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The Palgrave Handbook
of Islam in Africa
Edited by
Fallou Ngom · Mustapha H. Kurfi · Toyin Falola
The Palgrave Handbook of Islam in Africa
Fallou Ngom · Mustapha H. Kurfi ·
Toyin Falola
Editors

The Palgrave
Handbook of Islam
in Africa
Editors
Fallou Ngom Mustapha H. Kurfi
Boston University Bayero University
Boston, MA, USA Kano, Nigeria

Toyin Falola
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-45758-7 ISBN 978-3-030-45759-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45759-4

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 In gratitude to these
friends, colleagues, and mentors
for their tireless support
Astou Ngom
David Robinson
Douglas A. Kibbee
Eyamba G. Bokamba
James A. Pritchett
John O. Hunwick
Tejumola Olaniyan
Viera Pawlikova-Vilhanova
Yellimane Fall
 Preface

The Palgrave Handbook of Islam in Africa builds on the existing knowledge

on Islam in Africa, including Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels’
edited volume, The History of Islam in Africa, published in 2000. It gener-
ates new insights that enriches our understanding of the history of Islam in
Africa and the diverse experiences and expressions of the faith in the con-
tinent. The volume covers key themes that reflects the preoccupations and
realities of many African Muslims. It provides readers access to a comprehen-
sive treatment of the past and current traditions of Muslims in sub-Saharan
Africa, offering insights on different forms of Islamization that took place in
several regions, local responses to Islamization, Islam in colonial and post-co-
lonial Africa, and the various forms of Jihād movements that occurred in the
continent. It provides updated knowledge on various social, cultural, linguis-
tic, political, artistic, educational, and intellectual aspects of the encounter
between Islam and African cultures reflected in the varied lived experiences
and the corpus of African Islamic texts.

Boston, USA Fallou Ngom

Kano, Nigeria Mustapha H. Kurfi
Austin, USA Toyin Falola

Acknowledgments The project took much longer than expected due to the number
of chapters we received and had to edit. We are grateful to all the scholars who
have contributed to the volume. The volume would not have been a reality without
their commitment and patience. We are also grateful to the reviewers for their
useful feedback that improved the quality of many chapters and to Gana Ndiaye for
translating Bernard Salvaing and Omar Gueye’s chapters from French to English in
addition to contributing a chapter to the volume.

vii
 Note on Sources

The volume required working with multiple language materials. We opted

for the EI3 transliteration system for Islamic concepts and names of Arab
scholars. For African actors, if the name is partly of Arabic origin but is com-
monly presented in French or English historical materials without diacritics
(such as “Usman Dan Fodio”), we have applied EI3 transcription rules in the
first part of the names and kept the name the way it is pronounced locally.
Thus, “Usman Dan Fodio” is rendered as “ʿUthmān ɗan Fodio,” Omar Tall
is rendered as “ʿUmar Taal,” and “Amadou Bamba Mbacké” is rendered as
“Aḥmadu Bamba Mbàkke,” etc. Names of Sufi orders such as the Murīdiyya,
Tijāniyya, Qādiriyya, and others are transcribed following the EI3 system.
Arabic words such “Al-Ḥājj” and “Qāḍī,” whether they are titles or parts
of first names, are transcribed following EI3 rules with initial letters always
capitalized. For names such as “Muḥammad al-Kabārī,” we have applied the
EI3 rules, but use “Al-Kabārī” with the first letters capitalized when it is used
alone to refer to the same person. Names of people and places in published
materials in French, English, and Portuguese are generally kept as they appear
in published materials. We have used “Fuuta Jalon” and “Fuuta Tooro” as
they are pronounced by native speakers, rather than their various French or
English spellings. Finally, mixed words like “ʿAjamization” lose their final
long vowel diacritic (“ī”).

ix
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Fallou Ngom, Mustapha H. Kurfi and Toyin Falola

Part I History and Diffusion

2 Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa, 800–1900 19

Bernard Salvaing

3 Religious Leadership and Mobility: Revisiting

the Legacy of Al-Ḥājj Salim Suwari 41
Alfa Mamadou Diallo Lélouma

4 The Islamic Intellectual Tradition of Sudanic Africa, with

Analysis of a Fifteenth-Century Timbuktu Manuscript 55
Zachary V. Wright

5 Interpretations of Jihād in Africa: A Historical Overview 77

Fulera Issaka-Toure

6 Between Jihād and History: Reconceptualizing the Islamic

Revolutions of West Africa 93
Amir Syed

7 Islam and Emancipation: Fuladu Fulani

in the Kaabu Empire 117
Alpha Oumarou Ba

xi
xii CONTENTS

8 Geography, Islam, and Africa 133

Karen S. Barton

9 Islam in West Africa: Diffusion and Growth 149

Bala Saho

10 Southern Africa’s Muslim Communities:

Selected Profiles 163
Muhammed Haron

Part II Institutions and Practices

11 Sharīʿa Law in Muslim Africa 205

Erin E. Stiles

12 Female Muslim Scholars in Africa 221

Britta Frede

13 Islam and Christianity in Africa 233

Viera Pawlikova-Vilhanova

14 Islam and West African Religions 253

Christopher Wise

15 Islamic Philosophy in Africa 267

Assan Sarr

Part III Islam and Creativity

16 Islamic Architecture in Pre-colonial Africa 281

Georg Leube

17 Islamic Calligraphy, Abstraction and Magic Talismans

in Northern Nigeria 303
Abdalla Uba Adamu

18 Islam in Europhone African Literature 337

Cherif Ayouba Correa

19 Islam and Music in Africa 363

Brendan Kibbee
 CONTENTS xiii

20 Muslims and Traditional Dance Performance in Dagboŋ,

Northern Ghana 387
Tigwe Salifu Jebuni

Part IV African Muslims and Knowledge Systems

21 Black Africans in Arabic Sources: A Critical

Assessment of Method and Rhetoric 401
Mbaye Lo

22 African Islamic Influences in Selected African-American

Literary Writings 439
Babacar M’Baye

23 Competing and Complementary Writing Systems

in the Horn of Africa 457
Ethan M. Key

24 Manuscript Libraries of Sub-Saharan Muslim Africa 485

Liazzat J. K. Bonate

25 Exploring and Preserving the Islamic Manuscript

Heritage of Sub-Saharan Africa 507
Sara Fani

Part V Islam, Modernity and the Contemporary World

26 Islam and Activism: The Marabout and the Trade Union 535
Omar Gueye

27 Islam and Politics in West Africa: Intricacies of the

Relationship as Seen Through Mali and Senegal 559
Claire Seulgie Lim

28 Private Islamic Education in Africa 577

Gana Ndiaye

29 Islam and Political Renaissance in Contemporary Africa 599

Afis Ayinde Oladosu
xiv CONTENTS

30 Islam and Globalization in Africa 619

Paramole Kabir Olawale and Adeniji Atanda Stephen

31 Islam and the Environment in African Context 643

Muazu Usman Shehu

32 Researching Digital Media and Islam in Africa:

Recommending a Framework 657
Ibrahim N. Abusharif

33 Islam and the Future of Africa: Perceptions,

Stereotypes, and the Clash of Philosophies 679
Toyin Falola

Index 707
 Notes on Contributors

Ibrahim N. Abusharif is Associate Professor in the Journalism and Strategic

Communication Program at Northwestern University in Qatar. He holds a
post-graduate degree in journalism and a doctorate in religious and Islamic
studies. His academic interests include the intersections of religion and
media, particularly digital media and religious authority. His scholarly work
also includes the origins, promulgation, and effects of key journalistic fram-
ing terminologies used in prominent Western print news sources in covering
Middle East and North African events and ongoing affairs.
Abdalla Uba Adamu holds double professorships in Science Education
(1997) and Media and Cultural Communication (2012) from Bayero
University Kano, Nigeria. He teaches at the Department of Information and
Media Studies at Bayero University. He has served as a Fulbright African
Senior Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (1991)
and an Academic Resident at the Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Center
in 1993. In 2012 he was appointed as a European Union Visiting Professor
for the Modern University Project at the Department of African Languages
and Cultures, University of Warsaw (March 1 to May 31, 2012). He has
given lectures as a Visiting Professor at University of Florida, Gainesville,
Rutgers University (The State University of New Jersey), University of Basel,
University of Cologne, and Hamburg University. His research focuses on
transnational media flows and their impact on the transformation of Muslim
Hausa popular culture, especially literature, film, music and performing arts.
Alpha Oumarou Ba holds a Ph.D. in Languages, Literatures and Societies
at INALCO in Paris. He has taught Fulani Dialectology at INALCO and
African Written and Oral Literature at Université Cheikh Anta Diop in
Dakar. He has published several articles and presented his work at national
and international conferences since 2005. He has been teaching at Assane
Seck University of Ziguinchor in Senegal since 2015.

xv
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Karen S. Barton is Professor in the Department of Geography, GIS, and

Sustainability at the University of Northern Colorado. Her current work
is focused on West Africa, where she is completing a book manuscript on
Africa’s largest shipwreck and the resilience of communities in the wake of
the disaster. She has been a recipient of the National Endowment for the
Humanities Senior Fellow Award, the Ambassador Distinguished Fellowship
to Ethiopia, and has received several Fulbright grants for her international
research and teaching. In 2018 she was also a recipient of the National
Council for Geographic Education’s Distinguished Teaching award.
Liazzat J. K. Bonate is Lecturer in African History at the University of the
West Indies, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago. Previously, she taught
at Seoul National University in South Korea, at the Eduardo Mondlane
University in Mozambique, and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University
of Cape Town in South Africa. Dr. Bonate specializes in African History and
Islam in Africa with a focus on Mozambique. She has conducted extensive
research on the history, culture, politics, and gender relations of the northern
Mozambican Muslim communities during the colonial and post-colonial peri-
ods. She also researched their legal Islamic history and their relationships with
the wider Swahili and Indian Ocean world.
Cherif Ayouba Correa completed his Ph.D. in African Languages and
Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008. His doctoral dis-
sertation centers on three Senegalese writers: Ousmane Sembène, Mariama
Bâ, and Cheikh Hamidou Kane. Dr. Correa’s research and publication focus
on Islam in Senegalese literature and film. He is co-chair of the English
Department at Madison College, Wisconsin where he teaches composition
and literature (African and African-American) since 2006. Dr. Correa has also
served as vice-chair for the Association of African Studies Programs.
Alfa Mamadou Diallo Lélouma is an independent scholar who graduated
from Sciences Po, Paris. He has studied Fuuta Jalon’s history with knowl-
edge holders hailing from family lineages famed for their traditionalists, lead-
ers and scholars. His interests cover Islamic history and political science in
Senegambia and the Inner Niger Delta. His scholarly publications include the
co-edited volume: Islam et Bonne Gouvernance au XIXe siècle dans les Sources
Arabes du Fouta-Djalon (Éditions Geuthner, 2018). His ongoing priorities
include writing a modern and thought-provoking history for a lay audience,
including publishing and disseminating articles in the Guinean media.
Toyin Falola is University Distinguished Teaching Professor and Jacob and
Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas
at Austin. A Yoruba chief, he has received numerous awards and twelve hon-
orary doctorates. He has written extensively on religion, including Religious
Militancy and Self-Assertion: Islam and Politics in Nigeria; and Violence in
Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii

Sara Fani graduated from the Arabic Language and Literature program at
the University of Naples “L’Orientale” with a thesis on Arabo-Islamic book
bindings. She obtained her Ph.D. with a dissertation on Medieval Arabic trea-
tises of ink recipes. She combined her interest in codicology with a Master’s
degree in conservation and restoration of book materials and with activities
in different Italian libraries, such as cataloging Arabic manuscript collections
in Italian libraries (Florence and Venice) and organizing exhibitions. She
was involved in the ERC project Islam in the Horn of Africa, retrieving and
describing Islamic manuscripts from the Horn of Africa. She is now Post-Doc
Fellow at the University of Florence.
Britta Frede is a specialist in Islamic studies focusing on social transforma-
tion, translocal connectivities, and Islam in Africa since 1800. Her Ph.D.
(Free University of Berlin, Germany) dealt with the history of the Tijāniyya
in Mauritania, especially the implementation of a revival movement (Fayḍa)
among the well-established local Tijānī elite. The work received two awards:
The Hedwig Hinze Women Scholars Prize in 2013 and The Annemarie
Schimmel Prize in 2015. Since 2012 her focus shifted to female Islamic
scholars in contemporary urban settings of Africa, especially in Nouakchott,
Mombasa, and Cape Town. She currently holds a position at Bayreuth
University, Germany in the research cluster Africa Multiple.
Omar Gueye is Professor of History at Cheikh Anta Diop University in
Dakar, Senegal. His work focuses on Labor and Social History. He holds a
Ph.D. in Social History from The University of Amsterdam, a Ph.D. in
Modern and contemporary History from Cheikh Anta Diop University.
Professor Gueye was a Fellow at the Weatherhead (WIGH) Initiative on
Global History at Harvard University, a Fulbright Fellow at the University of
Michigan, a Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute in
Florence-Italy (EUI), a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Paris
(IEA) and an Associate Studies Director at Maison des Sciences de l’Homme
(MSH) in Paris. He is a contributor in several collective volumes, and has
recently published May 1968 in Senegal, in which he analyzes the African
specificity in the Global social movement. He is currently working on the
relationship between trade unionism and politics, and the odyssey of African
youth since the sixties.
Muhammed Haron is Professor of Religious Studies in the Theology and
Religious Studies Department at the University of Botswana. Professor
Haron was formerly associated with the University of the Western Cape and
the University of Cape Town. Currently, Haron is an Associate Researcher
at the University of Stellenbosch. During 2018 (April-May) he was a visit-
ing International Relations’ Professor at Rhodes University. Currently,
he serves as editor for the Annual Review of Islam in Africa (ARIA) and
Editor-in-Chief for Duke University’s Research Africa Reviews. He has
­
xviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

published extensively. His most recent publications include Muslim Higher

Education in Postcolonial Africa, co-edited (London 2016), Connecting South-
South Communities: Narrating the Tales of South Africa-Malaysia Relations
(Newcastle, 2018), and Proceedings of the 2016 Islamic Civilization in
Southern Africa Congress, co-edited (Istanbul, 2019).
Fulera Issaka-Toure is Lecturer at the Department for the Study of
Religions at the University of Ghana, Legon. She completed a postdoctoral
fellowship at the Department of Islamic Studies at Bayreuth University,
Germany. Her interests lie in gender rights, Islamic religious authorities,
and legal pluralism in a secular context of Ghana. She is currently working
on a project on Islam among African migrants in Germany and conducting
research on Muslim youth, popular culture and the transformation of Islamic
religious authorities in Ghana.
Tigwe Salifu Jebuni is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Interdisciplinary
Research and Consultancy Services (IIRaCS) at University for Development
Studies in Tamale, Ghana. He holds M.Phil. degree in Theatre Arts (Dance
in Education), a B.A. in Dance Studies with History and a Diploma in Dance
Studies from the University of Ghana, Legon. Tigwe served as an Assistant
Lecturer in the Department of Dance Studies at the University of Ghana from
2014–2016. His research interest lies in dance education and performance.
He was a pioneering member of Northern Regional Dance Association. He
serves as a board member of the Youth Home Cultural Troupe of Tamale. He
has extensive field experience in African dance and musical genres, particu-
larly Dagboŋ culture and tradition. Presently, Tigwe is conducting research on
mask performances and Sigma masquerades of the Tampulma.
Ethan M. Key is a Ph.D. student specializing in African History at Boston
University. Prior to that, he received an M.A. in World History from Georgia
State University. He is interested in the diverse relationships of languages
spoken and faiths practiced in the Horn of Africa, particularly in reference
to how people adjusted and maintained their worldviews to meet the chal-
lenges of incorporation into expanding empires and increased participation
in the international economy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries.
Brendan Kibbee is Lecturer at the City University of New York and Rutgers
University. In 2019 he received his Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the
City University of New York. His dissertation, “Counterpublics and Street
Assemblies in Postcolonial Dakar,” focused on the intersection of music, asso-
ciational life, politics, and public space in a densely populated neighborhood
of Dakar, Senegal. He was a fellow at CUNY’s Center for Place, Culture, and
Politics, and is the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays fellowship, and the Society
for Ethnomusicology’s twentieth-century Dissertation Fellowship. His work
has appeared in Current Musicology and Musicology Research.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xix

Mustapha H. Kurfi is Senior Lecturer at Bayero University in Kano,

Nigeria. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Boston University. A Hausa
native speaker, Mustapha Kurfi served as a Senior Teaching Fellow at the
African Studies Centers at Ohio University and Boston University. He has
digitized the Hausa, Kanuri, Fulfulde, Yoruba, and Nupe ʿAjamī manuscripts
hosted at the African Ajami Library (AAL) at Boston University. Dr. Kurfi
is the author of Jagoran Koyan Hausa ʿAjamī a Aiwace [A Practical Guide
to Learning Hausa ʿAjamī], (2017) and Littafin Koyan Hausa ʿAjamī don
Lafiyar Al’umma [Hausa ʿAjamī Workbook for Public Health], 2019. He
co-edited with Fallou Ngom, ʿAjamization of Islam in Africa (Leiden: Brill,
Islamic Africa, Volume 8: 1–2, October 2017).
Georg Leube is Akademischer Rat (Adjunct Lecturer) at the Chair of Islamic
Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany, where he works on the iconog-
raphy of authority under the so-called Turkmen Dynasties of the Qara- and
Aqquyunlu during the fifteenth-century CE. He received his Ph.D. on early
Islamic history and historiography from a prosopographical perspective at
Bayreuth University in 2014. He has taught a wide variety of courses on the
history and society of the pre-modern and modern Islamic World and is espe-
cially interested in approaches situating Islamicate material cultures in con-
texts of transcultural transmission and reception.
Claire Seulgie Lim is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Boston
University. She received her B.A. in International Relations, with a minor in
English Literature, and an M.A. in International Cooperation at the Graduate
School of International Studies, both at Seoul National University, South
Korea. She focuses on African studies, international relations, women’s polit-
ical participation, women’s movements, civil society, religion, and feminism.
Her graduate work has focused on the consequences of the gender parity law
in Senegal, in terms of social changes and within the broader conversation of
African feminism and civil society.
Mbaye Lo is Associate Professor of the Practice of Asian and Middle Eastern
Studies and International Comparative Studies at Duke University. Dr. Lo, a
recipient of the Duke Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award,
is the Arabic Program Coordinator and Director of Duke in the Arab World
Academic Program. His published books include Muslims in America: Race,
Politics and Community Building; Civil Society-Based Governance in Africa:
Theories and Practices; Understanding Muslim Discourse: Language, Tradition
and the Message of bin Laden; and Political Islam, Justice and Governance. He
is the co-editor of Muslim Institutions of Higher Education in Postcolonial
Africa.
Babacar M’Baye is Professor of English at Kent State University. A native
of Senegal, he received his Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University. His
research interests include Pan-African literature, film, music, and black post-
colonial and transnational cultures. He is the author of Black Cosmopolitanism
xx NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

and Anticolonialism: Pivotal Moments (Routledge, 2017), The Trickster Comes

West: Pan-African Influence in Early Black Diasporan Narratives (University
Press of Mississippi, 2009), and the co-editor of Crossing Traditions:
American Popular Music in Local and Global Contexts (Scarecrow Press,
2013) and Gender and Sexuality in Senegalese Societies: Critical Perspectives
and Methods (Lexington Books, 2019).
Gana Ndiaye is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at
Boston University. He earned a M.Sc. in Intercultural Mediation: Identities,
Mobility, and Conflicts from KU Leuven (Belgium), and an M.A. in French
Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA). Ndiaye
has worked as a high school teacher and in the secondary school administra-
tion of the Senegalese Ministry of Education. He is currently working on a
dissertation that examines the public expressions of religiosity of Senegalese
Muslim migrants in Brazil. His research interests include race and ethnicity,
immigration, transnational Islam, and African ʿAjamī literatures.
Fallou Ngom is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the African
Studies Center at Boston University. His research focuses on the inter-
actions between African languages and non-African languages, the adap-
tations of Islam, and ʿAjamī literatures in Africa. His work has appeared in
African Studies Review, History Compass, Islamic Africa, Journal of Arabic
and Islamic Studies, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development,
Language Variation and Change, and International Journal of the Sociology of
Language. His book, Muslims beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of ʿAjamī
and the Murīdyya (Oxford University Press, 2016), won the 2017 Melville J.
Herskovits Prize for the best book in African studies.
Afis Ayinde Oladosu is Professor in the Department of Arabic and Islamic
Studies at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He has won several international
fellowships and scholarships and presented papers in many international con-
ferences. He is an external examiner for undergraduate and doctorate exami-
nations and assessor for professorial promotions for universities in and outside
Nigeria. He is a member of several learned societies and reviewer for several
international journals. Currently, he serves as a member of the Governing
Council of the National University Commission (NUC) and Dean of the
Faculty of Arts at the University of Ibadan.
Paramole Kabir Olawale is Associate Professor of Islamic and
Contemporary Studies, Assistant Director at the Center for General Studies,
and former Sub-Dean of the Faculty of Arts at LASU. Dr. Paramole has
published widely within and outside Nigeria. His scholarly works include
Attitude of Yoruba Muslim Communities to HIV and AIDS, Scholarly Insights
on Islamic Ethics (2016), Dynamics of Islamic Studies among World Disciplines
(2019), and Interrogating Problematic Issues in Humanities and Education
(2019).
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxi

Viera Pawlikova-Vilhanova, Ph.D., Dr.Sc. is Senior Research Scholar at

the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and was
a Professor of African Studies at the University of St. Cyril and Methodius
in Trnava. Having graduated in African Studies from Charles University,
Prague, she did her postgraduate studies at Makerere University in Kampala,
Uganda. Her interests span African history, African historiographies, African
literatures and the spread of Islam and Christianity in Africa, with a special
interest in Christian missions in Africa, especially White Fathers, their lin-
guistic work and role in the production of knowledge on Africa. She has
published books and articles on these topics. Since 1998 she has served as
International Director of the international project Fontes Historiae Africanae/
Sources for African History of l’Union Académique Internationale based in
Brussels whose aim is to publish critical editions of sources for African history.
We are extremely saddened by the passing of Professor Pawlikova-Vilhanova
on September 26, 2019, and are grateful to her colleague, Martina Bucková,
who informed us and volunteered to complete the publication process of her
chapter.
Bala Saho received his Ph.D. in African history from Michigan State
University in 2012. He is a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries
West Africa (religious, legal, cultural, and social, women and gender history).
His book, Contours of Change: Muslim Courts, Women, and Islamic Society
in Colonial Bathurst, The Gambia, 1905–1965 (Michigan State University,
2018), explores the place of women in the formation of colonial Bathurst,
the evolution of women’s understanding of the importance of law in securing
their rights, as well as the ways in which women utilized the Qaḍī court sys-
tem to fight for growing rights within the domestic sphere.
Bernard Salvaing is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nantes, France.
He first worked on Christian missions in the Gulf of Guinea. Then he shifted
his focus to Islamic societies in Western Africa before colonization, par-
ticularly in Mali and Guinea. He has edited and translated Arabic and Fula
ʿAjamī texts from authors living in the nineteenth and in the beginning of
the twentieth century. He has collected and published several life stories
which highlight how traditional Islamic scholars and new Muslim educated
elites trained in European schools view their own cultures and their contact
with Europeans.
Assan Sarr is Associate Professor of History and Director of Graduate
Studies in the Department of History at Ohio University. His research inter-
ests include peace and conflict in Africa, land tenure, agrarian change, oral
history, slavery, and Islam in West Africa’s Senegambia region. Sarr is the
author of Islam, Power and Dependency in the Gambia River Basin and several
book chapters and articles, which appeared in the African Economic History,
African Studies Review, Journal of West African History and Mande Studies.
xxii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Muazu Usman Shehu is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Gombe State

University, Nigeria. He obtained his Ph.D. in Sociological Studies from
the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. His research interest is inter-
disciplinary and broadly include Religion and Ecology, Religion in Society,
Science and Technology in Society, and Forced Migration. His research has
been published in several academic journals and he has given talks in lead-
ing academic conferences around the world. His work has been funded by
the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Institute of International
Education (IIE), among other research agencies. In 2018, he was awarded
the Carson Fellowship of the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and
Society, Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany, with funding
to work on a project entitled “Diversity and Similarity in the Perception of
Environmental Problems among Salafi and Sufi Muslim Denominations in
Northeast Nigeria.”
Adeniji Atanda Stephen teaches History and International Studies at the
Lagos State University (LASU). He has taught several courses at LASU since
2005, including War and Peace in the Twentieth Century, Diplomatic History
of North Africa and the Middle East, Southern African History from 1400 to
Present, and American History from Colony to the Present. He has served as
Diploma Coordinator in Strategic Affairs, Staff Secretary, Course Adviser, and
Departmental Examination Officer at LASU.
Erin E. Stiles is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at
the University of Nevada, Reno, where she directs the Graduate Program and
chairs the interdisciplinary minor program in religious studies. Her research
focuses on the intersections of religion, law, and gender. She has conducted
ethnographic research on marital disputes and Islamic law in Zanzibar and
on religious experience in northern Utah. She is the author of An Islamic
Court in Context: An Ethnographic Study of Judicial Reasoning (2009) and
the co-editor of Gendered Lives in the Western Indian Ocean (2015), in addi-
tion to articles and book chapters.
Amir Syed is Visiting Assistant Professor in the history department at the
University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches courses in African and Islamic
history. He received his Ph.D. from the Interdisciplinary Program in
Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan. His research inter-
ests include issues related to the construction of religious authority, scholarly
cultures, and Islamic knowledge practices in West Africa. His current project
investigates the political and intellectual histories of nineteenth-century West
Africa through an analysis of the significant Muslim scholar, Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar
Taal (d. 1864). He is the co-author of Jihad of the Pen: The Sufi Literature of
West Africa (2018).
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxiii

Christopher Wise is Professor of English and Comparative Literature.

His research interests include Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Senegal. His
recent books include À la Recherche de Yambo Ouologuem; Sorcery, Totem,
and Jihad in African Philosophy; and Archive of the Umarian Tijaniyya.
Wise has also edited and translated various books by African writers, includ-
ing The Timbuktu Chronicles, 1493–1599: Al-Ḥājj Maḥmūd Kaʿti’s Taʾrīkh
­al-Fattāsh, The Manuscripts of Timbuktu: Secrets, Myths, and Realities, The
Yambo Ouologuem Reader, and Norbert Zongo’s The Parachute Drop. He is
currently editing and translating the collected writings of Al-Ḥājj Seku Taal.
Zachary V. Wright is Associate Professor in residence at Northwestern
University in Qatar, with joint appointments in history and religious stud-
ies. Wright received his Ph.D. (history) from Northwestern University. He
teaches classes on Islam in Africa, modern Middle East history, African his-
tory, Islamic intellectual history and Islam in America. His book publica-
tions include Living Knowledge in West African Islam: The Sufi Community
of Ibrahim Niasse (2015), and On the Path of the Prophet: Shaykh Ahmad
Tijani and the Tariqa Muhammadiyya (2005, 2015; French translation Sur
la Voie du Prophète, 2018). He has also translated a number of West African
Arabic texts into English, with publications such as Jihad of the Pen: The
Sufi Literature of West Africa (co-authored with Rudolph Ware, Amir Syed,
American University in Cairo Press, 2018); The Removal of Confusion con-
cerning the Saintly Seal (Fons Vitae, 2010, and reprint forthcoming), Pearls
from the Flood (Faydah Books, 2015), and Islam the Religion of Peace (Light
of Eminence, 2013). His current research concerns eighteenth-century
Islamic intellectual history in North Africa, with a book project entitled,
Islamic Realization and Sainthood in Eighteenth-Century North Africa.
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Islam and Christianism in Africa Credit: Jean Salvaing 20

Fig. 2.2 Muslim Towns and Countries before 1500 Credit:
Jean Salvaing 21
Fig. 2.3 Medieval Empires of the Western Sudan during
their Apogee Credit: Jean Salvaing 23
Fig. 2.4 Islamic States in Western and Central Africa Credit:
Jean Salvaing 31
Fig. 4.1 Screen shot by Zachary Wright (Source Bustān al-Fawāʾid wa
l-Manāfiʿ by Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Abū Bakr b. ʿAlī b.
Mūsā al-Kābarī based on a copy in Northwestern University’s
Arabic Manuscript Collection) 63
Fig. 8.1 Muslims and Christians in Africa (Source Pew Forum) 135
Fig. 8.2 The Diffusion of Islam (Source David Robinson, adapted
from John D. Fage and Maureen Verity, An Atlas of African
History, New York, 1978) 141
Fig. 8.3 Trans-Saharan Trade Routes from Eighth-Nineteenth
Centuries (Source Eric Ross, “A Historical Geography
of the Trans-Saharan Trade (map),” in The Trans-Saharan
Book Trade: Manuscript Culture, Arabic Literacy
and Intellectual History in Muslim Africa, edited by Graziano
Krätli and Ghislaine Lydon, 1–34 [Leiden: Brill, 2011]) 143
Fig. 10.1 The region’s religious montage (Source and Adapted from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country) 167
Fig. 10.2 The region’s Muslim population estimates
(Source and Adapted from Houssain Kettani: https://
pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1441/4b427c74872d17ec4c7b
2b0553c63a3d0314.pdf) 167
Fig. 16.1 Typical locations of building types in a schematic plan of a
­pre-colonial Islamic town following Wirth Orientalische Stadt
and others (Source © Emily Williamson) 283

xxv
xxvi LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 16.2 Miḥrāb and Minbar in the Mandhry Mosque in Mombasa,

Kenya (Source © Asghar Yusuf) 285
Fig. 16.3 Sabīl-Maktab of Sulṭān Qāʾitbāy in Cairo
(Source © Georg Leube) 288
Fig. 16.4 Photograph of Waqfiyya in the Mérinid Madrasa of Salé
(Source © Georg Leube) 291
Fig. 16.5 Sketch illustrating the growth of Cairo as a succession
of refoundations (Source © Emily Williamson) 293
Fig. 16.6 Friday-mosque of Djenné, Mali (Source © Chanana
McKelton) 294
Fig. 16.7 Main Gate of the Ribāṭ of al-Mahdiyya, Morocco
(Source © Georg Leube) 295
Fig. 17.1 a and b: Hausa Warsh script in Android applications
(Screenshot by Abdalla Uba Adamu) 309
Fig. 17.2 a and b: Zayyana details, Wooden Medium and Paper
(Credit: Abdalla Uba Adamu) 311
Fig. 17.3 a and b: Zayyana Varieties (Credit: Abdalla Uba Adamu) 313
Fig. 17.4 Mai Zayyana art shop, Sharifai, Kano city, January 2018
(Credit: Abdalla Uba Adamu) 315
Fig. 17.5 Young Hausa Calligrapher student of Mubarak Munir
Muḥammad—and Crayola (Credit: Abdalla Uba Adamu) 316
Fig. 17.6 a and b: Gabari original Zayyana (left) and New Directions
(right) (Credit: Abdalla Uba Adamu) 318
Fig. 17.7 a through d: Gabari Zayyana Patterns (Credit: Abdalla Uba
Adamu) 320
Fig. 17.8 a and b: New Directions in Hausa Islamic Calligraphy
(Credit: Abdalla Uba Adamu) 324
Fig. 17.9 Gabari and Mosque Wall zayyana, Kano, 2016
(Credit: Abdalla Uba Adamu) 326
Fig. 17.10 Emiral Art and Warsh Calligraphy in Kano (Credit: Abdalla
Uba Adamu) 326
Fig. 17.11 a and b: Talismanic Wall Murals, Kano, January 2018
(Credit: Abdalla Uba Adamu) 327
Fig. 17.12 Hatimi to Enhance Memorization of the Qurʾān
(Credit: Abdalla Uba Adamu’s personal collection
of local market editions) 328
Fig. 17.13 Textual Amulet for Curing Erectile Dysfunction
(Credit: Abdalla Uba Adamu’s personal collection
of local market editions) 330
Fig. 17.14 The Ismu-l-Lāhi-l-ʿAẓīm Hatim (Credit: Abdalla
Uba Adamu’s personal collection of local market editions) 332
Fig. 17.15 The secret of the Bismillāh (Credit: Abdalla Uba Adamu’s
personal collection of local market editions) 333
Fig. 19.1 Cànt performance led by Diwanou Galass in Médina,
Dakar, Senegal (Picture taken by Brendan Kibbee) 371
Fig. 23.1 Excerpt from the Book of Philemon, using fidel to transcribe
afaan Oromoo. Onesimos Nasib, trans. Macaafa Qulqulluu
(St. Chrischona, Switzerland, 1899) 458
 LIST OF FIGURES xxvii

Fig. 23.2 Excerpt from Shaykh Ṭalḥa’s Kashf al-ghumma in Amharic

ʿajamī. Kemal Abdulwehab. “The Kašf al-gumma
by Šayh Ṭalḥa b. Ĝa’far,” 313 464
Fig. 23.3 Shaykh Bakrii’s Oromo Alphabet. R. J. Hayward
and Mohammed Hassen, “The Oromo Orthography
of Shaykh Bakri Sapalō,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London 44, 3 (1981),
550–566: 556 468
Fig. 23.4 Shaykh Bakrii’s Alphabet Using Amharic and Arabic
To Explain. Hayward and Mohammed, 557 469
Fig. 23.5 Shaykh Bakrii’s Alphabet with Arabic and Amharic
Explanations. Hayward and Mohammed, 558 470
Fig. 23.6 Shaykh Bakrii’s Alphabet with Arabic and Amharic
explanations. Hayward and Mohammed, 559 470
Fig. 23.7 Letter using both fidel and Shaykh Bakrii’s alphabet
to transcribe afaan Oromoo. Hayward
and Mohammed, 560–561 471
Fig. 23.8 Sample of N’ko writing. Coleman Donaldson. “The Role
of Islam, Ajami Writings and Educational Reform
in Sulemaana Kante’s N’ko.” African Studies Review
(2020), 1–25: 5 473
Fig. 25.1 Ms WRK0003, from the Collection of Warukko,
Oromia (Ethiopia); the fastening between the textblock
and the cover is realized with an additional thread anchored
to the textblock sewing (©IslHornAfr project, ERC) 511
Fig. 25.2 (a) and (b) Ms SDQ0004, from the collection of Säddäqa,
Oromia (Ethiopia); the endbands are realized without
a core and the secondary sewing is anchored on the textblock;
(c) Ms LMG0007, from the collection of Limmu Ghannat,
Oromia (Ethiopia); the endband is sewn in one phase,
with a monochrome thread, on the spine lining;
(d) Ms SSE0002, from the collection of Suuse, Oromia
(Ethiopia); the secondary monochrome sewing without
a core is (slid?) on the spine (©IslHornAfr project, ERC) 512
Fig. 25.3 Ms DJBL0045, from the collection of Ayfaraḥ b. Sharīf b.
Ḥamza, in Balbala, Djibouti City (Djibouti); the textblock
is made by loose folios, while the cover is made by two
uncovered boards and a piece of colored fabric
in correspondence of the spine (©IslHornAfr project, ERC) 513
Fig. 25.4 Ms SHM2018-001, from the collection of Sharif Museum,
Harär (Ethiopia); a fabric envelop bag with shoulder strap
(©IslHornAfr project, ERC) 513
Fig. 25.5 A set of used reed pens (qalam) and small glass bottles
used for inks. Limmu Ǝnnarya, Oromia (Ethiopia)
(©IslHornAfr project, ERC) 516
xxviii LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 25.6 People eating and drinking next to a pile of manuscripts in

Säddäqa, Oromia (Ethiopia) (©IslHornAfr project, ERC) 519
Fig. 25.7 Ms SDQ0005, from the collection of Säddäqa, Oromia
(Ethiopia); the spine of the codex assumed a concave shape,
which is reflected in the protruding of the front edge
in a convex one (©IslHornAfr project, ERC) 520
Fig. 25.8 Ms from the collection of Limmu Ǝnnarya, Oromia
(Ethiopia); a wooden box containing manuscripts
and printed book affected by mold and insects
(©IslHornAfr project, ERC) 520
Fig. 25.9 (a) Remains of manuscripts and printed books affected
by rodents and insects, from the collection of Tije,
Oromia (Ethiopia); (b) Ms MAJ026, from the collection
of Muḥammad Abba Jamaal, Jimata, Oromia (Ethiopia);
effects of rodents’ infestation (©IslHornAfr project, ERC) 521
Fig. 25.10 Ms SHM2006-166, from the collection Sharif Museum,
Harär (Ethiopia); the effects of an acid green ink
on the paper support; the support has been repaired
with photocopy paper in correspondence of the green
frame (©IslHornAfr project, ERC) 522
Fig. 26.1 a and b Marabouts and Caliphs of their respective
Sufi orders welcoming French President Vincent Auriol
during his visit to Senegal in 1947. The pictured includes:
Ababacar Sy (Sy branch of the Tijāniyya), Seydou Nourou
Tall (Tall branch of the Tijāniyya), and Falilou Mbacké
(of the Murīdiyya), among others (Credit: IFAN) 540
Fig. 26.2 President Senghor and his supporters: a Serigne Babacar Sy,
the “protective father,” b Serigne Falilou Mbacké,
the “mentor,” c Seydou Nourou Tall in the middle
of his faithful disciples in Dakar (Credit: MINCOM) 546
Fig. 26.3 The New Caliph Serigne Abdoul Ahad Mbacké
of the Murīdiyya receiving administrative
and religious delegations to present their condolences
(Credit: MINCOM) 550
Fig. 26.4 Monseigneur Hyacinthe Thiandoum, Archbishop
of Dakar mediating between President Senghor
and the Dominican Fathers in 1968 (Credit: MINCOM) 550
Fig. 32.1 Portray image of the Grand Mosque in Medina-Baye,
Kaolack, Senegal (Credit: Ibrahim N. Abusharif) 660
Fig. 32.2 Archway adjoining the Grand Mosque in Medina-Baye,
Kaolack, Senegal (Credit: Ibrahim N. Abusharif) 661
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Fallou Ngom, Mustapha H. Kurfi and Toyin Falola

Àdduna, Wa-Xa-Ja [in Wolof]. Life is about Wa-Xa-Ja. Waxante, to speak to

each other; Xamante, to know each other; and Jariñante, to be useful to each
other. God could have created human beings as trees or rain, but it is because
He intended them to enrich each other that He created them as different
­ethnolinguistic groups.
Sëriñ Masoxna Lo, Imām of the Mosque of Diourbel, Senegal.

The numerous publications, conferences, symposia, workshops, and s­cholarly

networks devoted to various aspects of Islam in Africa around the world in
the last two decades testify to the global interest in African Muslim com-
munities, their histories, traditions, belief systems, organizations, and evolv-
ing modes of expression. The recent growing interest in Islam in Africa
partly results from the activities of militant groups such as Boko Haram,
Al-Shabaab, and others, and partly from the “discovery” of the rich African
Islamic intellectual traditions reflected in the old manuscripts found in the
fabled city of Timbuktu, Mali and the publicity they have received.1 The
­current activities of Islamic militant groups in the Sahel region that resulted
from the killing of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011 and the
ongoing discoveries of additional manuscript archives in several parts of

F. Ngom (*)
Department of Anthropology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
e-mail: fngom@bu.edu
M. H. Kurfi
Department of Sociology, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria
e-mail: mustapha@bu.edu
T. Falola
Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
e-mail: toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu

© The Author(s) 2020 1

F. Ngom et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Islam in Africa,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45759-4_1
2 F. NGOM ET AL.

sub-Saharan Africa continue to generate more interest in Islam in Africa

globally.
The recent academic works highlight the significance and vibrancy of
Muslim communities in Africa and abroad and their enduring embeddedness
in the larger global story of Islam.2 Significant progress has been made on
the study of Islam in Africa because some important hurdles that tradition-
ally impeded the field have been seriously challenged, though not completely
erased. These include the following hurdles: (a) the usual treatment of the
Great Sahara Desert as an insurmountable barrier that sealed off North Africa
from sub-Saharan Africa3; (b) the traditional racial separation of Muslims
in Africa between Arabs and Moors who supposedly practice “pure Islam”
(“White Islam/Islam Blanc”) and Blacks who allegedly practice “corrupt
Islam” (“Black Islam/Islam Noir”) that the French colonial administrator
Paul Marty championed4; and (c) the overemphasis on African oral traditions
at the expense of the equally important and rich multilingual non-Europhone
sources of Africa in Arabic and ʿAjamī (African languages written with the
Arabic script).5
Furthermore, studies on Islam in Africa are still dominated by the
­Arabic-centric monoglossic ideology of language that values the Arabic lan-
guage and texts over African languages and texts in ʿAjamī. Though Arabic
has served for centuries as the Latin of Africa for Muslims, to use Hunwick’s
words,6 many African Muslims live in societies where multilingualism is the
norm and they have authored and will continue to produce multilingual texts
of equal value in Arabic and ʿAjamī depending on their goals and targeted
audiences.7 These African Muslims subscribe to the polyglossic or pluralist ide-
ology of language and believe that God is multilingual and that all languages
are equal in their capacity to become vehicles of Islamic and non-Islamic
thoughts. They view the functions of Arabic and ʿAjamī as complementary,
rather than mutually exclusive.8
To do justice to the knowledge systems of these Africans, we must con-
sider all the multilingual sources they produce by investing in learning, not
only Arabic, but also their local languages and developing the cultural and
literacy skills necessary to access the insights in their ʿAjamī texts. To do
this, we need to overcome what has been termed the old linguistic paradox
in the production of knowledge about sub-Saharan African societies.9 Only
few specialists of Islam in Africa and Africanists in general speak fluently and
are literate in the languages and scripts used in the communities they study
while it is unthinkable to study Chinese, Americans, Arabs, French, German,
or Russian communities without the fluency and literacy in their languages
and scripts necessary to access the insights in their sources of knowledge. As
the rich ʿAjamī archives in Africa demonstrate,10 if knowledge production
about African Muslims and others who live beyond the Arab world and who
have rich ʿAjamī traditions is to be greatly enhanced and more accurate and
objective, this double standard has to be addressed and their ʿAjamī materials
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

have to become a full part of the primary sources used to produce knowledge
about them.11
Though the lingering effects of these hurdles are still perceived in the
Western media and in studies on Islam in Africa and African studies at large,
more scholars in the humanities and social sciences are now recognizing
the enduring historical, cultural, educational, intellectual, and religious ties
between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, the arbitrariness of the colonial
racial classifications of African Muslims, and the wealth of insights covering
vast areas of human knowledge to be gained when non-Europhone written
archives in Arabic, ʿAjamī, and indigenous scripts such as N’ko and others
are put in conversation with oral and Europhone sources on Africa.12
Today, Arabic and ʿAjamī sources produced by African Muslims are more
readily available to scholars than ever before thanks to digital technology.
African manuscript archives collected during the colonial era and microfilms
of African Islamic texts collected in the postcolonial era are supplemented
with thousands of new digital texts in Arabic and ʿAjamī from Muslim
Africa.13 Thanks to the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme
and other institutions, important Arabic and ʿAjamī archives that reflect the
intellectual histories and preoccupations of many African communities, hith-
erto inaccessible to scholars, are being preserved and made accessible to stu-
dents and scholars studying Africa around the world.14 The existing digital
collections, preservations, and studies of the forms and contents of the rich
non-Europhone sources of Africa are undeniably enhancing teaching and
research on Islam in Africa in the twenty-first century, fostering emerging
fields of scholarly inquiry such as ʿAjamī Studies and Timbuktu Studies.15
However, despite the progress made to date on the studies on Islam in
Africa, much remains to be learnt from the various Muslim communities in
Africa. In reality, the long durée history of Islam in Africa, which started with
the first arrival of Muslim refugees seeking protection from Al-Najāshī, the
King of Aksum in present-day Ethiopia in the seventh century to now, is long
and complex. So too are the subsequent multiple adaptations of Islam in the
various linguistic, cultural, epistemological, and political ecologies in different
parts of Africa.
The current research and multilingual textual archives in Arabic and
African languages continuously being uncovered show how the faith has trav-
eled and subsequently adapted to different ethnolinguistic, political, and cul-
tural environments in Africa, resulting in Muslim communities where there is
no single center of Islam, but multiple centers; where there is no single lan-
guage of Islam, but multiple languages of Islam (Arabic and local languages);
and where there are no single monolithic Umma (the worldwide Muslim
community), but an imagined Umma where ethnolinguistic diversity is often
celebrated as a form of divine mercy by local revered leaders and poets.16
In reality no book can do justice to the diversity of the trajectories of
African Muslim communities, their Islamic traditions and lived experiences.
4 F. NGOM ET AL.

The Islamic faith, sciences, education system, art, and worldview have spread
across Africa in multiple ways, interacting in the process with local traditions,
languages, cultures, political systems, and worldviews in ways that resulted in
a variety of societies and communities that are united by the faith, yet distinct
in the way they individually express their Islamic orthodoxy, religiosity, and
identity in private and public spaces.17
This volume contributes to the scholarship on the various trajectories and
manifestations of Islam in Africa by bringing together thirty-three chapters
that reflect different voices from various disciplines and locations around the
world. The international group of scholars who have contributed to the vol-
ume consists of established and emerging scholars. They offer diverse per-
spectives on past and contemporary issues on African Muslim communities.
The chapters are written by men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims,
outsiders and insiders. All have worked or lived in an African Muslim commu-
nity. The chapters are organized thematically in five parts.

Part I: History and Diffusion

The first part of the volume brings together nine chapters dealing with var-
ious aspects of the history and multiple adaptations of Islam in Africa. The
themes discussed in this section include the important works and legacies of
prominent Muslim scholars, local textual traditions, the formation of African
Muslim identities, the different interpretations and implementations of jihād
and their consequences, the emancipatory role that Islam played to free some
oppressed people from traditional non-Muslim rule, and the spatial distribu-
tion of the faith in Africa.
Chapter 2 by Bernard Salvaing sets the historical and geographical stage
for the subsequent chapters. In his chapter, Salvaing provides a history of the
spread of the faith in sub-Saharan Africa from the eighth century to the end
of the nineteenth century, on the eve of the generalization of colonial rule.
He documents the spread of Islam throughout sub-Saharan Africa chrono-
logically and regionally, showing the patterns of conversion, and offering
useful insights on the contents of the resulting Islamic African cultures and
literatures.
Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the legacies of two prominent African Muslim
scholars: The renowned thirteenth-century Mande scholar, Al-Ḥājj Salim
Suwari, and the fifteenth-century Timbuktu scholar, Muḥammad al-Kābarī.
In Chapter 3, Alfa Mamadou Diallo focuses on the life and work of Al-Ḥājj
Salim Suwari whose most well-known and enduring legacies include his call
for a peaceful cohabitation between Muslims and their neighbors of differ-
ent creeds. By closely reading the available evidence on Al-Ḥājj Salim Suwari,
Diallo offers new perspectives on a key African scholar who founded African
Muslim communities that are characterized by outstanding Islamic knowl-
edge, political autonomy, pacifism, and above all mobility. In Chapter 4,
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

Zachary Wright shows how African Muslim scholarly voices reflected in local
textual traditions demonstrate the continent’s depth of intellectual inquires,
and an engagement with global Islamic discourses in a variety of disciplinary
specializations. Wright shows how the fifteenth-century Timbuktu scholar,
Muḥammad al-Kābarī, left an important summary of theology, asceticism,
and esotericism—“The Garden of Secrets” (Bustān al-Fawāʾid)—that offers
insight into the formation of African Muslim identities.
Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the multiple interpretations and implemen-
tations of jihād in Africa, and Chapter 7 discusses how the Islamic faith
served as a liberating force for the Fulakunda Fulɓe of Senegambia. In
Chapter 5, Fulera Issaka looks at the various interpretations and manifesta-
tions of the concept of jihād in Africa. She examines the patterns, motives,
and consequences of jihād in the continent, discussing the different modes
of jihāds that have taken place in the African continent from the precolo-
nial period to now. She shows that the historical trajectory of the inter-
pretations and implementations of jihād in Africa reflects the polycentric
nature of Islam. In Chapter 6, Amir Syed interrogates some common
interpretations of jihād in Africa as “Islamic revolutions.” Syed notes that
while many of the leaders of these movements used the language of jihād,
and drew on the broader Islamic legal tradition, they did so in response to
differing historical circumstances. Instead of focusing on the discourse of
jihād, he argues that it is important to also investigate the social, politi-
cal, and economic contexts within which these jihād movements emerged,
and analyze their differences, since they all unfolded separately in space
and time. In Chapter 7, Alpha Oumar Ba discusses the lesser-known role
of Islam in the liberation of Fuladu Fulani people from the non-Muslim
Mandinka Empire of Kaabu in Senegambia (ca. 1537–1867). Drawing on
the history of the Kaabu Empire, the local epic, and the collective mem-
ory of the Fuladu Fulɓe, Ba shows how the oppressed people saw Islam as
a liberating religion and took advantage of it to escape from their centu-
ries-old domination by the non-Muslim Mandinka ruling elite of the Kaabu
Empire.
Chapters 8, 9, and 10 deal with the spatial diffusion and reasons that
facilitated the spread of Islam in different parts of Africa. In Chapter 8,
Karen S. Barton examines the relationship between geography and Islam in
Africa. Using data and maps from the Pew Forum, she highlights the con-
temporary distribution of Islam at the national and regional scales. Her
chapter includes a discussion of the role that expansion diffusion played in
creating contemporary religious spatial patterns across the continent. The
chapter lays out a geographical explanation of where Islam is most dom-
inant in contrast to Christianity or traditional African religions and why.
The second central theme of Barton’s chapter deals with Islamic sacred
spaces in Africa. She describes how the siting of holy places influences the
movement of people. Barton argues that cartography can deceive, and that
6 F. NGOM ET AL.

spatial phenomena must be ground-truthed in order to yield the most accu-

rate results on Islam’s distribution and dynamics. In Chapter 9, Bala Saho
describes the processes of Islamization in West Africa as a combination of
factors, including the attitudes of West Africans toward Islam as the faith
continues to provide a multitude of opportunities. Saho shows how the pro-
cess of Islamization gained momentum in West Africa once colonialism was
established because Islam’s utilitarian values such as the spiritual and social
services and its tolerance to accommodate West African customs and tra-
ditions and its promise of heaven persistently made the faith attractive to
many West Africans.
While Saho’s chapter focuses on the diffusion of Islam in West Africa, in
Chapter 10, Muhammed Haron shifts the focus to Muslim communities
in the southern African region. Haron’s chapter deals with Mozambique,
Malawi, and Zimbabwe while offering an overview and demographics on
Muslim communities in other countries of the SADC zone (Southern African
Development Community). Haron shows that while Muslim communities
in the SADEC countries form part of the citizenry in the region’s diverse
states where they were born and reside, their Muslim identities set them apart
from their fellow citizens socially, politically, economically, culturally, and
religiously.

Part II: Institutions and Practices

The second part of the volume consists of five chapters dealing with sharīʿa
law, female Muslim scholars, Christianity and Islam, Islam and West African
Religions, and an important Islamic philosophical tradition in Africa. In
Chapter 11, Erin E. Stiles examines how different African societies and states
have used sharīʿa to regulate aspects of social life. She first considers sharīʿa
in the early historical period, then moves to sharīʿa in the colonial period,
and finally explores the ways in which some modern African states have dif-
ferently incorporated sharīʿa into state legal systems. The final section of her
chapter looks at contemporary challenges regarding sharīʿa in Africa.
In Chapter 12, Britta Frede deals with female Muslim scholars in Africa
from a historical perspective. After discussing some factors that led to the fact
that our knowledge about female Muslim scholars in Africa remains scattered,
Frede gives a historical overview of the development of female Islamic schol-
arship in Africa. She notes how women have often played important roles in
diverse religious institutions in Muslim Africa as teachers, spiritual guides,
and founders of institutions. She also highlights how the twentieth century
saw major changes in the training of Muslim scholars through educational
reforms that created new Muslim scholars who were no longer exclusively
trained at traditionalist institutions but received modern state education.
She argues that the recent increasing governmental involvement in the reli-
gious sphere has created new opportunities for a more visible engagement
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

of women in Islamic education, spiritual guidance, and religious institutional

leadership.
In the two subsequent chapters, Viera Pawlikova-Vilhanova deals with
Christianity and Islam in Africa (Chapter 13), and Christopher Wise shifts
his attention to the relationships between Islam and West African religions
(Chapter 14). Viera shows how both Christianity and Islam can be regarded
as African religions because they entered the African continent in their nascent
days. She notes that since the arrival of both religious traditions in Africa their
impact has been of fundamental importance in much of the continent, and
that Christian–Muslim African encounters have shaped the history of Africa.
She shows how in many parts of Africa, Christians and Muslims have encoun-
tered each other, interacted with each other, and often lived side by side ami-
cably for many centuries. However, Viera notes that the increased polarization
of relations between Christians and Muslims in the world has led in the past
decades to the increased polarization of adherents of Christianity and Islam in
Africa. She highlights how the radicalization of religion, the Pentecostalization
of Christianity and the rise of charismatic and evangelical Christian communi-
ties and the radicalization of Islam and the call for implementation of sharīʿa
law threaten to create tension and destroy the peaceful coexistence between
the two faith communities in parts of Africa.
In Chapter 14, Christopher Wise discusses the long history of West
Africa’s religious traditions, extending far beyond the arrival of Islam and
Christianity in the region. This history, Wise notes, includes the impact of
ancient Egyptian religion, which continues to inform contemporary cultural
belief systems in the Sahel. Although the Abrahamic traditions tend to dis-
miss indigenous cultural practices as “primitive forms of occult sorcery,” Wise
argues that Islam in West African has been profoundly transformed by ancient
Egypto-African belief systems that are far older than any of the Abrahamic
traditions. Because Islam arrived in the region centuries ago and has been
fully ʿAjamized (Africanized), Wise argues that it is largely for this reason that
Wahhābī and other like-minded Islamic militants have targeted West African
Muslims as needful of their “benevolent” intervention. He links the recent
jihādist activities in the Sahel to the age-old problem of taboo-Arab racism
and to the U.S., French, and NATO-led attacks on Libya that destabilized
the region.
In Chapter 15, Assan Sarr situates African Muslim societies and some of
the scholarship generated in this region in the broader Islamic philosophi-
cal world. Like other parts of the Muslim world, Sarr shows how Africa has
produced important thinkers in the Islamic sciences, theology, law, and the
traditions of Prophet Muḥammad. The prominent scholars whose teachings
and practices he discusses include Muḥammad b. Tūmart, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
b. Khaldūn, Nana Asma’u, Shaykh Saad Bouh, Shaykh Aḥmadu Bamba, and
others. Sarr argues that these Muslim thinkers have developed and practiced a
religious and political philosophy that challenged Muslims to seek knowledge
as a way to develop greater consciousness.
8 F. NGOM ET AL.

Part III: Islam and Creativity

The third part of the volume brings together five chapters dealing with
Islamic architecture in precolonial Africa, Islamic calligraphy and talismans
in northern Nigeria, Islam in Europhone African literature, Muslim attitudes
toward traditional dance performances in northern Ghana, and Islam and
music in Africa. In Chapter 16, Georg Leube provides an overview of Islamic
architecture in precolonial African Muslim societies. Leube construes the
monuments of Islamic architecture in Africa as “living artifacts.” His chapter
focuses on the common visions of society, history, and meaning that inform
the communal architecture constructed by Muslim societies in precolonial
Africa. In Chapter 17, Abdalla Uba Adamu analyzes the forms of Islamic cal-
ligraphy among the Hausa Muslim communities of northern Nigeria, with
a particular focus on the Islamic city of Kano. By examining various forms
of Islamic calligraphy in Kano, Adamu’s chapter makes an important contri-
bution to the ongoing scholarly conversation on the evolution of the Arabic
script and Islamic calligraphy in Africa.
In Chapter 18, Cherif Correa offers a new reading of two well-known
works in the Europhone African literature using an Islamic framework:
Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s L’Aventure Ambiguë and Mariama Bâ’s Une si
Longue Lettre. Through his reading, Correa reveals how Europhone African
authors look at Islam from a marginal position in their attempt to search
for ways and means to illustrate shifts in identity and identification among
African Muslims. Correa notes that the faces of Islam that these Europhone
African authors portray in their texts are influenced by local beliefs and inter-
pretations of Islamic texts.
The two remaining chapters of this part focus on music and dance in
Muslim Africa. In Chapter 19, Brendan Kibbee shifts the focus to music.
He traces histories of sounded practice that connect geographically distant
locales, revealing shared orientations to sound and spirituality that unite the
diverse populations of Muslim Africa. Kibbee highlights how sound serves as
a pedagogical tool, a medium of interpersonal connections, and a means for
accessing divine grace (baraka) in Muslim Africa. His close examination of
African Islamic sonic engagements challenges narratives of “syncretism” and
“periphery,” showing instead how decentralized practices spreading from
multiple locations have enriched Islamic orthodoxy in Africa. In Chapter 20,
Tigwe Salifu Jebuni looks at Islam and traditional dance performance in
the Tamale Metropolis in northern Ghana, where there is little relationship
between Salafī Muslims and traditional Dagboŋ dance practitioners. This is
partly because music-making and dancing are regarded as ḥaram (forbidden/
sinful) by local Salafī Muslims whereas members of local Sufi orders such as
the Tijāniyya and the Aḥmadiyya maintain otherwise. By exploring whether
the Qurʾān and the ḥadiths condone traditional dance forms from local per-
spectives, this chapter highlights both the complexity and significance of
music-making and dance in African Muslim communities.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

Part IV: African Muslims and Knowledge Systems

This part contains five chapters that explore, among other themes, the
image of Black Africans in Arabic sources, African Islamic influences in
African-American literature, innovative writing systems in selected Muslim
­
communities from the Horn of Africa and West Africa, and manuscript librar-
ies in sub-Saharan Africa and the ongoing efforts to preserve them.
In Chapter 21, Mbaye Lo looks at the treatment of Black Africans in
Arabic sources. The scope of his chapter is restricted to major Arabic works
published in the Middle East and North Africa since the birth of Islam until
now. Thus, Arabic and ʿAjamī works by Black Africans in sub-Saharan Africa
are largely excluded from the chapter. The Arabic sources that Lo examines
build on existing and learned knowledge about Black Africans from before
the advent of Islam in the seventh century. He shows how most of these
Arabic sources project disparaging views about Blacks as they perpetuated
held stereotypical views and learned prejudices about blackness and conflated
the notion of blackness with slavery in order to justify various practices of
subjugation. Lo shows how Black poets and writers vigorously resisted the
bigoted and stereotypical representations of their race in Arabic sources and
crafted their own narratives of triumph, resistance, and resilience.
In Chapter 22, Babacar M’Baye focuses on Africanisms and African
Islamic influences in Zora Neal Hurston’s Mules and Men (1935), James
Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and Julie Dash’s Daughters
of the Dust (1992), three celebrated works in twentieth-century African-
American literature. Through a comparison of similar Senegalese and
African-American ways of worshipping, living, communing, and speaking,
M’Baye shows how Hurston, Baldwin, and Dash’s works reflect impor-
tant African features that have survived in African-American literature.
Drawing from anthropological and historical sources to analyze the three
texts, M’Baye’s chapter helps to chart a new method of studying African-
American literature by focusing on African retentions and parallels in the
Black Atlantic world.
In Chapter 23, Ethan Key looks at competing writing systems in multi-
ple languages in Ethiopia where one sees Amharigna using Geʿez fidel; Afaan
Oromoo using adapted Latin characters, Qubee; and Arabic. His chapter con-
siders instances when Muslim scholars made seemingly unexpected writing
choices. He examines the works of Shaykh Ṭalḥa b. Jaʿfar (c. 1853–1936)
who resisted Christian-based nationalism by writing Amharic ʿAjamī in the
Wallo region and Shaykh Bakrii Saphalo (1895–1980) who invented a new
writing system in Hararghe despite having multiple writing systems avail-
able to transcribe the Oromo language. Ethan Key examines the historical
circumstances that shaped the lives and works of these two Muslim leaders.
He concludes his chapter by comparing Shaykh Bakrii and Sulemaana Kanté
(1922–1987) who invented the N’ko writing system for the ­macro-Manding
language in West Africa, thus showing how the works of these individuals
10 F. NGOM ET AL.

reveal interactions of ʿAjamī and other writing traditions in multiliterate,

multilingual, and multiethnic societies in the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia) and in
West Africa (Guinea).
Chapters 24 and 25 focus on the development of literacy and manuscripts
in Muslim Africa. In Chapter 24, Liazzat J. K. Bonate shows the abundance
of Arabic and ʿAjamī manuscripts in sub-Saharan Africa, despite the mis-
guided but persisting idea about the supposed “illiteracy” and “orality” of the
region. Bonate notes that these manuscripts emerged due to the expansion
of Islam and trade, and that literacy in Arabic was confined to more special-
ized religious, political, and trading elites while ʿAjamī literacy has been a
more democratic and widespread phenomenon. She highlights how Qurʾānic
schools provide skills necessary for conducting trade and for transcribing local
languages into ʿAjamī using the Arabic script. Bonate also historicizes African
manuscript collections and archives kept in Europe and Africa from the colo-
nial era to the current emergence of libraries and archives that are stimulating
innovative and vibrant scholarship reflecting the agency, creativity, and intel-
lectual traditions of sub-Saharan Africa.
In Chapter 25, Sara Fani deals with the physical aspects of the Islamic
manuscript heritage of the Horn of Africa. Drawing on current research pro-
jects on the region, Fani classifies the typologies of the books retrieved. She
provides a short codicological description that highlights the specific fea-
tures of the manuscripts produced in the sub-Saharan African regions and the
aspects common to other Islamic codices: the codex model, the bookbind-
ing structure and materials, the paper and the inks employed. She describes
the most common damages affecting the manuscripts and the ongoing
digitization and cataloguing campaigns related to their preservation and
conservation.

Part V: Islam, Modernity, and the Contemporary World

The last part of the volume brings together eight chapters dealing with Islam
and activism, Islam and politics, private Islamic education, Islam and globali-
zation, Islam and the environment, a framework for researching digital Islam
and media, and a concluding chapter.
In Chapter 26, Omar Gueye examines the role of Islam and Muslim actors
in social movements in French West Africa in general and in Senegal in par-
ticular. He examines the impact of the interactions between local Sufi lead-
ers known as marabouts in trade union and nationalist political struggles and
the construction of the postcolonial states. He shows how local marabouts
interfered in the large-scale battles fought within the confederation of work-
ers’ unions that brought together workers of various trades and nationalities
and how they shifted from being religious leaders to economic entrepreneurs,
turning into pacifiers of the colonial and later postcolonial public space.
Using examples from the railroad workers’ strike of September 1938 in Thiès
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

in Senegal, the 1947–1948 strike of the workers of the Dakar–Niger rail-

road, and the strike of May 1968 in Dakar, Senegal, Gueye shows the nexus
between activism, the state, and religion in French West Africa.
In Chapter 27, Claire S. Lim explores the relationship between Islam and
political life in Mali and Senegal. She looks at the trajectory that the relation-
ship took in the two countries in order to explain the contemporary differ-
ences we observe between the two states. Lim shows how in Mali religion
is generally relegated to the private sphere and efforts of individuals while in
Senegal Islam (through Sufi orders) has played an important role in politics
for a long time, making Senegal an officially secular, yet an unofficially very
Muslim state. Lim highlights the complexities and flexibilities of the relation-
ship between religious and political actors in Senegal by looking at the cur-
rent gender parity law in the country.
In Chapter 28, Gana Ndiaye focuses on the private Islamic education
institution (madrasa), which has served the educational needs of a signif-
icant part of the population in Muslim societies of Africa during and after
European colonization. Ndiaye revisits the history of the madrasas in Africa
and the multiple attempts to reform and control them. Based on a case study
of Senegal and a review of the literature on various African countries, he
argues that the various attempts to form private Islamic education institutions
in recent years constitute a continuation of the history of colonial and post-
colonial powers’ attempts to “domesticate” the madrasas and police their cur-
ricula. Today, he argues, these strategies are couched in modernization and
reform discourses and framed as a fight against terrorism.
In Chapter 29, Afis Ayinde Oladosu looks at how the involvement of
Muslims in politics in Africa has continued to generate passionate interests
and attention across disciplinary boundaries all around the world. In explor-
ing this phenomenon, he identifies three popular approaches to Islam and
statehood, and discusses the factors that condition existing parameters, pos-
tures, and experiences of the nexus between Islam and political practice in
Nigeria as representative of the larger phenomenon in Africa. Oladosu argues
that the results of the interactions between Islam and politics, be it delectable
or detestable, are shared by other religious traditions, which offer the possibil-
ity of merging the sacred and the profane, particularly in the political realm.
In Chapter 30, Paramole K. Olawale and Adeniji A. Stephen deal with Islam
and globalization. They present the Islamic faith as a global religion from the
outset and argue that all the Prophets of God came with one message of uni-
fication of humanity. Furthermore, they contend that the current outcomes
of globalization, which include rapid and increased exchange of Islamic reli-
gious ideas, education, practices, and technology-negotiated interactions,
expand the global impact of the faith across Africa.
In Chapter 31, Muazu U. Shehu offers useful insights on Islam and the
environment in Africa. He discusses the role of Islamic beliefs and princi-
ples in shaping environmental concern, and perceptions and strategies of
12 F. NGOM ET AL.

adaptation to environmental problems in Africa. Given the severity of envi-

ronmental problems and the powerful role religions (including Islam) con-
tinue to play in all spheres of individual and community life in sub-Saharan
Africa, Muazu notes that the communities in the region provide a good
opportunity to study Islam and environmental issues. His chapter gives an
overview of the theoretical and empirical knowledge on the links between
Islam and the environment in African societies. Using evidence from north-
ern Nigeria, Muazu analyzes how Muslims subjectively interpret Islamic
environmental beliefs, examines the perceptions of current environmental
problems among Muslims, and how Islamic beliefs and values inform con-
scious efforts to act in environmentally responsible ways. He concludes his
chapter by looking at the conditions that influence the practice of Islamic
environmentalism.
In Chapter 32, Ibrahim N. Abusharif focuses on contemporary ­ media-
religion studies in West Africa. He recommends a new approach that
­positions media-religion research in a larger trend of an emerging field. His
chapter contributes to a better understanding of the transnational effects of
digital media in contemporary religious traditions around the world, and
calls for alternatives to the dominant Western-centric analyses of religious
phenomena around the world and their relationship to both new and tradi-
tional media. Finally, Chapter 33 by Toyin Falola offers thoughts on Islam
and Africa’s future. This closing chapter reports the various perceptions of
Islam, highlighting opinions that will shape the understanding of the faith
in the future and the role of Muslims to change the negative narratives on
their faith. It shows how the expansion of faith has inspired various reac-
tions around the world, noting how contemporary discussions on Islam are
complicated by global politics, Islamophobia, terrorism, and clashes with
Christianity. The chapter also deals with topical issues on Islam in Africa and
the world, including the history of Islam and its future and relevance, Islam
and African cultures, Islamic banking, Islamic extremism, Islam and politics,
Islam and modernity, and Islam and women issues.

Notes
1. See Shamil Jeppie and Souleymane Bachir Diagne, The Meanings of Timbuktu
(HSRC Press, 2008).
2. See for example, Michael A. Gomez’s African Dominion: A New History of
Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2019); Lamin Sanneh’s Beyond Jihad: The Pacifist Tradition in West
African Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Ousmane O.
Kane’s Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa
(Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Ousmane O. Kane The
Homeland Is the Arena: Religion, Transnationalism, and the Integration
of Senegalese Immigrants in America (Oxford University Press, 2011);
Fallou Ngom Muslims beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of ʿAjamī and
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

the Murīdiyya (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Terje Østebø
Localising Salafism: Religious Change Among Oromo Muslims in Bale, Ethiopia
(Leiden: Brill, 2012); Robert Launay, ed. Islamic Education in Africa: Writing
Boards and Blackboards (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016);
and Rudolph T. Ware The Walking Qurʾan: Islamic Education, Embodied
Knowledge, and History in West Africa (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2014). For other fascinating publications on Islam in Africa,
see Islamic Africa published by Brill.
3. See Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, The History of Islam in Africa
(Ohio University Press; James Currey; David Philips Publishers, 2000), 1–18.
4. For more on this, see David Robinson Paths of Accommodation: Muslim
Societies and the French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–
1920 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000), 11.
5. See Ousmane O. Kane Non-Europhone Intellectuals (Dakar: CODESRIA,
2012); Fallou Ngom and Eleni Castro, “Beyond African Orality: Digital
Preservation of Mandinka ʿAjamī Archives of Casamance,” History Compass,
2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12584; Fallou Ngom, “ʿAjamī
Literacies of West Africa,” in Tracing Language Movement in Africa, edited by
Ericka A. Albaugh and Kathryn M. de Luna (Oxford University Press, 2018),
143–164; Dmitry Bondarev, “Multiglossia in West African Manuscripts: A
Case of Borno, Nigeria,” in Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field, edited by
J. B. Quenzer, D. Bondarev, and J.-U. Sobisch (De Gruyter, 2014, 113–155);
and Darya Ogorodnikova, “ʿAjamī Annotations in Multilingual Manuscripts
from Mande Speaking Areas: Visual and Linguistic Features,” Islamic Africa:
Special Volume, edited by Fallou Ngom and Mustapha H. Kurfi, 8 (1–2), 111–
143. https://doi.org/10.1163/21540993-00801006.
6. John O. Hunwick, West Africa, Islam, and the Arab World (Princeton: Markus
Wiener Publishers, 2006).
7. See Ngom, Muslims Beyond the Arab World, 59–67; “Ajami Literacies of
West Africa,” in Tracing Language Movement in Africa, edited by Ericka A.
Albaugh and Kathryn M. de Luna (Oxford University Press, 2018), 143–164;
Ngom and Castro, “Beyond African Orality: Digital Preservation of Mandinka
ʿAjamī Archives of Casamance,” History Compass, 2019, 1–6.
8. See Ngom, Muslims Beyond the Arab World, 59–67 and 250; Ngom, “Ajami
Literacies of West Africa,” 153; Ngom and Castro, “Beyond African Orality:
Digital Preservation of Mandinka ʿAjamī Archives of Casamance,” History
Compass,” 1–16.
9. Ngom, Muslims Beyond the Arab World, 247.
10. See the African Ajami Library, which contains as of the writing of this intro-
duction over 30,000 pages of Arabic, Dagbanli, Fulfulde, Fuuta Jalon Fula,
Hausa, Kanuri, Malagasy Sorabe, Mandinka, Nupe, Wolof, and Yoruba ʿAjamī
texts produced by African scholars and masses. More collections are underway.
11. Ngom, Muslims Beyond the Arab World, 247.
12. For more on the N’ko script, see Coleman Donaldson,“The Role of Islam,
Ajami Writings and Educational Reform in Sulemaana Kanté’s N’ko,” African
Studies Review manuscript, 2019.
13. See Fallou Ngom, “West African Manuscripts in Arabic and African Languages
and Digital Preservation,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedias: African History,
14 F. NGOM ET AL.

edited by Thomas Spear, June 2017. The article contains an overview of

African manuscript archives in several parts of the world and non-exhaustive
links to important digital repositories containing Arabic and ʿAjamī texts from
sub-Saharan Africa.
14. For selected archives with African manuscripts, see British Library’s
Endangered Archives Programme, https://eap.bl.uk/; Boston University’s
African Ajami Library, https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/1896; West
African Arabic Manuscript Database, https://waamd.lib.berkeley.edu/about/
history; West African Arabic Manuscripts-MES: Electronic Resources, https://
guides.library.illinois.edu/c.php?g=806797&p=5756546; Michigan State
University’s African Online Digital Library, http://aodl.org/islamictoler-
ance/; Northwestern University’s Arabic Manuscripts from West Africa: A
Catalog of the Herskovits Library Collection, http://libguides.northwestern.
edu/c.php?g=492192&p=3366800; and the Library of Congress’ Islamic
Manuscripts from Timbuktu, http://memory.loc.gov/intldl/malihtml/mali-
bibTitles1.html.
15. For more on ʿAjamī Studies, see Ngom, Muslims Beyond the Arab World, 247–
251; for Timbuktu Studies, see Kane, Beyond Timbuktu, 21–40. For more on
the work being done in ʿAjamī Studies, see the NEH Collaborative Ajami
Project at Boston University, http://sites.bu.edu/nehajami/; and the Ajami
Project at Hamburg University, https://www.manuscript-cultures.uni-ham-
burg.de/ajami/project_e.html.
16. For more on the celebration of ethnolinguistic diversity as a form of divine
mercy, see “Taxmiis bub Wolof,” in Muslims Beyond the Arab World, 60–68.
17. See Fallou Ngom and Mustapha H. Kurfi, ʿAjamization of Islam in Africa,
Special Volume: Islamic Africa, Vol 8: 1 & 2, 2017.

References
African Ajami Library at Boston University. https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/
1896.
African Online Digital Library at Michigan State University. http://aodl.org/
islamictolerance/.
Ajami Project at Hamburg University. https://www.manuscript-cultures.uni-ham-
burg.de/ajami/project_e.html.
Arabic Manuscripts from West Africa: A Catalog of the Herskovits Library Collection.
http://libguides.northwestern.edu/c.php?g=492192&p=3366800.
Bondarev, Dmitry. “Multiglossia in West African Manuscripts: A Case of Borno,
Nigeria.” In Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field, eds. Jörg Quenzer, Dmitry
Bondarev, and Jan-Ulrich Sobisch, 113–155. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014.
British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme. https://eap.bl.uk/.
Donaldson, Coleman. “The Role of Islam, Ajami Writings and Educational Reform in
Sulemaana Kanté’s N’ko.” African Studies Review, manuscript, 2019.
Gomez, Michael A. African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and
Medieval West Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
Hunwick, John O. West Africa, Islam, and the Arab World. Princeton: Markus Wiener
Publishers, 2006.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

Jeppie, Shamil and Souleymane Bachir Diagne. The Meanings of Timbuktu. HSRC
Press, 2008.
Kane, Ousmane O. The Homeland is the Arena: Religion, Transnationalism, and the
Integration of Senegalese Immigrants in America. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2011.
———. Non-Europhone Intellectuals. Dakar: CODESRIA, 2012.
———. Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa. Boston, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2016.
Launay, Robert ed. Islamic Education in Africa: Writing Boards and Blackboards.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016.
Levtzion, Nehemia and Randall L. Pouwels. The History of Islam in Africa. Athens:
Ohio University Press; Oxford: James Currey; Claremont: David Philips Publishers,
2000.
Library of Congress’ Islamic Manuscripts from Timbuktu. http://memory.loc.gov/
intldl/malihtml/malibibTitles1.html.
NEH Collaborative Ajami Project at Boston University. http://sites.bu.edu/
nehajami/.
Ngom, Fallou. Muslims beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of ʿAjamī and the
Murīdiyya. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
———. “West African Manuscripts in Arabic and African Languages and Digital
Preservation.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedias: African History, ed. Thomas
Spear, June 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.123.
———. “ʿAjamī Literacies of West Africa.” In Tracing Language Movement in Africa,
eds. Ericka A. Albaugh and Kathryn M. de Luna, 143–164. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2018.
Ngom, Fallou and Eleni Castro. “Beyond African Orality: Digital Preservation of
Mandinka ʿAjamī Archives of Casamance.” History Compass, 2019, 1–16. https://
doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12584.
Ngom, Fallou and Mustapha H. Kurfi. ʿAjamization of Islam in Africa, Islamic
Africa: Special Volume, 8 (1 & 2), 2017.
Ogorodnikova, Darya. “ʿAjamī Annotations in Multilingual Manuscripts from Mande
Speaking Areas: Visual and Linguistic Features.” Islamic Africa: Special Edition,
eds. Fallou Ngom and Mustapha H. Kurfi, 2017, 8 (1 & 2), 111–143. https://
doi.org/10.1163/21540993-00801006.
Østebø, Terje. Localising Salafism: Religious Change among Oromo Muslims in Bale,
Ethiopia. Leiden: Brill, 2012.
Robinson, David. Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and the French Colonial
Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920. Athens: Ohio University Press,
2000, 11.
Sanneh, Lamin. Beyond Jihad: The Pacifist Tradition in West African Islam. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2016.
Ware, Rudolph T. The Walking Qurʾan: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and
History in West Africa. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
West African Arabic Manuscript Database. https://waamd.lib.berkeley.edu/about/
history.
West African Arabic Manuscripts-MES: Electronic Resources. https://guides.library.
illinois.edu/c.php?g=806797&p=5756546.
 PART I

History and Diffusion

 CHAPTER 2

Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa, 800–1900

Bernard Salvaing

Some basic elements explain the spatial distribution of Islam and Christianity
in Africa.1 Before the invention of the caravel in the fifteenth century, which
made possible traveling in unfavorable conditions, the trade winds that blow
steadily from the northeast to the southwest of the Atlantic coast of Africa
prevented any contact with Christian Europe. However, the seasonal alter-
nation of monsoons and trade winds in the Indian Ocean allowed Arab mer-
chants to reach the eastern coast of the continent at the beginning of the
Islamic conquests. The Nile Valley was also another natural route to the
interior of the African continent. As for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, it
connected to the rest of the world only across the Sahara desert. Thus, the
earliest Arab expeditions in North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries
penetrated into the Sahara in two directions, the one from Tripoli toward
Fezzan and the other from the Sus in southern Morocco.2 Even though the
Sahara was a hurdle for the armies, it would not stop the merchants and the
caravans that took those routes. Consequently, two poles of political and
Islamizing power emerged: the medieval West African empires and the Bornu
kingdom. Thus, Islam developed in the zones that long-distance commerce
opened. This chapter examines the patterns of conversion to Islam among
the different social strata in Africa from the 800s to the 1900s. It also offers
insights into the content of African Islamic culture and literature (Fig. 2.1).3

B. Salvaing (*)
University of Nantes, Nantes, France
e-mail: bernard.salvaing@univ-nantes.fr

© The Author(s) 2020 19

F. Ngom et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Islam in Africa,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45759-4_2
20 B. SALVAING

Fig. 2.1 Islam and Christianism in Africa Credit: Jean Salvaing

From the Seventh to the Fifteenth Century

The spread of Islam in Africa from the seventh to the fifteenth century was
a process in which rulers, merchants, and clerks were the main actors. Clerks
accompanied Muslim expatriate merchants. The latter also brought teachers
for the education of their children. The local rulers entrusted their children to
these teachers, and progressively adopted Islam, which would trickle down to
the other social categories (Fig. 2.2).

The Horn of Africa

The Christian kingdoms between Coptic Egypt and Ethiopia took long to
surrender because the Nubian archers stopped the Arab conquest in 641. The
Nubian kingdom and the Arab armies reached a truce in 652. In return for
the respect of its sovereignty, the kingdom paid a yearly tribute and accepted
the construction of a mosque in its capital, Dongola. This status quo lasted
for six hundred years during which Islam penetrated the neighboring regions
in the desert and the north of Nubia because of Arab immigration and the
presence of Arab traders. The spread of Islam continued after the fall of the
Fatimids in Egypt. The kingdom of Nubia was conquered in 1317, and that
 2 ISLAM IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, 800–1900 21

Fig. 2.2 Muslim Towns and Countries before 1500 Credit: Jean Salvaing

of Alua, down south, in the fifteenth century. The Christian kingdom of

Ethiopia, which was home to a significant number of Muslims, managed to
maintain its independence vis-à-vis neighboring Muslim principalities.

The East Coast

Seafarers and Muslim merchants from the north crisscrossed the Indian
Ocean, and coastal trading cities developed. In these cities, African merchants
embraced Islam, which gave them prestige in the eyes of the ruling elite. The
22 B. SALVAING

latter progressively adopted Islam, as well. Occasionally present in the islands

such as Lamu, Islam took root around the tenth century before reaching the
coast in the thirteenth century. In 1313, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, who visited Mogadishu
and Kilwa, expressed his admiration for the elite of the east coast of Africa
because of their piety. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth century, when
many Arabs from the Hadhramaut (Arabic: Ḥaḍramawt, a southern Arabian
Peninsula region) migrated to the area during this period of prosperity, Islam
became the religion of the majority of the population.

Central Africa
Many nomads from the north settled among the populations of the Chad
region between 550 and 800. The state of Kanem emerged from this encoun-
ter. The settlers managed to take control of the central power; the Sayfawa
family reigned over the Kanem-Bornu until 1846.4 King Hummay embraced
Islam in the eleventh century. During this period, trade between Kanem and
Northern Africa via the Fezzan that had started in the ninth century ampli-
fied. The kings who succeeded each other on the throne completed the pil-
grimage to Mecca. After two centuries of internal crises due to struggles
between dynasties and the drying of Lake Chad, around the thirteenth and
fifteenth century, the Kanem State rejuvenated in the Bornu province. In
1480, it took the name of the latter province and made N’Gazargamu its cap-
ital. The erudite Islamic culture of the State attracted scholars from North
Africa, Timbuktu, and Walata.
Further West, the trading elites in the commercial Hausa cities (today’s
northern Nigeria), which were connected to the trans-Saharan trade routes,
became Islamized in the fourteenth century as they came in contact with the
Wangara (the learned Jula traders from Mali). More influential than Kano,
the city of Katsina became the Islamic cultural center where learned Fula
from Mali converged between 1452 and 1463.5 These cities also received the
influence of Islam from the Bornu.

West Africa
Around 1050, the western part of the continent experienced a sudden Islamic
wave due to the jihād of the Almoravids led by Ibn Yāsīn, a Ṣanhāja Berber
from southern Algeria.6 Today, we know that his impact in the Islamization
process has been more significant than initially thought—the Berber elites
who settled in Mauritania have turned the zone into a permanent platform
for the spread of Islam. Thus, West Africa, which had until then been in con-
tact with Ibāḍī7 merchants from the Maghreb, adopted the Mālikī school of
Islamic jurisprudence (Fig. 2.3).8
However, the spread of Islam throughout the medieval era has been
mainly through the trans-Saharan trade (of slaves and gold) that connected
 2 ISLAM IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, 800–1900 23

Fig. 2.3 Medieval Empires of the Western Sudan during their Apogee Credit: Jean
Salvaing

the Islamic world (mainly Morocco) and trading cities such as Walata9 and
Timbuktu along the Sahara.10 Those cities were part of the medieval West
African empires that dominated the area located between the eleventh and
seventeenth-degree northern latitude. Farther down south, the forest consti-
tuted the borders of those empires; the tsetse flies would have decimated their
cavalries. In the fifteenth century, the gold and kola traders managed to reach
the forest.
Another way of examining the Islamization of West Africa is to look at the
evolution of the ancient West African empires.11 At the time of its apogee
in the tenth century, the Ghana Empire was exporting gold from Bambuk
and Bure to the North. According to Al-Bakrī’s travel narrative, there was in
Ghana, near the royal palace in the capital, a Muslim city inhabited by Arab–
Berber merchants.12 The king and the general population maintained their
ancestral faith, but there were Muslim ministers and secretaries. The Muslim
expatriates, while maintaining strong ties with local communities, kept their
identities because they wanted to preserve their faith but also because their
foreign status gave them protection. A similar framework was found in the
Gao Empire in its beginnings.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
hartos más son los que enferman
y mueren por la iñorancia ó
malicia de los médicos y
boticarios que los que sanan con
las curas que les hacen y
medicinas que reciben. Y así lo
que dice Salomón, que el Señor
altísimo crió de la tierra la
medicina y el varón prudente no
la aborrecerá, entiéndolo yo por la
buena medicina; pero por lo que
se ha platicado, pocas medicinas
tienen buenas los boticarios, y tan
pocas son las que ordenan bien
los médicos; y así lo mejor sería
que las gentes se curasen todas
como yo he visto á los mismos
médicos cuando están enfermos,
y á sus mujeres y hijos cuando
están malos.
Lerma.—¿Y qué diferencia ha
visto vuesa merced hacer?
Pimentel.—Yo os la diré luego.
Cuando un médico está malo,
jamás le veréis comer ni tener
dieta, á lo menos tan estrecha
como la mandan á los otros
enfermos; no comen lentejas, ni
acelgas cocidas, ni manzanas
asadas, sino muy buenos caldos
de aves y parte dellas con otras
cosas sustanciales. Beben
siempre, aunque tengan
calentura, un poco de vino
aguado, y no del peor que pueden
haber. No permiten sangrarse ni
purgarse, si la necesidad no es
tan grande que vean al ojo la
muerte; á sus mujeres y hijos
cúranlos tan atentadamente, que
siempre dicen que dexan obrar á
la naturaleza, y nunca les dan
purgas ni les hacen sangrías, sino
son en enfermedades agudas y
peligrosas. Pero si uno de
nosotros está un poco mal
dispuesto ó tiene calentura, por
poca que sea, luego receutan
xarabes y purgas y mandan sacar
cien onzas de sangre, con que
recibe el cuerpo más daño que
provecho puede recoger en toda
su vida de los médicos.
Lerma.—La culpa desto tiene la
común opinión del vulgo, porque
si un médico va á visitar tres ó
cuatro veces á un enfermo y no
provee luego en hacer remedios,
tiénenle por iñorante y murmuran
dél, diciendo que no sabe curar ni
hace cosa buena en medicina, y
si no les mandan comer dietas y
estrecharse, parésceles que
aquello es para nunca sanarlos; y
por otra parte, desmándanse á
comer mil cosas dañosas, y
muchas veces por esta causa
estrechamos la licencia, que bien
sabemos que hay pocos
enfermos que no la tomen mayor
que nosotros se la damos, y
acaece á muchos venirles la
muerte por ello. Y á la verdad, los
médicos habrían siempre de
mandar lo que se ha de hacer
puntualmente, y los enfermos
cumplirlo sin salir dello; y lo que
nosotros hacemos con nuestras
mujeres y hijos es porque osamos
aventurarlas, y si la cura fuere
más á la larga, nuestro ha de ser
el trabajo.
D. Gastar.—Si los médicos
teniendo mayor afición y voluntad
para procurar la salud á sus
mujeres é hijos hacen eso con
ellos, lo mismo querría yo que
hiciessen conmigo.
Lerma.—Vuesa merced, que lo
entiende y tiene discreción para
ello, holgaría de que se tuviese
esa orden en sus enfermedades;
pero las otras gentes, á los
médicos que luego receutan y
sangran y purgan y hacen otras
cosas semejantes y experiencias
malas ó buenas, tiénenlos por
grandes médicos y con ello
cobran fama y reputación entre
las gentes.
Pimentel.—Entre las gentes
necias será esto; pero no es
buena razón, señor licenciado,
que miren los médicos ninguna
cosa desas para dexar de cumplir
con lo que son obligados á Dios y
á sus conciencias, y al bien
general y particular de sus
repúblicas; y habrían siempre de
tener cuenta con la necesidad de
los enfermos, y no con el juicio de
las gentes; y cuenta con curar las
enfermedades de manera que de
los remedios que aplican para
sanar las unas no se
engendrasen otras mayores, y
cuenta con que la han de dar á
Dios si usan bien ó mal sus
oficios, y desta manera nunca
errarán en lo que hicieren ni
tendrán de qué ser reprendidos ni
acusados. Pero ¿quién hay que
haga esto?
Lerma.—Algunos habrá, si
vuessa merced manda no
llevarlos á todos por un rasero.
Pimentel.—Si los hay yo no los
veo, y reniego del mejor de
vosotros, como dixo el que araba
con los lobos.
Lerma.—Vámonos, señor
Dionisio, que basta lo que el uno
al otro nos hemos dicho sin
esperar la cólera del señor
Pimentel, que yo le veo en
términos de ponernos á todos
muy presto del lodo.
Pimentel.—Eso será por no
esperarse á oir las verdades.
Dionisio.—¿No bastan las que
nosotros hemos tratado sin que
vuessa merced quiera traer cosas
nuevas? Y si han de ser para
echarnos de aquí por fuerza,
mejor será que nos vamos antes
que oyamos con que nos pese.
Lerma.—Aunque yo quisiese
detenerme, no puedo hacerlo.
Vuessa merced, señor Gaspar,
está mejor, loado Dios, y para el
dolor del hígado se aplicarán
luego los remedios necesarios. Yo
me voy por la botica de Dionisio,
donde dexaré dada la orden en lo
que se hubiese de hacer. No se
beba otra agua sino la de
doradilla, y con tanto, beso las
manos á vuesas mercedes.
D. Gaspar.—No sea esta
visitación para olvidarme tanto
como estos días.
Dionisio.—No será, porque yo
tendré cuidado de ponerlo al
señor licenciado para que venga
muchas veces.
D. Gaspar.—A vos, señor
Dionisio, os pido yo por merced
que vengáis, que no huelgo
menos con vuessa visitación que
con la de cuantos médicos hay en
el mundo.
Dionisio.—Yo lo haré así, y agora
vuestras mercedes me perdonen,
que el licenciado lleva priesa y
quiero seguirle porque no se
agravie, y aun podrá ser que
sospeche que todavía quedamos
murmurando.
Pimentel.—No sería pecado
mortal si la murmuración fuesse
tan verdadera y provechosa como
las passadas.

Finis.
 COLLOQUIO

Entre dos caballeros llamados

Leandro y Florián y un pastor
Amintas, en que se tratan las
excelencias y perfición de la
vida pastoril para los que
quieren seguirla, probándolo
con muchas razones naturales
y autoridades y ejemplos de la
Sagrada Escritura y de otros
autores. Es muy provechosa
para que las gentes no vivan
descontentas con su pobreza,
no pongan la felicidad y
bienaventuranza en tener
grandes riquezas y gozar de
grandes estados.

INTERLOCUTORES

Leandro.—Florián.—Amintas.

Leandro.—Paréceme, señor
Florián, que no es buen camino el
que llevamos; porque agora que
pensábamos salir al cabo deste
monte, entramos en la mayor
espesura, y según veo no se nos
apareja buena noche, pues será
excusado salir tan presto de este
laberinto donde andamos dando
vueltas á una parte y á otra, sin
hallar salida.
Florián.—Culpa es nuestra,
pues quessimos que nos
anocheciese en tierra tan
montañosa, y cuanto más
anduviéremos será mayor el yerro
no sabiendo á qué parte vamos.
Lo mejor será que nos metamos
en una mata destas y
desenfrenando los caballos para
que puedan pacer, passemos lo
que nos queda de la noche
durmiendo, que venido el día
presto podremos aportar á
poblado.
Leandro.—Bien decís; pero á mí
me parece que oigo ladrar
algunos mastines, y sin duda
debe de estar cerca alguna
majada de pastores.
Florián.—Decís la verdad, que
yo también los he oído; por aquí
podremos ir, que el monte está
menos espeso.
Leandro.—No sería malo hallar
alguna cosa que comer, porque
yo os doy mi fe que no voy menos
muerto de hambre que si
hubiesse tres días que no
hubiesse comido bocado.
Florián.—A mí la sed me fatiga,
aunque no lo había dicho; pero
una noche como quiera puede
pasarse.
Leandro.—Mejor sería passarla
bien que mal, si pudiéssemos, y
no hemos traído mal tino, que
veis allí está fuego hecho y un
pastor no poco enzamarrado;
pero doy al diablo estos perros
que assí nos fatigan como si
veniéssemos á hurtalles el
ganado.
Amintas.—Torna aquí,
Manchado, que mala rabia te
mate y lobos te despedacen;
torna aquí; dolos yo á la mala
ventura, que no saben ladrar sino
cuando no es menester.
Leandro.—Buenas noches,
hermano mío.
Amintas.—Salud buena os dé
Dios. ¿Qué venida es ésta por
aquí á tal hora?
Florián.—Mi fe, hermano, no
venimos por nuestra voluntad,
sino por haber perdido el camino,
que toda esta noche hemos
andado perdidos por este monte,
hasta agora que contigo hemos
topado, que no ha sido pequeña
dicha.
Amintas.—Esa yo la he tenido en
haber llegado á mi majada
personas tan honradas, y más y
más si en ella quisiéredes ser mis
huéspedes por esta noche, pues
que á cualquiera parte que
queráis caminar, el pueblo más
cercano está de aquí dos leguas;
y con la grande escuridad que
hace, dificultosamente podréis
atinar allá, aunque yo quisiese
poneros en el camino.
Leandro.—Desa manera forzado
será aceptar tu buena voluntad y
ofrecimiento; pero dinos, ¿por
ventura tienes alguna cosa que
comamos, que lo que nos dieres
te será todo muy bien pagado?
Amintas.—No ha de faltar, si
queréis contentaros con la miseria
de que vivimos los pobres
pastores. Desenfrenad los
caballos para que puedan pacer,
pues hay hierba en abundancia
que suplirá la falta de la cebada,
que para vosotros pan hay con un
pedazo de cecina y esta liebre
que mis mastines por gran
aventura mataron, para la cual
tenía encendido el fuego que veis,
y assí está ya aparejada, y en
lugar del buen vino que solemos
beber en vuestra tierra, habréis
de pasaros con agua que agora
poco ha he traido de una clara y
sabrosa fuente.
Leandro.—Dios te dé buena
ventura, que más nos hartará tu
buena voluntad y gracia que
todos los manjares y vinos del
mundo, y pues que así es,
comencemos á comer, que en
verdad yo estaba medio
desmayado con pensar que esta
noche la habíamos de pasar
como camaleones.
Florián.—Nunca Dios hizo á
quien desamparase, y yo os
prometo que me sabe mejor lo
que como y bebo que si
estuviéssemos en el mejor
banquete que se hace en la corte.
Amintas.—El buen gusto hácelo
el buen apetito y la hambre, que
es la cosa que mayor sabor pone
á los manjares, y así agora no
podrá saberos mal el pan de
centeno de mi convite que tan
buenos bocados os veo dar en él
como si fuesse de trigo y de lo
muy escogido, blanco y regalado.
Florián.—Así me ayuda Dios
que hasta agora yo no había
mirado si era de trigo ó de
centeno, porque me sabe tan
bien, que no tengo cuidado sino
de hartarme.
Amintas.—Si queréis, señores,
leche migada, aquí la tengo en
este cacharro nuevo; bien podéis
comer sin asco, que yo os digo
está bien limpio.
Leandro.—Está tan sabrosa y
tan dulce que ninguna cosa me
ha sabido mejor en mi vida.
Comed della, señor Florián, que
por ventura nunca mejor la
comistes.
Florián.—Assí es la verdad, pero
no comamos tanta que nos pueda
hacer daño.
Leandro.—Bien habéis dicho,
que yo ya estoy satisfecho.
Florián.—Y yo muy bien harto.
Dios dé mucha salud á quien tan
bien nos ha convidado.
Amintas.—Assí haga, señores, á
vosotros, aunque no tenéis de
qué darme gracias, si no es por la
voluntad, que, conforme á ella, de
otra manera fuérades convidados.
Leandro.—Dime, hermano mío,
¿cómo es tu nombre?
Amintas.—Amintas, señor, me
llamo, á vuestro servicio. Mas
decidme, ¿para qué lo
preguntáis?
Leandro.—Lo uno para saber de
quién hemos recebido tan buena
obra, y que cuando se ofreciere
tiempo podamos galardonarte
della, y lo otro para poderte mejor
decir algunas cosas que después
que aquí estamos me han pasado
por el pensamiento.
Amintas.—Cuando alguna buena
obra se hace, ella misma trae
consigo el galardón en ser bien
hecha, assí que yo me doy por
bien pagado si en algo he podido
serviros. En lo demás, decid,
señor, lo que quisiéredes, que
bien aparejado me hallaréis para
oiros.
Leandro.—Pues tan buen
aparejo hallo en ti, hermano
Amintas, para escucharme,
quiérote decir lo que estoy
considerando, y no me tengas á
mal mis razones, porque en el fin
dellas conocerás que todas irán
enderezadas en provecho y honra
tuya; y cuando así no fuere, bien
podré yo engañarme, pero mi
intención será buena, pues quiero
darte en todo el consejo que yo
para mí mesmo tomaría, aunque
por ello me puedas dar la viga
que dicen que está aparejada
para quien lo da á quien se lo
pide.
Amintas.—Aquellos que son
aconsejados mal ó bien, tienen
una gran ventaja, y es que no son
forzados, antes quedan en su
libertad para escoger lo que mejor
les está y les pareciere; que de
otra manera no sería consejo,
sino mandamiento forzoso; así
que los que aconsejan, no
solamente bien, pero aunque sea
mal, han de ser con atención
oídos, porque si el consejo es
bueno pueden y deben los
hombres aprovecharse dél, y si es
malo toman las gentes mayor
aviso para huir el peligro que
consigo trae; aunque para esto yo
confieso que hay necesidad de
muy gran discreción, porque
muchas veces las gentes simples
son engañadas con el consejo de
los maliciosos.
Leandro.—Tienes tanta razón en
lo que dices y tan buenas razones
en lo que hablas, y con tan polido
y gentil estilo te muestras en tu
plática tan prudente, que sólo
esto me mueve á decirte mi
parecer cerca de lo que debrías
hacer de ti y de tu vida; que
según siento traes tan mal
empleada en la soledad de estos
desiertos y montes, y en la
braveza destas montañas, á
donde aun las bestias fieras
parece que de mala voluntad
habitarían. Y para que mejor,
hermano mío Amintas, puedas
entenderme, yo he considerado
que, siendo tú un mancebo al
parecer de veintiuno á veintidós
años, con muy buena disposición
en el cuerpo y tan hermoso de
rostro que andando tratado de
otra manera pocos ó ninguno
habría que te hiciesen ventaja,
assí en gentileza como en
hermosura, teniendo otras gracias
que, según lo que de ti hemos
visto y conocido no deben faltarte,
y sobre todo un buen natural y
juicio claro, dotado de gran
discreción, con sutil y delicado
entendimiento, que lo empleas
tan mal todo ello, que con razón
podrías ser reprendido de los que
te conocen y sienten que podrías
tener mayores y mejores
pensamientos que no los que
muestras andando tras el ganado,
en hábito tan humilde que nunca
serás ni podrás ser más de lo que
agora paresces, que es ser pastor
como los otros pastores. Y
contentándote con la pobreza y
desventura que todos tienen, sin
pretender de pasar más adelante
ni venir á ser más estimado y
temido, habiendo en ti tanta
habilidad y suficiencia, á lo que
hemos visto y conocido, que más
pareces hombre disfrazado que
no criado en el hábito que traes.
Así que, amigo Amintas, lo que
todas las gentes pretenden, que
es el valor de la persona y las
riquezas, por donde vienen á ser
más estimados y tenidos, tú
también lo habías de pretender y
procurar, no teniendo tan gran
descuido para lo que te cumple,
que si tú quieres ponerte en
mudar el hábito y manera de vivir
en que agora andas, yo fiador que
ni te falten aparejos para venir
poco á poco á poner tu persona
en otra manera de vida con que
puedas vivir más honrado y
contento que agora lo estás,
aunque á ti te parezca al contrario
de lo que digo.
Florián.—Todas las mudanzas
son trabajosas, y aunque sean de
mal en bien ó de bien en mejor se
hacen con dificultad, porque la
costumbre se convierte en otra
naturaleza, y assí debe de ser en
Amintas, que aunque conozca
que vuestro consejo, señor
Leandro, es bueno y provechoso,
con estar tan acostumbrado, y por
ventura toda su vida, en el oficio
que agora tiene, dificultosamente
querrá dexarlo, que si él quisiesse
todos le ayudaríamos para
disponer de sí, mudando el hábito
y procurando remediarse por otra
vía más aventajada y
honrosamente.
Amintas.—Conocido he, señores,
la intención con que me habéis
dicho lo que de mi vida os parece,
y que el consejo que me dais es
como de personas que deseáis mi
bien y lo procuraríades cuando en
vuestra mano estuviese, y pues
no os lo puedo servir con las otras
según mi pobreza, agradecéroslo
he siempre con mi voluntad. Pero
muy engañados estáis en lo que
de mí habéis juzgado, porque yo
voy por otro camino muy diferente
del que á vosotros os parece que
siga, y no debéis maravillaros
mirando lo que comúnmente se
dice: que cuantas cabezas hay,
tantos son los pareceres y juicios
diferentes. Vosotros fundáis
vuestra opinión en aquello que
tenéis por mejor y más bien
acertado, porque así está
concebido y determinado en
vuestro entendimiento, y á mí
pónenseme delante otras razones
tan fuertes en lo contrario, que no
me dexan determinar en dexar la
vida que tengo, ni en que tenga
por mejor otra ninguna de las que
las gentes tienen; y si no fuesse
por no cansaros y haceros perder
el sueño, que os será más
provechoso, yo las diría, para que
viésedes que no me faltan
razones, si por ventura con ellas
me engaño, para querer ser
pastor, como lo soy, y no tener en
nada todo lo que el mundo para
valer más me pueda poner
delante.
Leandro.—No podrás, Amintas,
darnos mejor noche que será con
oirlas, que el sueño no nos hace
falta, y pues que descansamos
recostados en esta verde
frescura, por amor de mí te ruego
que prosigas hasta el cabo de tu
plática, que de muy buena gana
escucharemos, para poder
entender qué causas pueden á ti
moverte, fuera de la simpleza que
los otros pastores tienen, para
tener y estimar en mucho la vida
que todos tenemos en poco,
huyendo della con todo nuestro
poder y fuerzas, y que tú por tu
voluntad quieras seguirla,
mostrando tan gran
contentamiento con ella.
Amintas.—Pues que assí lo
tenéis por bien, escuchadme, que
yo las diré y con la mayor
brevedad que pudiere, para que si
os parecieren torpes y mal
fundadas, como salidas de un
entendimiento torpe y grosero, no
recibáis cansancio en
escucharlas, que los pastores á
veces pueden leer cosas que los
ciudadanos, impedidos de sus
tratos y conversaciones, por
ventura no leen, por donde
recogeré en mi memoria algunas
cosas de las que en este yermo á
mis solas he leído acerca deste
propósito de que hablamos.
Florián.—Antes te ruego que las
digas sin dexar ninguna cosa de
lo que te pareciere que hace al
propósito, para que mejor las
entendamos.
Amintas.—Todas las cosas como
las hace y produce la naturaleza
desnudas y con sólo el ser que de
su sustancia tienen son de mayor
perfición que cuando los
accidentes son adquiridos y
postizos, porque parece que la
causa de tener necesidad dellos
arguye aquella cosa ser
imperfecta y querría ser ayudada
con ponerlos en sí, para la
imperfección que en sí sienten. Y
porque mejor me podáis entender,
decidme, señores, ¿qué ventaja
hace una cosa viva, aunque sea
fea y tenga muchos defetos para
parecer bien, á la mesma cosa
pintada, aunque el pintor se
esmere en hacerla y procure
contrahacer naturalmente á la
viva? Y así mesmo ¿qué ventaja
tan grande la de la hermosura
igual al parecer en dos mujeres, si
la una la tiene suya sin poner
cosa ninguna y la otra la tiene
postiza y con afeites y otras cosas
que la ayuden á estar hermosa?
Pues si tomáis las hierbas y flores
que nacen en los campos de
diversos colores y matices,
¿cuánta mayor perfición muestran
en sí que las que están pintadas y
contrahechas? Y dexando aparte
la suavidad de los olores, y la
virtud con que están criadas, en el
parecer les hacen ventaja muy
conocida.
Pareceros ha, señores, que estas
comparaciones van sin propósito
hasta que entendáis el fin para
que las he dicho, el cual es
mostraros que cuanto las cosas
están más cerca y allegadas á lo
que manda y muestra querer la
naturaleza, tanto se podrían decir
que tienen mayor bondad y que
son más perfetas, y con la
perfición más dignas de ser
queridas y seguidas de las
gentes. Todo esto he dicho para
mostraros que, siendo la vida
pastoril, por muchas causas y
razones que para ello hay, más
allegada á la que la naturaleza
quiso como por principal intento y
voluntad que los hombres
seguiéssemos, que os parezca
también que los que la siguen y
se contentan con ella no
solamente no hacen yerro
ninguno, pero que no por esso es
razón que sean tenidos en menos
que los otros hombres que siguen
y andan embebidos en las
riquezas y en los deleites y en las
pompas y honores, que todas son
vanidades del mundo.
Leandro.—No me parece mal
fundamento el que has tomado;
pero yo no veo razón que baste á
probar cómo quiso la naturaleza
más que los hombres anduviesen
guardando ganado que no que
entendiesen en los otros tratos y