[62] Sayyid ʻAlī Akbar: K͟hitāy Nāmah, p. 83. “If the emperor of China embraces Islam, his subjects must inevitably become Muslims too, because they all worship him to such an extent that they accept whatever he says, and when that light coming from the West grows in strength, the unbelievers of the East will come flocking into Islam without showing any contention, because they are free from all fanaticism in matters of religion.” [↑]
[63] T͟hamarāt al-Funūn, 26th Shawwāl, p. 3. (A.H. 1311.) [↑]
CHAPTER XI.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN AFRICA.
The history of Islam in Africa, covering as it does a period of well-nigh thirteen centuries and embracing two-thirds of this vast continent, with its numerous and diverse tribes and races, presents especial difficulties in the way of systematic treatment, as it is impossible to give a simultaneous account in chronological order of the spread of this faith in all the different parts of the continent. Its relations to the Christian Churches of Egypt and the rest of North Africa, of Nubia and Abyssinia have already been dealt with in a former chapter; in the present chapter it is proposed to trace its progress first among the heathen population of North Africa, then throughout the Sudan and along the West coast, and lastly along the East coast and in Cape Colony.[1]
The information we possess of the spread of Islam among the heathen population of North Africa is hardly less meagre than the few facts recorded above regarding the disappearance of the Christian Church. The Berbers offered a vigorous resistance to the progress of the Arab arms, and force seems to have had more influence than persuasion in their conversion. Whenever opportunity presented itself, they rebelled against the religion as well as the rule of their conquerors, and Arab historians declare that they apostasised as many as twelve times.[2] In the annals of the long struggle a few scanty references to conversions are to be found. These would appear sometimes to have been prompted by the recognition of the fact that further resistance to the [[313]]Arab arms was useless. When in 703 the Berbers made their last stand against the invaders, their intrepid leader and prophetess, al-Kāhinah,[3] foreseeing that the fortune of battle was to turn against them, sent her sons into the camp of the Muslim general with instructions that they were to embrace Islam and make common cause with the enemy; she herself elected to fall fighting with her countrymen in the great battle that crushed the political power of the Berbers and gave Northern Africa into the hands of the Arabs. Peace was made on condition that the Berbers would furnish 12,000 combatants to the ranks of the Arab troops, and of these men two army-corps were formed, each of which was placed under the command of one of the sons of al-Kāhinah.[4] By this device of enlisting the Berbers in their armies, the Arab generals hoped to win them to their own religion by the hope of booty.
The army of seven thousand Berbers that sailed from Africa in 711 under the command of Ṭāriq (himself a Berber) to the conquest of Spain, was composed of recent converts to Islam, and their conversion is expressly said to have been sincere: learned Arabs and theologians were appointed, “to read and explain to them the sacred words of the Qurʼān, and instruct them in all and every one of the duties enjoined by their new religion.”[5] Mūsạ̄, the great conqueror of Africa, showed his zeal for the progress of Islam by devoting the large sums of money granted him by the caliph ʻAbd al-Malik to the purchase of such captives as gave promise of showing themselves worthy children of the faith: “for whenever after a victory there was a number of slaves put up for sale, he used to buy all those whom he thought would willingly embrace Islam, who were of noble origin, and who looked, besides, as if they were active young men. To these he first proposed the embracing of Islam, and if, after cleansing their understanding and making them fit to receive its sublime truths, they were converted to the best of religions, and their conversion was a sincere one, he then would, by way of putting their abilities to trial, employ them. If they evinced good disposition and talents [[314]]he would instantly grant them liberty, appoint them to high commands in his army, and promote them according to their merits; if, on the contrary, they showed no aptitude for their appointments, he would send them back to the common depôt of captives belonging to the army, to be again disposed of according to the general custom of drawing out the spoil by arrows.”[6]
How superficial the conversion of the Berbers was may be judged from the fact that when the pious ʻUmar b. ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz in A.H. 100 (A.D. 718) appointed Ismāʻīl b. ʻAbd Allāh governor of North Africa, ten learned theologians were sent with him to instruct the Muslim Berbers in the ordinances of their faith, since up to that time they do not seem to have recognised that their new religion forbade to them indulgence in wine. The new governor is said to have shown great zeal in inviting the Berbers to accept Islam, but the statement that his efforts were crowned with such success that not a single Berber remained unconverted is certainly not correct.[7] For the conversion of the Berbers was undoubtedly the work of several centuries; even to the present day they retain many of their primitive institutions which are in opposition to Muslim law.[8] Islam took no firm root among them until it assumed the form of a national movement and became connected with the establishment of native dynasties, under which many Berbers came within the pale of Islam who before had looked upon the acceptance of this faith as a sign of loss of political independence. Of these various changes of political condition it is not the place to speak here, but in a history of Muslim propaganda the rise of the Almoravids deserves special mention as a great national movement that attracted a great many of the Berber tribes to join the Muslim community. In the early part of the eleventh century, Yaḥyạ̄ b. Ibrāhīm, a chief of the Ṣanhāja, one of the Berber tribes of the Sahara, on his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca, sought in the religious centres of Northern Africa for a learned and pious teacher, who should accompany him as a missionary of Islam to his [[315]]benighted and ignorant tribesmen: at first he found it difficult to find a man willing to leave his scholarly retreat and brave the dangers of the Sahara, but at length he met in ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn the fit person, bold enough to undertake so difficult a mission, pious and austere in his life, and learned in theology, law and other sciences. So far back as the ninth century the preachers of Islam had made their way among the Berbers of the Sahara and established among them the religion of the Prophet, but this faith had found very little acceptance there, and ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn found even the professed Muslims to be very lax in their religious observances and given up to all kinds of vicious practices. He ardently threw himself into the task of converting them to the right path and instructing them in the duties of religion; but the sternness with which he rebuked their vices and sought to reform their conduct, alienated their sympathies from him, and the ill-success of his mission almost drove him to abandon this stiff-necked people and devote his efforts to the conversion of the Sudan. Being persuaded, however, not to desert the work he had once undertaken, he retired with such disciples as his preaching had gathered around him, to an island in the river Senegal, where they founded a monastery and gave themselves up unceasingly to devotional exercises. The more devout-minded among the Berbers, stung to repentance by the thought of the wickedness that had driven their holy teacher from their midst, came humbly to his island to implore his forgiveness and receive his instructions in the saving truths of religion. Thus day by day there gathered around him an increasing band of disciples, especially from among the Lamṭūna, a branch of the Ṣanhāja clan, whose numbers swelled at length to about a thousand. ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn then recognised that the time had come for launching out upon a wider sphere of action, and he called upon his followers to show their gratitude to God for the revelation he had vouchsafed them, by communicating the knowledge of it to others: “Go to your fellow-tribesmen, teach them the law of God and threaten them with His chastisement. If they repent, amend their ways and accept the truth, leave them in peace; if they refuse and persist [[316]]in their errors and evil lives, invoke the aid of God against them, and let us make war upon them until God decide between us.” Hereupon each man went to his own tribe and began to exhort them to repent and believe, but without success: equally unsuccessful were the efforts of ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn himself, who left his monastery in the hope of finding the Berber chiefs more willing now to listen to his preaching. At length in 1042 he put himself at the head of his followers, to whom he had given the name of al-Murābiṭīn (the so-called Almoravids)—a name derived from the same root as the ribāṭ[9] or monastery on his island in the Senegal,—and attacked the neighbouring tribes and forced the acceptance of Islam upon them. The success that attended his warlike expeditions appeared to the tribes of the Sahara a more persuasive argument than all his preaching, and they very soon came forward voluntarily to embrace a faith that secured such brilliant successes to the arms of its adherents. ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn died in 1059, but the movement he had initiated lived after him and many heathen tribes of Berbers came to swell the numbers of their Muslim fellow-countrymen, embracing their religion at the same time as the cause they championed, and poured out of the Sahara over North Africa and later on made themselves masters of Spain also.[10]
It is not improbable that the other great national movement that originated among the Berber tribes, viz. the rise of the Almohads at the beginning of the twelfth century, may have attracted into the Muslim community some of the tribes that had up to that time still stood aloof. Their founder, Ibn Tūmart, popularised the sternly Unitarian tenets of this sect by means of works in the Berber language which expounded from his own point of view the fundamental doctrines of Islam, and he made a still further concession to the nationalist spirit of the Berbers by ordering the call to prayer to be made in their own language.[11]