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THE ISLAMIC LITERATURES of AFRICA 1. Introduction the History

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THE ISLAMIC LITERATURES of AFRICA 1. Introduction the History THE ISLAMIC LITERATURES OF AFRICA 1. Introduction The history of Islam in Africa begins when the Arabs took Egypt from the Byzantines in 641 AD1. The Arabs went on conquering and by 647 the Greek city of Tripolis paid them tribute2. Tunisia was definitively in Arab hands after 689, when they retook it from the Berbers3. In Algeria, Berber independence was destroyed in 693, although rebellion flared up again later4. In Morocco, Fes, the first Muslim town of any significance, was founded in 789 by Idris ibn Abdallah5. Islam became dominant when the Almohad rulers settled Arab tribes there in the 12th century6. Islam was not yet dominant in the eleventh century in the kingdom of Ghana in what is now southern Mauretania7. Many West African rulers of the later Middle Ages paid lipservice to Islam as the religion of the rich traders, but for political and ritual rea- sons they had to continue worshipping the ancestral gods so as to keep the clan structure intact8. The Muslim traders no doubt made many converts among the vil- lagers in West Africa, but occasionally there arose a great military leader who would proclaim a jihad and sweep large tracts of the sahel and savannah regions free of pagan rulers9. Today, Islam is frimly estab- lished in all of West Africa with the exception of the coastal areas. It has a majority in Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad and all the countries to the north of those lands in North and West Africa. The 1 Carl BROCKELMAN, History of the Islamic Peoples, New York, Capricorn Books, 1960, p. 57. Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI) Vol. I, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1960, p. 451, 844. 2 Cyrenaica (now the region of Benghazi) was occupied by the Arabs in 643 A.D. See EI Vol. I, p. 1049; E.E. EVANS-PRITCHARD, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Oxford University Press 1949, p. 48. BROCKELMANN, op. cit., p. 74. Kayrawan, founded in 670, was sacked by the Berbers in 756, showing there was as yet no complete Arab domination. (EI vol. I, p. 1175). 3 EI vol. IV, p. 827. 4 EI vol. I, p. 367. 5 EI vol. II, p. 818; vol. III, p. 1031. 6 EI vol. I s.v. Abd al Mu}min and vol. III p. 386-7. 7 EI vol. II p. 1002. 8 Mervyn HISKETT; The Development of Islam in West Africa, London, Longman, 1984, p. 21-4. 9 Op. cit., p. 24, and all of chapter fourteen. 194 J. KNAPPERT northern states of Nigeria are also in majority Muslim. In total, Nigeria has a Muslim population of some 50 million, or 47% of all Nigerians10. The Republic of the Sudan is a special case. There, Islam is still pro- gressing as a result of government intervention11. Eritrea and Somalia have Muslim majorities, whereas in Kenya and Tanganyika, Islam is limited to the coastal area, the so-called Swahili Coast. In northeastern Kenya Islam was introduced by the Somali herdsmen spilling over from Somalia12. In Etiopia too, Islam forms an important minority (35%). The phenomenal success of Islam in Africa (half the population of the continent is Muslim), is the result of three factors: war, trade and mar- riage. Islam entered Africa in 640 as a holy war against the Christians. All of North Africa was Islamicised by the sword, and so was the Sudan. In many other regions, including the Swahili Coast, we learn of Islam first from the arrival of the traders. All the Swahili chronicles mention the arrival of the first Muslims as traders who bought parcels of land from the local chiefs; many of them married a chief's daughter13. The chiefs did not mind being associated with men who were rich by African standards and the best association between two men is that of in-law- ship. The traders' wives may still have been pagans in their hearts, but their sons certainly became Muslims. Since Islam permits a man four wives and as many concubines (i.e. female slaves) as “his right hand 10 Readers Digest Guide to Places of the World, London 1987, p. 475. 11 Very little information is available concerning the Sudan owing to the government admitting no one to the southern provinces. The Independent, a well respected London Newspaper, reported on 24 Oct. 1987: “Sudanese Muslims conduct trade in slaves from the South… Arab militias, armed by the government in its war against the Dinka-led Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement, have seized as many as 7,000 villagers, who have been sold ..”. Figaro (Paris) reports on 30 April 1991: “Soudan: un génocide pro- grammé. L'homme fort de Khartoum dépense cinq millions de francs par jour pour écraser les chrétiens du Sud du pays. Son peuple meurt de faim. En silence”. Time, New York, reports on Feb 21, 1994: “Under pressure from discontented elements within his National Islamic Front government, President Omar al-Bashir apparently ordered his forces to the attack in an effort to boost the morale and silence the opposition with a deci- sive victory in what he calls a jihad, or holy war”. Whole villages have been bombed in this “final attempt by the Islamic government in Khartoum to crush the predominantly Christian rebels with whom it has been at war for 11 years”. 12 For Somalia and southern Eritrea see I.M. LEWIS, Peoples of the Horn of Africa, London, International African Institute 1969, p. 140-154, 172-3. For Kenya, A.I. Salim in the EI, vol. IV, p. 885, gives “6%” as the percentage of Muslims, but in the next sentence raises that by implication to 8%. in a population of 10.942.704 in 1974. Since in the 22 years thereafter the population of Kenya has doubled to twenty million, the number of Muslims is at least 2 mill., though Muslim sources claim that it must be 15% or 3 mill. 13 J. KNAPPERT, The East African Coast: Some Notes on its History, in Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 23, 1992, p. 152. Wives were often accomodatd in different towns. THE ISLAMIC LITERATURES OF AFRICA 195 possesses” (Koran 3,4), the Muslim traders in Africa usually sired whole clans. The Arab writer Al-Îafi praises African women for their fertility, saying they can have as many as “thirty wombfuls of babies” each. The Muslim traders, if they were successful in their new domain, would invite their brothers and cousins to join them. In this way there arose, and prospered, bomas, i.e. walled towns, in advanced positions beyond the frontiers of Islamic territory, e.g. in Tabora and Ujiji in west- ern Tanzania, and in Kisangani and Kasongo in Zaire. There was no question of “quarantine”14, since every African clan had its own “kraal” (from Luganda ekiraalo ‘dwelling place’), where its own gods were worshipped. Women were usually expected to adopt their hasbands' reli- gion. The traders obviously had to keep their traderoutes open and there was no better way to achieve that than by means of one's relatives. Thus, brothers and nephews would be settled in halfway stations along the car- avan route. For instance, Hamed Bin Muhammad (alias Tippu Tip) mar- ried the daughter of Fundikira, chief of the Nyamwezi of Tabora, which lies as the crossing of two traderoutes. Extensive religious communities like the Kadiriyya and the Ismailiyya have numerous commercial interests in the interior. Their clients in Zaire will realise that confessing Islam is in their interest. Many local agents in Kinshasa and Brazzaville work for the Hausa and Fulani traders from Cameroun and Niger. These facts also illustrate the benefits of colonial and modern times: the rich merchants travel by air; the traders and their agents use French or English when Swahili or Hausa are not spoken in the areas where their trade is expanding. A very common cause for the spread of Islam is ethnic multiplication. The Arabs in the Sudan have grown from a few persons to fourteen mil- lion in five hundred years. The Somali people of Somalia and Ogaden expanded likewise from a few persons, perhaps one clan, to eight million in 500 years. The Fulani of Fulbe people spread out from their land of origin in the middle Senegal Valley, via the Niger bend and northern Nigeria to northern Cameroun, bringing their dominant Islamic culture with them as they conquered northern Nigeria c. 190015. The Diula or 14 HISKETT, Op. cit. p. 22. The fact that every clan, with its retainers, lived within an enclosure, did not mean that there was no contact between them. On the contrary, there was certainly trade, and probably an exchange of brides from time to time. The Muslims always sought to dominate eventually their non-Muslim countrymen, and they usually succeeded, but the privacy of each clan was sacred. 15 HISKETT, op. cit., p. 151 ff. & p. 158∞ff. 196 J. KNAPPERT Dyoula are another example: a Manding-speaking ethnic group of traders who have spread out over most of what used to be French West Africa. They have great influence in the Ivory Coast16. 2. Literacy Since the majority of the Muslims with whom the Africans came into contact, were traders, the notion of writing came to their perception as the Muslims' most curious activity. Traders use writing to keep their accounts, and to send reports and orders to other traders, to relatives and to rulers. By means of these written notes the traders could wield considerable power, if only by remembering how much money they had lent to their borrowers, and what they had in stock.
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