Rethinking the Spread of Islam in Eastern and Southern Africa*
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A S^N AND AFRICAN STUDES, 79, 2010, 1, 134-167 RETHINKING THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN EASTERN AND SOUTHERN AFRICA* Viera PAWLIKOVÁ-VILHANOVÁ, Institute of Oriental Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia [email protected] The process of Islamic expansion up-country, away from the Iong Islamised towns of the East African coast, only began in the nineteenth-century. Islam advanced slowly and gradually along a network of caravan routes through trading contacts with some African peoples, spread by ordinary adherents, Kiswahili-speaking merchants, who penetrated the interior of Eastern Africa in search of ivory and slaves. Economic and trading interests and activities also played a role in the spread of Islam at the southernmost tip of the African continent. Many slaves and political prisoners sent to the Cape during the period 1652 to 1795 were Muslims. Even though the idea of a comparison between Eastern and Southern Africa may arouse contradictory reactions among students of Islam, an attempt will be made at an appraisal of similarities and differences in the spread of Islam, Islam’s contribution to literacy, education and intellectual development, and challenges lslam had to face under colonialism. Key words: Islam, origins, expansion, slave trade, slavery, colonialism. Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, Islamic civilisation, Arabic script, language, education, literacy * The study is based on a paper presented at the International Symposium on ‘Islamic Civilisation in Southern Africa’, which took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 1 - 3 September 2006. A short, condensed version was published as Similarities and Differences in the Spread of Islam: East and South Africa Compared, In Annual Review ofIslam in South Africa. Issue No. 9, 2006-7, pp. 58-63. 134 Defining the Problems and Issues in the Study ofIslam in an African Context The study of Islam in Eastern and Southern Africa reveals a great deal of complexity as well as the pluralistic character of Islamic development within this region. A complexity in the conversion pattems and the processes of conversion can be distinguished everywhere in Africa or in sub-Saharan Africa leading to a variety of religious and cultural syntheses. Like Christianity, Islam in Africa can be seen as an African religion that had originated outside the continent but entered the African continent during the earliest days of its existence, spread, and has then in the course of time been adapted in many different ways to suit many different contexts. The processes of Islamic conversion were incorporated within the historical process of the development of African societies. Conversion patterns or models can be likened to a mosaic of elements of different religious faiths, traditional African religions, Islam and Christianity, all possibly at times co-existing and at other time intermixing. In other words, Islam meshed with pre-existing religions in sub-Saharan Africa in many different ways rather than necessarily confronting them. As Ray put it: ‘It would be misleading to speak of the process of Islamisation as a process of “conversion” from African belief to orthodox Islamic religion. A gradual blending took place between African and Islamic elements, making a new configuration which assumed different forms in different areas.’1 Conversion to Islam on the African continent can be viewed as a phased process involving different stages of religious change and assimilation of older religious elements within the process. Different authors have identified and proposed different conversion models that allow for gradual religious change and the assimilation of older religious elements within the process.2 1 RAY. B.C. African Religions, p. 184. Quoted also by Tim othy INSOLL The Archaeology ofIslam in Sub-Saharan Africa, p. 29. 2 Dominant models that have been proposed to explain conversion to Islam (and/or Christianity) are those by J.S. TRIMINGHAM The Influence ofIslam upon Africa, p. 43, who used the terms germination, crisis and reorientation. H.J. Fisher also proposed three stages of conversion to Islam in Africa, quarantine (Islam is confined to a specific group, usually traders), mixing, and a phase ofreform. See H.J. FISHER Conversion 135 In thc African context, Islamisation refers to both the religious change and the accompanying cultural change, allowing, once the core requirements of the faith were fulfilled, for numerous local interpretations of Islam. The introduction of Islam meant many changes involving religious belief and concomitant changes in the material sphere, economy, society and politics. There has been a debate for quite some time over the nature of African Islam. Africa has been often viewed as passive, simply receiving Islam, not as a contributing source or as an active ingredient in the construction of Islam.3 The persistent tendency in the authoritative literature to perceive Africa as being outside of normative Islam and marginal to the Islamic world has been criticised by many students of Islam in Africa.4 Contrary to other regions of Africa that have been well researched and documented, the history of Islam in South Africa has not been until recently well studied. The racial preoccupation formerly evident in South African historiography and society was reflected in much of the historical research and writing on Islam in South Africa and the South African Muslim community. It largely focused on the Cape Muslim community, on people earlier offensively Reconsidered: Some Historical aspects ofReligious Conversion in Black Afric, pp. 27- 40, also his The Juggernaut’s Apologia: Conversion to Islam in Black Africa , pp. 153— 173. Well-known and often used and quoted is Robin Horton’s model, dealing, however, with the spread of Christianity in Africa, see HORTON, R. African Conversion, pp. 85 -108, and On the Rationality of Convertion, pp. 219-235. According to Timothy Insoll, the model of conversion to Islam in an area of the Indian subcontinent, Bengal, proposed by Eaton, inclusion, identification, displacement, ‘is best suited to some of the African data’, INSOLL, T. The Archaeology ofIslam in Sub- Saharan Africa, pp. 29-30. Cf. with EATON, R.M., The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760, Sundkler also suggests a three-phased model, albeit for the spread of Christianity in Africa, attraction, reaction and response. See SUNDKLER Bengt & STEED Christopher, A History ofthe Church in Africa , pp. 95-96. 3 Some authors, e.g. J.S. Trimingham in his numerous works on Islam, perceived Africa as marginal to the Islamic world. See e.g. his Islam in West Africa, A History ofIslam in West Africa, Islam in East Africa, or The Influence of Islam upon Africa. In the latter work he commented, ‘the adoption of Islam brought little change in the capacity of Africans to control the conditions of their existence for they were in touch but in a peripheral way with the developed civilizations of other Islamic peoples’. See TRIMINGHAM, J.S. The Influence of Islam upon Africa, pp. 1-2. Quoted also by INSOLL, Timothy The Archaeology ofIslam in Sub-Saharan Africa, p. 8. 4 INSOLL, T. The Archaeology ofIslam in Sub-Saharan Africa, pp. 7 - 12, also ROSS E.S, Africa in Islam. What the Afrocentric Perspective Can Contribute to the Study of Islam, In International Journal ofIslamic and Arabic Studies, 2003. 136 called ‘Cape Coloureds’ or ‘Cape Malays’, and did not pay much attention to other Muslims in South Africa, for example, Indians or African coverts, who have been until now largely neglected. The spread of Islam in East and South Africa has been a long-drawn process appearing at first sight to preclude the existence of any element of similarity. Islam in East and South Africa can be described as a history of several phases and types of Islam, revealing over the centuries a plurality of manifestations of Islamisation. Complexity is again evident both in the reasons that can be suggested to explain why some people converted to Islam and in the models that can be advanced to explain this phenomenon. The aim of this contribution is not to survey in detail the course of Islam across Southern Africa, from Uganda and the East African coast down to the Cape, which would be like peering into a kaleidoscope, but rather to study the processes of conversion to Islam and attempt to outline some patterns that can be found in the expansion of Islam across this vast region, to reconstruct the dynamics of religious conversion and examine the diverse social, political and economic effects of conversion to Islam upon the peoples of the southem part of the African continent, and assess some, if any, similarities and differences in the spread of Islam. The Course of Islam in East and Central Africa Islam came to the East African coast quite early in the Islamic era through trade and economic migration on dhows. The Indian Ocean trade was organised around the monsoons and this was the case as far back as historical knowledge goes. The agents of Islam were traders who settled on the East African coast where they mingled with local people and helped to build up coastal cities and the unique Kiswahili language and civilisation.' The anciently established Swahili Islamic culture remained dominant only along a narrow coastal strip. Though trade contacts seem to have existed between some areas of Southem and East Central Africa and the coast from at least the end of the first millennium, as attested by archaeological evidence, this trade was not accompanied by religious influence.6 One reason may have been that the traders MIDDLETON, J. The World of Swahili. An African Mercantile Civilization, MATHEW, G. The East African Coast until the Coming of the Portuguese, In History ofEast Africa, eds. OLIVER Roland - MATHEW. G. , pp. 94-128, TRIMINGHAM, J.