Islam in Tropical Africa

I. M. Lewis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315311395
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

First published in 1980, this second edition of Islam in Tropical Africa presents specialist studies of the history and sociology of Muslim communities in Africa south of the Sahara. The studies cover an extensive and range of time and place, and include consideration of particular aspects of Muslim belief and practice in regions such as Senegal and Somalia. The second edition includes an updated introduction which draws attention to the ways in which differently organized traditional cultures and social systems had reacted and adapted to Muslim influence in the field of politics, law and ritual in the second half of the twentieth century.

This book will be of interest to those studying Islam, African studies and ethnography.

I.
Introduction

The Muslim population of tropical Africa¹ is more widely scattered and less continuous in its distribution than that of North Africa. In many instances its members form minority communities in states which have no national allegiance to Islam, and even when they live in countries which are predominantly Muslim, few of these are formally constituted as Islamic states.² Despite this, however, likely estimates place their total number at almost 60,000,000,³ the same figure usually taken to represent the strength of the Muslim population of North Africa. Tropical Africa, therefore, notwithstanding the highly variegated character of its peoples’ religious adherence and their wide cultural diversities, is thus nearly a quarter Muslim, and must be regarded as one of the major Islamic areas of the world.

The Special Studies which form the basis for this volume consider particular aspects of the Islamic life of a number of communities—widely separated in space and time—within this great Muslim belt. This introductory essay, which serves as a preface to these Studies, begins by reviewing the broad historical circumstances and salient characteristics of the penetration of Islam in the five regions into which tropical Africa may conveniently be divided. It then proceeds to consider the contribution made to the dissemination of Islam by such agencies as trade and proselytization. This leads to consideration of the interaction between traditional local institutions and Islam in the political field, and that in turn to the wider problem of the impact of Islamic Law on customary law and practice. Discussion of the influence of Islam on traditional religious phenomenology and on beliefs and ritual follows; and in the final section attention centres on the more contemporary issues of the role of Islam in the colonial and post-colonial periods.

These themes are broadly those which were followed in our general discussions at Zaria, and many of the points made then are incorporated in the essay which follows.⁴ Here the principal aim is to outline a sociological framework within which the interrelations between African and Muslim beliefs and institutions can be meaningfully and profitably discussed.

Since there is in European languages, to say nothing of Arabic, already a substantial body of writing on Islam in Africa, it might be thought that the preparation of a short sociological essay such as this would be a light task. This, however, has not proved to be the case. For, on closer examination of much of this literature, it becomes abundantly clear that the sociological study of the connexions between beliefs and ritual among living Muslim peoples is still in its infancy. The present position is thus a frustrating one; and it is necessary to begin by challenging such misleading preconceptions as that only centralized states can readily adopt Islam, or that matrilineal societies are uniformly resistant to Muslim penetration, or that Islamic marriage rules are incompatible with clan exogamy, before proceeding to establish the real implications of the conversion of African societies to Islam.

If, therefore, many of the conclusions reached in the following pages seem negative this is largely a reflection of the superficiality and inadequacy of much of our present knowledge. It is also a demonstration of the fundamental fact that Islam can be analysed sociologically only within the social context of the actual life and folk beliefs of living Muslim communities. What is enshrined in the orthodox literary tradition of Islam and usually taken as this religion’s essential character is often very differently represented in the concepts and practices which inform everyday Muslim life. Moreover, the method long established in Islamic Studies of tracing the origins and historical development of beliefs and institutions does not necessarily take one very far in understanding their contemporary significance in any given social context of living Islam. Of course, history, where it is known or discernible, cannot be ignored—to do so would be to limit the scope and depth of social analysis—but purely historical explanations of events in terms of their antecedents are no substitute for systematic analysis of the manner in which institutions are inter-related and mutually sustaining in a given social setting.⁵

Thus, in this province of Islamic Studies, as elsewhere in the subject, the final plea must be for more intensive field research on actual Muslim communities. And, for the social anthropologist and sociologist, there is the added challenge that the study of the interaction between traditional pre-Islamic and Muslim beliefs and institutions offers special opportunities for testing the validity of functional hypotheses. If a social anthropologist’s analysis of the social significance or ‘functions’ of institutions and customs in a traditional Pre-Islamic community is correct it should have some predictive value in suggesting how Islam will be accommodated. New developments under the impact of Islam which do not support the previous analysis must inevitably cast doubt on its validity. Hence the study of Islam in Africa, particularly where Islam and Christianity are competing for new adherents, presents a field full of potentialities for the social scientist and deserves much more rigorous and concerted attention than it has so far received.

Notes

¹ I.e. Africa south of the Sahara, but excluding Southern Africa.

² Exceptions are the Somali and Sudan Republics.

³ Approximately two-thirds of this total are concentrated in West Africa, and about 19,000,000 of these live in Nigeria. In Senegal, Guinea, Mali, and Niger, Muslims constitute the predominant element, while the proportionately smallest Muslim populations are found in Liberia, Ghana, and Togo. In North-East, East, and Central Africa, where the remaining third of the total Muslim population of tropical Africa is found, Muslims are in the majority in the Sudan Republic (c. 9,000,000), while Zanzibar and the Somali Republic have for all intents and purposes entirely Muslim populations. The Muslim element is also strong in Ethiopia (including Eritrea) and in Tanzania, representing perhaps a quarter to a third in each case. The smallest Muslim communities are found in Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), and in Zaire.

⁴ Here I should like to acknowledge my debt to all the discussants at Zaria. For comments on earlier drafts of this introduction I am particularly grateful to the painstaking comment and criticism of Dr. Abner Cohen, Professor Daryll Forde, Professor Spencer Trimingham, and Dr. Peter Ucko.

⁵ See E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Anthropology and History, Manchester University Press, 1961.

I.
Regional Review of the Distribution and Spread of Islam

(a) The Eastern Sudan

Of the regions of tropical Africa which are our concern in this book, Islam made its earliest, most concerted inroads in the Eastern Sudan and Horn of Africa. While the southern part of what is today the Sudan Republic, with its largely Nilotic and negroid populations remained until recently for the most part shielded from any intensive Muslim influence, the north was from early times subject to Islamic penetration along three main paths. From the seventh century Islam began to infiltrate with trade from the east, through the Red Sea ports of Badi, Aydhab, and Suakin (and from the Dahlak Archipelago after A.D. 702.) Later, a western stream of influence through Darfur assumed some importance. But these two distinct lines of Muslim contact pale into insignificance in comparison with the impact of the main channel of early Islamization from Egypt and the north.

Following the Arab invasions and conquest of Egypt, from the seventh century onwards Arab immigrants began to move south into the northern Sudan in an ever-increasing tide. This informal penetration was encouraged rather than hampered by the generally cordial relations which were established between Christian Nubia and the north after the failure of the initial Egyptian attempts at conquest in A.D. 641 and 651. Nevertheless, as Muslim Egypt grew in strength Nubian power gradually diminished over the centuries, and what is remarkable is its surprisingly long span of life rather than its eventual eclipse in 1317 when the Christian kingdom at last bowed to the might of Mamluk Egypt. By this time, the effect of the continuous process of population drift and infiltration was such that the northern Sudan had become extensively populated by Arabic-speaking peoples who had mixed in varying degrees with the indigenous Hamitic peoples giving rise in many cases to entirely new ethnic aggregations.¹ Later Muslim immigrants and proselytizers thus found that a broad framework of Islamic culture had already been established, and this was subsequently further built upon and consolidated, particularly in the Turco-Egyptian period, achieving its most dramatic political expression in the nineteenth-century Mahdia.

This prevailing current of Muslim influence has left an indelible mark on the character of Sudanese Islam. The Egyptian connexion accounts both for the prevalence of the Maliki School of Law introduced from Upper Egypt probably in the middle of the sixteenth century,² and for the establishment during the Turco-Egyptian conquest in the early nineteenth century of the Hanafi School as the official code of the courts. At the same time the direct experience, at first hand, of Arabian Islam (the acceptance of which would seem to have been facilitated by correspondences between Hamitic Sudanese and Muslim Arab social institutions) has had a profound effect which is readily apparent in the close association of Islam with Arab identity. More than for most of the other Muslim peoples of Africa, for the Sudanese to be a Muslim is to be an Arab. It is this deep assimilation of Islam and identification with Arab culture and society which is expressed in the universal claim to Arab ancestry³ and the overwhelming currency of Arabic. Only the Nubians and Beja have preserved their own languages.

When, however, we turn to that other equally salient trait of Sudanese Islam, the emphasis placed on the cult of saints and the great proliferation of Sufi tariqas (lit. ‘the way’, i.e. path of devotion or religious discipline) or Religious Orders (often also called ‘brotherhoods’)⁴, we have to look to the influence of the Hijaz during the Fung period (1500—1800). Trimingham⁵ has noted the existence of over twenty separate Orders, many of them locally based, of which the Shadiliyya is probably the earliest (c. 1445), and the Mirghaniyya (or Khatmiyya) the most popular today. To appreciate their significance in the recent history of the Sudan it is only necessary to recall that the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad (1843-85) was himself an affiliate of the Sammaniyya Order, and indeed, Khalifa or head of one of its branches. His mission as Mahdi, of course, transcended sectarian tariqa loyalties, and his rule showed little tolerance of rival movements. But the division between those who look to the religious leadership of his descendants and are known as the Ansar, and those who adhere to the Khatmiyya Order, remains one of the most important factors in the religious and political life of the Sudan Republic today.

(b) North-Eastern Africa and the Horn

Whereas in the eastern Sudan the principal early bearers of Islam were the Arabic-speaking Semitic tribal invaders whose descendants, heavily mixed with Hamitic and negroid indigenous elements, make up so much of the present population, Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa were not subjected to any comparable Muslim Arab influx. Their early Semitic–speaking peoples—of whom the Christian Amhara must be regarded as the prototype—have, on the whole, rejected and resisted Islam, which, by contrast, has made its most notable gains among Hamitic–(or Cushitic–) speaking populations such as the Saho, ‘Afar (Danakil), and Somali, and more recently, and with less striking success, among the Oromo. Important Semitic-speaking peoples who have adopted the Muslim faith, however, are the Beni ‘Amir (Beja) of the eastern Sudan and Eritrea, the Bait Asgade, the Marya and Mensa of Eritrea, and some of the Tigrina-speaking groups’ of Eritrea and north-west Ethiopia.⁶

In this region as a whole the main gateway for Muslim influence has been the Red Sea and Indian Ocean coasts. Along these shores Muslim Arab, and in some cases also Persian colonies, established—or continued—a string of trading posts from shortly after the hijra. The Dahlak Islands off the coast of Eritrea were occupied by a Muslim Arab garrison in A.D. 702, after a piratical Abyssinian attack on Jedda, but the most important coastal settlemen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Part One Introduction
• Part Two Special Studies
• Index