Some mention has already been made of the introduction of Islam into this part of Africa. The seed planted here [[331]]by ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn and his companions, was fructified by continual contact with Muhammadan merchants and teachers, and with the Arabs of the oasis of al-Ḥawḍ and others. A traveller of the fifteenth century tells how the Arabs strove to teach the Negro chiefs the law of Muḥammad, pointing out how shameful a thing it was for them, being chiefs, to live without any of God’s laws, and to do as the base folk did who lived without any law at all. From which it would appear that these early missionaries took advantage of the imposing character of the Muslim religion and constitution to impress the minds of these uncivilised savages.[57]
We have ampler details of a more recent movement of the same kind, which had been set on foot in the south of Senegambia by a Mandingo, named Ṣamudu, commonly known by the name Samory, a pagan soldier of fortune born about 1846, who became a Muhammadan early in the course of his career and founded an empire, south of Senegambia, in the country watered by the upper basin of the Niger and its tributaries. An Arabic account of the career of Samory, written by a native chronicler, gives us some interesting details of his achievements. It begins as follows: “This is an account of the Jihād of the Imām Aḥmadu Ṣamudu, a Mandingo.… God conferred upon him His help continually after he began the work of visiting the idolatrous pagans, who dwell between the sea and the country of Wasulu, with a view of inviting them to follow the religion of God, which is Islam. Know all ye who read this—that the first effort of the Imām Ṣamudu was a town named Fulindiyah. Following the Book and the Law and the Traditions, he sent messengers to the king at that town, Sindidu by name, inviting him to submit to his government, abandon the worship of idols and worship one God, the Exalted, the True, whose service is profitable to His people in this world and in the next; but they refused to submit. Then he imposed a tribute upon them, as the Qurʼān commands on this subject; but they persisted in their blindness and deafness. The Imām then collected a small force of about five hundred men, brave and [[332]]valiant, for the Jihād, and he fought against the town, and the Lord helped him against them and gave him the victory over them, and he pursued them with his horses until they submitted. Nor will they return to their idolatry, for now all their children are in schools being taught the Qurʼān, and a knowledge of religion and civilisation. Praise be to God for this.”[58] It is not possible here to trace the course of his conquests, which were marked by wholesale massacres and devastation.[59] He reached the height of his power about 1881, shortly after which he came in conflict with the French, who took him prisoner in 1898 after a series of harassing campaigns. He died in 1900. Though the effect of his conquests was the destruction of large numbers of pagans who were massacred by his ruthless armies, while others were terrified into a nominal acceptance of Islam, he does not appear to have put before him the same distinctly religious aim as al-Ḥājj ʻUmar did.[60] He left to the Qādiriyyah marabouts the task of propaganda, and they with their accustomed traditions of toleration are said to have done much to mitigate the savagery of his proceedings.[61] They opened schools in the conquered towns, established there the organisation of their order, and both instructed the new converts and sought to win fresh ones.
With regard to these militant movements of Muhammadan propagandism, it is important to notice that it is not the military successes and territorial conquests that have most contributed to the progress of Islam in these parts; for it has been pointed out that, outside the limits of those fragments of the empire of al-Ḥājj ʻUmar that have definitively remained in the hands of his successors, the forced conversions that he made have quickly been forgotten, and in spite of the momentary grandeur of his successes and the enthusiasm of his armies, very few traces remain of this armed propaganda.[62] The real importance of these [[333]]movements in the missionary history of Islam in Western Africa is the religious enthusiasm they stirred up, which exhibited itself in a widespread missionary activity of a purely peaceful character among the heathen populations. These Jihāds, rightly looked upon, are but incidents in the modern Islamic revival and are by no means characteristic of the forces and activities that have been really operative in the promulgation of Islam in Africa: indeed, unless followed up by distinctly missionary efforts they would have proved almost wholly ineffectual in the creation of a true Muslim community. In fact, the devastating wars and cruel violence of conquerors such as al-Ḥājj ʻUmar and Samory and especially the emissaries of the Tijāniyyah have caused the faith of Islam to be bitterly hated by the pagan tribes of the Sudan in the countries watered by the Senegal and the Niger. Hostility to the Muslim faith has almost assumed with them the form of a national movement, but still this Muhammadan propaganda has spread the faith of the Prophet in many parts of Guinea and Senegambia, to which the Fulbe[63] and merchants from the Hausa country in their frequent trading expeditions have brought the knowledge of their religion, and have succeeded during the last and the present century in winning large numbers of converts. Especially noteworthy is the activity of those Qādiriyyah preachers and Muslim traders who have won fresh converts to their faith since the French occupation has brought peace to the country; this peaceful penetration has been facilitated in the French Sudan, as in other parts of Africa that have recently come under the sway of European powers, by the consideration shown by French officials to the educated classes, who are of course all Muhammadans, and by the open contempt with which the degraded habits and superstitions of the pagan fetish-worshippers are regarded.[64]
But the proselytising work of the order that is now to be described has never in any way been connected with violence or war and has employed in the service of religion only the [[334]]arts of peace and persuasion. In 1837 a religious society was founded by an Algerian jurisconsult, named Sīdī Muḥammad b. ʻAlī al-Sanūsī, with the object of reforming Islam and spreading the faith; before his death in 1859, he had succeeded in establishing, by the sheer force of his genius and without the shedding of blood, a theocratic state, to which his followers render devoted allegiance and the limits of which are every day being extended by his successors.[65] The members of this sect are bound by rigid rules to carry out to the full the precepts of the Qurʼān in accordance with the most strictly monotheistic principles, whereby worship is to be given to God alone, and prayers to saints and pilgrimages to their tombs are absolutely interdicted. They must abstain from coffee and tobacco, avoid all intercourse with Jews or Christians, contribute a certain portion of their income to the funds of the society, if they do not give themselves up entirely to its service, and devote all their energies to the advancement of Islam, resisting at the same time any concessions to European influences. This sect is spread over the whole of North Africa, having religious houses scattered about the country from Egypt to Morocco, and far into the interior, in the oases of the Sahara and the Sudan. The centre of its organisation was in the oasis of Jag͟habūb[66] in the Libyan desert between Egypt and Tripoli, where every year hundreds of missionaries were trained and sent out as preachers of Islam to all parts of northern Africa. It is to the religious house in this village that all the branch establishments (said to be 121 in number) looked for counsel and instruction in all matters concerning the management and extension of this vast theocracy, which embraced in a marvellous organisation thousands of persons of numerous races and nations, otherwise separated from one another by vast differences of geographical situation and worldly interests. For the success that has been achieved by the zealous and energetic emissaries [[335]]of this association is enormous; convents of the order are to be found not only all over the north of Africa from Egypt to Morocco, throughout the Sudan, in Senegambia and Somaliland, but members of the order are to be found also in Arabia, Mesopotamia and the islands of the Malay Archipelago.[67] Though primarily a movement of reform in the midst of Islam itself, the Sanūsiyyah sect is also actively proselytising, and several African tribes that were previously pagan or merely nominally Muslim, have since the advent of the emissaries of this sect in their midst, become zealous adherents of the faith of the Prophet. Thus, for example, the Sanūsī missionaries laboured to convert that portion of the Baele (a tribe inhabiting the hill country of Ennedi, E. of Borku) which was still heathen, and communicated their own religious zeal to such other sections of the tribe as had only a very superficial knowledge of Islam, and were Muhammadan only in name;[68] the Tedas of Tu or Tibesti, in the Sahara, S. of Fezzan, who were likewise Muhammadans only in name when the Sanūsiyyah came among them, also bear witness to the success of their efforts.[69] The missionaries of this sect also carry on an active propaganda in the Galla country and fresh workers are sent thither every year from Harar, where the Sanūsiyyah are very strong and include among their numbers all the chiefs in the court of the Amīr almost without exception.[70] In the furtherance of their proselytising efforts these missionaries open schools, form settlements in the oases of the desert, and—noticeably in the case of the Wadai—they have gained large accessions to their numbers by the purchase of slaves, who have been educated at Jag͟habūb and when deemed sufficiently well instructed in the tenets of the sect, enfranchised and then sent back to their native country to convert their brethren.[71] It would appear, however, that the influence of this order is now on the decline.[72] [[336]]
Slight as these records are of the missionary labours of the Muslims among the pagan tribes of the Sudan, they are of importance in view of the general dearth of information regarding the spread of Islam in this part of Africa. But while documentary evidence is wanting, the Muhammadan communities dwelling in the midst of fetish-worshippers and idolaters, as representatives of a higher faith and civilisation, are a living testimony to the proselytising labours of the Muhammadan missionaries, and (especially on the south-western borderland of Islamic influence) present a striking contrast to the pagan tribes demoralised by the European gin traffic. This contrast has been well indicated by a modern traveller,[73] in speaking of the degraded condition of the tribes of the Lower Niger: “In steaming up the river (i.e. the Niger), I saw little in the first 200 miles to alter my views, for there luxuriated in congenial union fetishism, cannibalism and the gin trade. But as I left behind me the low-lying coast region, and found myself near the southern boundary of what is called the Central Sudan, I observed an ever-increasing improvement in the appearance of the character of the native; cannibalism disappeared, fetishism followed in its wake, the gin trade largely disappeared, while on the other hand, clothes became more voluminous and decent, cleanliness the rule, while their outward more dignified bearing still further betokened a moral regeneration. Everything indicated a leavening of some higher element, an element that was clearly taking a deep hold on the negro nature and making him a new man. That element you will perhaps be surprised to learn is Mahommedanism. On passing Lokoja at the confluence of the Benué with the Niger, I left behind me the missionary outposts of Islam, and entering the Central Sudan, I found myself in a comparatively well-governed empire, teeming with a busy populace of keen traders, expert manufacturers of cloth, brass work and leather; a people, in fact, who have made enormous advances towards civilisation.”
In order to form a just estimate of the missionary activity of Islam in Nigritia, it must be borne in mind that, while on [[337]]the coast and along the southern boundary of the sphere of Islamic influence, the Muhammadan missionary is the pioneer of his religion, there is still left behind him a vast field for Muslim propaganda in the inland countries that stretch away to the north and the east, though it is long since Islam took firm root in this soil. Some sections of the Fūnj, the predominant Negro race of Sennaar, are partly Muhammadan and partly heathen, and Muhammadan merchants from Nubia are attempting the conversion of the latter.[74]
The pagan tribe of the Jukun,[75] whose once powerful kingdom disappeared before the victorious development of the Fulbe, has withstood the advancing influence of Muhammadanism, though the foreign minister of their king has always been a Muslim and colonies of Hausas and other Muhammadans have settled among them; but these Muslim settlers do not succeed in making any converts from among the Jukun, whose traditions of their past greatness make them cling to the national faith whose spiritual headship is vested in their king.[76]
It would be easy also to enumerate many sections of the population of the Sudan and Senegambia, that still retain their heathen habits and beliefs, or cover these only with a slight veneer of Muhammadan observance even though they have been (in most cases) surrounded for centuries by the followers of the Prophet. The Konnohs, an offshoot of the great tribe of the Mandingos, are still largely pagan, and it is only in recent years that Islam has been making progress among them.[77] Consequently, the remarkable zeal for missionary work that has displayed itself among the Muhammadans of these parts during the present century, has not far to go in order to find abundant scope for its activity. Hence the importance, in the missionary history of Islam in this continent, of the movements of reform in the Muslim religion itself and the revivals of religious life, to which attention has been drawn above.
The West Coast is another field for Muhammadan missionary [[338]]enterprise where Islam finds itself confronted with a vast population still unconverted, in spite of the progress it has made on the Guinea Coast, in Sierra Leone and Liberia, in which last there are more Muhammadans than heathen. One of the earliest notices of Muslim missionary activity in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone is to be found in a petition for the dissolution of the Sierra Leone Company, ordered to be printed by the House of Commons, on the 25th May, 1802. “Not more than seventy years ago, a small number of Mahomedans established themselves in a country about forty miles to the northward of Sierra Leone, called from them the Mandingo Country. As is the practice of the professors of that religion they formed schools, in which the Arabic language and the doctrines of Mahomet were taught, and the customs of Mahomedans, particularly that of not selling any of their own religion as slaves, were adopted. Laws founded on the Koran were introduced. Those practices which chiefly contribute to depopulate the coast were eradicated, and in spite of many intestine convulsions, a great comparative degree of civilisation, union and security were introduced. Population, in consequence, rapidly increased and the whole power of that part of the country in which they are settled has gradually fallen into their hands. Those who have been taught in their schools are succeeding to wealth and power in the neighbouring countries, and carry with them a considerable portion of their religion and laws. Other chiefs are adopting the name assumed by these Mahomedans, on account of the respect which attends it; and the religion of Islam seems likely to diffuse itself peaceably over the whole district in which the colony is situated, carrying with it those advantages which seem ever to have attended its victory over Negro superstition.”[78] In the Mendi country, about one hundred miles south of Sierra Leone, Islam appears to have found an entrance only in the present century, but to be now making steady progress. “The propagandism is not conducted by any special order of priests set apart for the purpose, but [[339]]every Musalman is an active missionary. Some half a dozen of them, more or less, meeting in a town, where they intend to reside for any length of time, soon run up a mosque and begin work. They first approach the chief of the town and obtain his consent to their intended act, and perhaps his promise to become an adherent. They teach him their prayers in Arabic, or as much as he can, or cares to, commit to memory. They put him through the forms and ceremonies used in praying, forbid him the use of alcoholic beverages—a restriction as often observed as not—and lo! the man is a convert.”[79] On the Guinea Coast, Muslim influences are spread chiefly by Hausa traders who are to be found in all the commercial towns on this coast; whenever they form a settlement, they at once build a mosque and by their devout behaviour, and their superior culture, they impress the heathen inhabitants; whole tribes of fetish-worshippers pass over to Islam as the result of their imitation of what they recognise to be a higher civilisation than their own, without any particular efforts being necessary for persuading them.[80]
In Ashanti there was a nucleus of a Muhammadan population to be found as early as 1750 and the missionaries of Islam have laboured there ever since with slow but sure success,[81] as they find a ready welcome in the country and have gained for themselves considerable influence at the court; by means of their schools they get a hold on the minds of the younger generation, and there are said to be significant signs that Islam will become the predominant religion in Ashanti, as already many of the chiefs have adopted it.[82] In Dahomey and the Gold Coast, Islam is daily making fresh progress, and even when the heathen chieftains do not themselves embrace it, they very frequently allow themselves to come under the influence of its missionaries, who know how to take advantage of this ascendancy in their labours among the common people.[83] Dahomey and Ashanti are the most important kingdoms in this part of the [[340]]continent that are still subject to pagan rulers, and their conversion is said to be a question of a short time only.[84] In Lagos there are well-nigh 10,000 Muslims, and all the trading stations of the West Coast include in their populations numbers of Musalmans belonging to the superior Negro tribes, such as the Fulbe, the Mandingos and the Hausa. When these men come down to the cities of the coast, as they do in considerable numbers, either as traders or to serve as troops in the armies of the European powers, they cannot fail to impress by their bold and independent bearing the Negro of the coast-land; he sees that the believers in the Qurʼān are everywhere respected by European governors, officials and merchants; they are not so far removed from him in race, appearance, dress or manners as to make admission into their brotherhood impossible to him, and to him too is offered a share in their privileges on condition of conversion to their faith.[85] As soon as the pagan Negro, however obscure or degraded, shows himself willing to accept the teachings of the Prophet, he is at once admitted as an equal into their society, and admission into the brotherhood of Islam is not a privilege grudgingly granted, but one freely offered by zealous and eager proselytisers. For, from the mouth of the Senegal to Lagos, over two thousand miles, there is said to be hardly any town of importance on the seaboard in which there is not at least one mosque, with active propagandists of Islam, often working side by side with the teachers of Christianity.[86]