Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a remarkable man, Shayk͟h ʻUt͟hmān Danfodio,[40] arose from among the Fulbe[41] as a religious reformer and warrior-missionary. From the Sudan he made the pilgrimage to Mecca, whence he returned full of zeal and enthusiasm for the reformation and propagation of Islam. Influenced by the doctrines of the Wahhābīs, who were growing powerful at the time of his visit to Mecca, he denounced the practice of prayers for the dead and the honour paid to departed saints, and deprecated the excessive veneration of Muḥammad himself; at the same time he attacked the two prevailing sins of the Sudan, drunkenness and immorality.
Up to that time the Fulbe had consisted of a number of small scattered clans living a pastoral life; they had early embraced Islam, and hitherto had contented themselves with forming colonies of shepherds and planters in different parts of the Sudan. The accounts we have of them in the early part of the eighteenth century, represent them to be a peaceful and industrious people; one[42] who visited their [[324]]settlements on the Gambia in 1731 speaks of them thus: “In every kingdom and country on each side of the river are people of a tawny colour, called Pholeys (i.e. Fulbe), who resemble the Arabs, whose language most of them speak; for it is taught in their schools, and the Koran, which is also their law, is in that language. They are more generally learned in the Arabic, than the people of Europe are in Latin; for they can most of them speak it; though they have a vulgar tongue called Pholey. They live in hordes or clans, build towns, and are not subject to any of the kings of the country, tho’ they live in their territories; for if they are used ill in one nation they break up their towns and remove to another. They have chiefs of their own, who rule with such moderation, that every act of government seems rather an act of the people than of one man. This form of government is easily administered, because the people are of a good and quiet disposition, and so well instructed in what is just and right, that a man who does ill is the abomination of all.… They are very industrious and frugal, and raise much more corn and cotton than they consume, which they sell at reasonable rates, and are so remarkable for their hospitality that the natives esteem it a blessing to have a Pholey town in their neighbourhood; besides, their behaviour has gained them such reputation that it is esteemed infamous for any one to treat them in an inhospitable manner. Though their humanity extends to all, they are doubly kind to people of their own race; and if they know of any of their body being made a slave, all the Pholeys will unite to redeem him. As they have plenty of food they never suffer any of their own people to want; but support the old, the blind, and the lame, equally with the others. They are seldom angry, and I never heard them abuse one another; yet this mildness does not proceed from want of courage, for they are as brave as any people of Africa, and are very expert in the use of their arms, which are the assagay, short cutlasses, bows and arrows and even guns upon occasion.… They are strict Mahometans; and scarcely any of them will drink brandy, or anything stronger than water.”
Danfodio united into one powerful organisation these [[325]]separate communities, scattered throughout the various Hausa states. The first outbreak occurred in the year 1802, in the still pagan kingdom of Gober, which had gained ascendancy over the northernmost of the Hausa states; the attempt of the king of Gober to check the growing power of the Fulbe in his dominions caused Danfodio to raise the standard of revolt; he soon found himself at the head of a powerful army, which attacked not only the pagan tribes, forcing upon them the faith of the Prophet, but also the Muhammadan Hausa states. These fell one after another and the whole of Hausaland came under the rule of Danfodio before his death in 1816. His grave in Sokoto is still an object of reverence to large numbers of pilgrims. He divided his kingdom among his two sons, who still further extended the boundary of Fulbe rule; Adamaua, founded in 1837 on the ruins of several pagan kingdoms, marks the limit of their conquests to the south-east; and the city of Ilorin, in the Yoruba country, founded in the lifetime of Danfodio, was the bulwark of the Pul empire to the south-west. With varying fortunes the dominant power remained throughout the nineteenth century in the hands of the Fulbe, who showed themselves cruel and fanatical propagandists of Islam, until British administration was established in Nigeria in 1900.
The introduction of law and order into Southern Nigeria has favoured the propaganda of Islam as in other parts of Africa that have come under European rule. The Hausa Muslims, some of whom belong to the Tijāniyyah order, have been able to move freely about the country and to penetrate among pagan tribes which had hitherto kept all Muhammadan influences rigidly at bay. In the Yoruba country particularly Islam is said to be rapidly gaining ground. There is a legend of an unsuccessful attempt made by a Muslim missionary as early as the eleventh or twelfth century; he was a Hausa who came to Ife, the religious capital of the pagan Yoruba country, and used to call the people together and read them passages from the Qurʼān; he could only speak the Yoruba language imperfectly, and with a foreign accent he would repeat to his listeners, “Let us worship Allāh: He created the mountain, He created the lowland, He created everything, He created us.” He did [[326]]this from time to time without succeeding in winning a single convert, and died a few months after his arrival in Ife. After his death his Qurʼān was found hanging on a peg in the wall of his room, and it came to be worshipped as a fetish.[43] Where this early apostle of the faith failed, his modern co-religionists have achieved a remarkable success. During the period of anarchy before the British occupation, the Muslims were for the most part congregated in large, walled towns, but under the new conditions of security they are able to reside permanently in villages, and near the scenes of their agricultural labours, and Muhammadan influences have thus become more widely extended over the country. As in German East Africa, the presence of Muhammadans among the native troops has been found to be favourable to the extension of their faith, and the pagan recruits often adopt Islam in order to escape ridicule and gain in self-respect.[44] In the Ijebu country also, in Southern Nigeria, a quite recent propagandist movement has been observed; Islam was only introduced into this part of the country in 1893, and in 1908 there was one town with twenty, and another with twelve mosques.[45] This rapid spread of the Muslim faith is particularly noticeable along the banks of the river Niger in Southern Nigeria; a Christian missionary reports: “When I came out in 1898 there were few Mohammedans to be seen below Iddah.[46] Now they are everywhere, excepting below Abo, and at the present rate of progress there will scarcely be a heathen village on the river-banks by 1910.”[47]
There has thus been much missionary work done for Islam in this part of Africa by men who have never taken up the sword to further their end,—the conversion of the heathen. Such have been the members of some of the great Muhammadan religious orders, which form such a prominent feature of the religious life of Northern Africa. Their efforts have achieved great results during the nineteenth century, [[327]]and though doubtless much of their work has never been recorded, still we have accounts of some of the movements initiated by them.
Of these one of the earliest owed its inception to Sī Aḥmad b. Idrīs,[48] who enjoyed a wide reputation as a religious teacher in Mecca from 1797 to 1833, and was the spiritual chief of the K͟haḍriyyah; before his death in 1835 he sent one of his disciples, by name Muḥammad ʻUt͟hmān al-Amīr G͟hanī, on a proselytising expedition into Africa. Crossing the Red Sea to Kossayr, he made his way inland to the Nile; here, among a Muslim population, his efforts were mainly confined to enrolling members of the order to which he belonged, but in his journey up the river he did not meet with much success until he reached Aṣwān; from this point up to Dongola, his journey became quite a triumphant progress; the Nubians hastened to join his order, and the royal pomp with which he was surrounded produced an impressive effect on this people, and at the same time the fame of his miracles attracted to him large numbers of followers. At Dongola Muḥammad ʻUt͟hmān left the valley of the Nile to go to Kordofan, where he made a long stay, and it was here that his missionary work among unbelievers began. Many tribes in this country and about Sennaar were still pagan, and among these the preaching of Muḥammad ʻUt͟hmān achieved a very remarkable success, and he sought to make his influence permanent by contracting several marriages, the issue of which, after his death in 1853, carried on the work of the order he founded—called after his name the Amīrg͟haniyyah.[49]
A few years before this missionary tour of Muḥammad ʻUt͟hmān, the troops of Muḥammad ʻAlī, the founder of the present dynasty of Egypt, had begun to extend their conquests into the Eastern Sudan, and the emissaries of the various religious orders in Egypt were encouraged by the Egyptian government, in the hope that their labours would assist in the pacification of the country, to carry on a propaganda in this newly-acquired territory, where they laboured with so much success, that the recent insurrection [[328]]in the Sudan under the Mahdī has been attributed to the religious fervour their preaching excited.[50]
In the West of Africa two orders have been especially instrumental in the spread of Islam, the Qādiriyyah and the Tijāniyyah. The former, the most widespread of the religious orders of Islam, was founded in the twelfth century by ʻAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, said to be the most popular and most universally revered of all the saints of Islam,[51]—and was introduced into Western Africa in the fifteenth century, by emigrants from Tuat, one of the oases in the western half of the Sahara; they made Walata the first centre of their organisation, but later on their descendants were driven away from this town, and took refuge in Timbuktu, further to the east. In the beginning of the nineteenth century the great spiritual revival that was so profoundly influencing the Muhammadan world, stirred up the Qādiriyyah of the Sahara and the Western Sudan to renewed life and energy, and before long, learned theologians or small colonies of persons affiliated to the order were to be found scattered throughout the Western Sudan from the Senegal to the mouth of the Niger. The chief centres of their missionary organisation are in Kanka, Timbo (Futah-Jallon) and Musardu (in the Mandingo country).[52] These initiates formed centres of Islamic influence in the midst of a pagan population, among whom they received a welcome as public scribes, legists, writers of amulets, and schoolmasters: gradually they would acquire influence over their new surroundings, and isolated cases of conversion would soon grow into a little band of converts, the most promising of whom would often be sent to complete their studies at the chief centres of the order, or even to the schools of Kairwan or Tripoli, or to the universities of Fez and al-Azhar in Cairo.[53] Here they might remain for several years, until they had perfected their theological studies, and would then return to their native place, fully equipped for the work of spreading the faith among their fellow-countrymen. In this way a leaven has been introduced into the midst of fetish-worshippers and idolaters, which has gradually [[329]]spread the faith of Islam surely and steadily, though by almost imperceptible degrees. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century most of the schools in the Sudan were founded and conducted by teachers trained under the auspices of the Qādiriyyah and their organisation provided for a regular and continuous system of propaganda among the heathen tribes. The missionary work of this order has been entirely of a peaceful character, and has relied wholly on personal example and precept, on the influence of the teacher over his pupils, and on the spread of education.[54] In this way the Qādiriyyah missionaries of the Sudan have shown themselves true to the principles of their founder and the universal tradition of their order. For the guiding principles that governed the life of ʻAbd al-Qādir were love of his neighbour and toleration: though kings and men of wealth showered their gifts upon him, his boundless charity kept him always poor, and in none of his books or precepts are to be found any expressions of ill-will or enmity towards the Christians; whenever he spoke of the people of the Book, it was only to express his sorrow for their religious errors, and to pray that God might enlighten them. This tolerant attitude he bequeathed as a legacy to his disciples, and it has been a striking characteristic of his followers in all ages.[55]
The Tijāniyyah, belonging to an order founded in Algiers towards the end of the eighteenth century, have, since their establishment in the Sudan about the middle of the nineteenth century, pursued the same missionary methods as the Qādiriyyah, and their numerous schools have contributed largely to the propagation of the faith; but, unlike the former, they have not refrained from appealing to the sword to assist in the furtherance of their scheme of conversion, and, unfortunately for a true estimate of the missionary work of Islam in Western Africa, the fame of their Jihāds or religious wars has thrown into the shade the successes of the peaceful propagandist, though the labours of the latter have been more effectual towards the spread of Islam than the creation of petty, short-lived dynasties. The records of campaigns, especially when they have interfered with the [[330]]commercial projects or schemes of conquest of the white men, have naturally attracted the attention of Europeans more than the unobtrusive labours of the Muhammadan preacher and schoolmaster. But the history of such movements possesses this importance, that—as has often happened in the case of Christian missions also—conquest has opened out new fields for missionary activity, and forcibly impressed on the minds of the faithful the existence of large tracts of country whose inhabitants still remained unconverted.
The first of these militant propagandist movements on the part of the members of the Tijāniyyah order owes its inception to al-Ḥājj ʻUmar, who had been initiated into this order by a leader of the sect whose acquaintance he made in Mecca. He was born in 1797, near Podor on the Lower Senegal, and appears to have been a man of considerable endowments and personal influence, and of a commanding presence. He was the son of a marabout and received a careful religious education; he was already famed for his learning and piety when he set out on the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1827. He did not return to his own country until 1833, when he commenced an active propaganda of the teaching of the Tijāniyyah order, fiercely attacking his co-religionists for their ignorance and their lukewarmness, especially the adepts of the Qādiriyyah order, whose toleration particularly excited his wrath. He traversed the Central Sudan, winning many adherents and receiving honour as a new prophet, until about 1841 he reached Futah-Jallon, where he armed his followers and commenced a series of proselytising expeditions against those tribes that still remained pagan about the Upper Niger and the Senegal. It was in one of these expeditions that he met his death in 1865. His son, Aḥmadu Shayk͟hu, succeeded in holding together the various provinces of his father’s kingdom for a few years only; internal conflicts and the advance of the French broke up the Tijāniyyah empire, and their territories passed under the rule of France.[56]