, Algeria: several sites where Arab settlers following in wake of ‘conquest’) colonized hinterland and interior

- introduced new agriculture: replaced Berber/coastal ‘tree-culture’ (olives, citrus fruits) with grain growing, pastoralism sheep, goats

- invited gradual integration: ‘Berberization’ of Arab communities and ‘Islamization’ of Berber neighbours


Archaeological work only suggests alternative understanding of ‘spread of Islam’ but is more consistent than ‘conquest/conflict’ theory with other known factors:

- apart from initial moves of ‘Arabs’ from Arabian peninsula into North Africa, most so-called ‘Islamic conquest’ was carried out, physically, by Berber warriors


- Berbers attracted by ‘rewards’ of Arab armies and hierarchy

- not required to totally relinquish aspects of culture while benefitting from new political ‘masters’

- emergence of Almoravids is itself example of this ‘process’ in context of Saharan tribes[case study, below]


‘Typical’exampleNorth Africanwarrior:

Arab ?…

…Or Berber?

“Warriors of the Faith” (North Africa) – Berbers not Arabs

• Tariq ibn Ziyad

Berber Muslim and Umayyad General who led the conquest of VisigothicHispania (Spain)in 711 under orders of the Umayyad Caliph


Story of the Almoravids:

- well known to European, African history

- in Europe: succeeded Umayyid dynasty in Spain (11th C.), - ‘Moors’, left scholarly and architectural legacy

- in North Africa (Morocco): created capital out of Marrakesh- made it centre of scholarship, Koutoubia Mosque world renown

- in Africa, understood as ‘origin’ of Islamization of West Africa(‘Conquest of Ghana’, see next day ‘Sahara, West Africa’)


Koutoubia Mosque, Marrakesh (Morocco)


11th Century:- leader of Saharan Berber Sanhaja tribe made the hajj

- on return, visited with Islamic scholar in ‘Ifriqiyya’(Tunisia – origine of name ‘Africa’)

- convinced that his people were Muslim but not ‘good Muslims’

- returned to Sahara with cleric from Morocco: Abd Allah ibn Yasin’


Goal:

- to help his people ‘turn from pre-Islamic habits and fully embrace Islam’

- first articulation of issue that continues to be central to Muslim communities in Africa: what does ‘fully embracing Islam’ mean?


Result:

- some fractions of the Sanhaja followed him but…

- the important Lamtuna clan (family) resisted: rejected him and his ‘message’

-Yasin returned to North Africa for ‘advice’


Advice: return to the Sahara, launch jihad [‘holy war’]

- offered resisters opportunity to convert, recognize him as legitimate religious leader

- ‘retreated’ with followers (similar to the Prohpet’s hijra to Medina; here called ‘ribat’ – blurs physical location, still debated, with ‘physical process’)

- After: returned to desert and successfully defeated opposing tribes

- ultimately, continued ‘holy war’ into West Africa and into Spain

Almoravids: Spain, Morocco, Sahara

Almoravid Leader

Yusuf ibn Tashfin

Cousin of initialAlmoravid Leader ,third Emir of Almoravid empirein North Africa and Al-Andalus(Moorish Iberia/Spain).


Narrative seems to ‘fit’ with idea of spread of Islam into North/West Africa ‘by the sword’:

- not challenged until 1992 article “What’s in a Name? The Almoravids of the 11th century…” [see ‘Additional Readings’]

- H J Fisher (and subsequently others) argued convincingly against paradigm


Key Issue: idea of ‘ribat’ as physical place and/or holy war

- ‘disagreement’ derives different uses/mis-uses textual documentation

- sources not local chronicles (as elsewhere East, West Africa) - accounts by Arab geographers, most never visiting places described

-Ibn Battuta being the exception!


Arab sources ‘compiled’: reading back through archives of accounts

- as problematic as archaeological sites where ‘evidence’has been spread through several layers of ‘time’

- scholar in 12th century will ‘read’ texts from earlier centuries differently from scholar writing in 14th or 15th

centuries


Fisher’s critique of existing scholarly interpretations rests largely on this point:

- that contemporary interpretations have not adequately differentiated between these ‘chronologically specific’understandings

- critical argument: ribat was neither a place nor a war – it was a religious network

- as such, suggests different process by which Islam became entrenched in Sahara (and by extension), West Africa


His argument is largely linguistic (that is, he looks at how earlier Arab writers, writing at time of Almoravids, use the term ribat):

- concludes that it is only later writers who interpret term as ‘place’ or ‘war’

- these interpretations reflect who they are and political situation when they’re writing NOT what 11th century writers were saying


- if right, this is earliest suggestion that Islam is spread through religious network (leader, scholarly legitimacy, followers, centres of learning) that will later become the ‘norm’: tariqa

- such networks later carry the name of their leader: in this case, those of the ‘ribat’ indirectly did exactly that --‘Almoravids’ [‘those of the ribat’]


Fisher does not deny a role to conflict:

- argues it was primarily about leadership: competing for power between Saharan clans

- in this case Sanhaja against Zenata

- under Ibn al-Yasin, one of those tribes claimed the right to be ‘truly Muslim’

Conclusions

(1) For those who were of ‘the centre’ (Mecca, Cairo –perhaps even Ifriqiyya), Sahara and regions beyond were both physically and conceptually ‘distant’

- caution about what remains major source of information about North and West Africa – texts produced in ‘the centre’-- needs to be heeded.

Conclusions

(2) - Hajj used to integrate ‘centre and periphery’:

- travels of Ibn al-Yasin, direct consequences for Western Sahara and West Africa- also ‘information’: ‘literary’ integration (published accounts of travels)

Conclusions

(3) Prototypes in Islamic History:

- Fisher draws attention to both the ‘physical re-enactment’ of Islamic history and ‘motif’

- ‘real’ history of birth of Islam became enshrined in ‘ritual’of being Muslim: eg. the hijra

Conclusions

In all subsequent histories of societies ‘becoming Muslim’we see both:

- ‘real’ attempts to re-enact ‘birth of Islam’ (eg Usman danFodio, Case Study of Sokoto Caliphate)

- and ‘literary motifs’: those who wish to present history in ‘acceptable Islamic terms’ to their audience

- both ‘endeavours’ pose problems for historians

Conclusions

Almoravids:- paradigm of ‘Islamic conquest by sword’ (born of history of early Islam) has long shaped unquestioning acceptance of Almoravid narrative

- Fisher addressed one aspect of that story -- the ribat, arguing for its derivation from the hijra part of the traditional story of Islam

Point: we need to keep both observations (real, literary) in mind when interpreting all sources about Islamization in North and West Africa

Conclusions

(4) Tendency to overemphasize military action in story of Islamization:

- arguably ‘overemphasized’ even in narrative of ‘birth of Islam’ [our discussion of video ‘Islam: empire of Faith]

- recent archaeological work allowed us to extend critique to North African narratives

- Fisher’s argument underscores tendency in context of Almoravids in West Africa

Conclusions

(5) Fisher identifies another factor shaping modern historiography: politics

- as in ‘real past’, profession reflects contemporary politics

- eg. Nigerian scholar who (recently) argued for complete dismissal of Arabic sources (and all subsequent scholarship based on them)

- earlier references to French dominance in North African history, obsession with the Roman (rather than Muslim) era

Conclusions

Final Conclusion:

“ The pattern of events described in this paper [article on Almoravids] is, if stripped to the bare essentials, a prototypical model of innumerable such interventions in the history of Black Africa , up to and including today.”

If true, this is a concept we need to keep in mind throughout the course:

- what does Fisher mean? - why is it so significant?

islamization of africa ii

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