INEXORABLE ISLAMIZATION
Jose Diego Villeda TSTR
Baghdad Aghmadu, a 47 year old merchant, makes the perilous journey across the Sahara Desert for about 3 times each year. He is a man who has been induced to follow the Islamic religion since he was a child. Every time, Aghmadu joyfully remembers his grandmother stories about the advent of Islam to Africa that prompted the construction of mosques, new techniques of weighting, the art of writing and a marked rise in education.
“Undeniably, Islam has been and currently is the dominant religion of Africa,” stated Baghdad. Starting in North Africa due to the conquest of Spain, Islam began to disseminate across the Sahara Desert to finally reach the eastern and western part of the continent.
“Top-down, definitely top-down,” said Baghdad Aghmadu in between laughter when asked about the Islamization of Western Africa. “Rulers were first lured into the Islamic religion by merchants who made the death-defying expedition through the Sahara Desert.” He also explained that rulers could not impose the Islamic religion beliefs if they wanted to maintain social harmony. He wrapped up his answer by adding, “take the example of both the Empire of Mali and Ghana whose population was converted thanks to the rulers embracement of the Islamic religion.”
As Baghdad was elucidating the topic, an African cleric entered the market place. “Curious, what a coincidence,” he exclaimed in the middle of the boisterous environment. “Basically, the responsible for the spread of Islam are both Arab traders and travelers but also African clerics like him.”
It is not fortuitous the existence of a correlation between the rise of Islam and the development of urban communities. The Arab traders not only brought Islam to West Africa but also resources like gold. I was informed that that the West African rulers taxed the merchants as well. The influx of gold and metals prompted the erection of this massive urban communities like Ghana, Mali and Songhay. During this time, people pretended to be Muslim since it gave certain benefits in the trading business.
A group of sources confirmed that in North Africa, Christianity dramatically contracted following the rise of Islam. At first, places like Egypt tolerated Christianity by only requiring the payment of a special tax called “jizya”. However, as Baghdad Aghmadu told, “Christian Crusades compromised Christianity in places like Egypt since after their activites, Muslim rulers started to suspect the loyalty of Christians living on those areas.”
As a result, churches were destroyed and Christians were forced to leave from the best land.”
Particularly in Timbutku, where the WHAP crew was at the moment, the arrival of Islam attracted scholars and intellectuals from all around the the Muslim world. With them, they brought commerce and money. Islam was undoubtedly foundational for the appearance of Timbuktu.
After exhaustive research it was found that West Africa and North Africa shared commonalities but also strong differences regarding Islamization. First, regardless of how Islam reached both regions, West and North Africa embraced and promoted the conversion to the Islamic religion like in Egypt. However, West Africa was never affected by the mass migration of Arabs that happened in North Africa. Also, while the Arabic language became the dominant language in North Africa, in West Africa it just became an important language of religion, education, administration and trade but never the dominant one.
