islamization of africa ii
TRANSCRIPT
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Islamization of Africa II:
Sept. 24“North Africa: conversion and conquest
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Spread of Islam Into Africa:North Africa and the Sahara
Arab and Swahilitraders spreadIslam: 8th-19thcenturies C.E.
7th -15th centuries
Almoravids 11th C.
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
Story of spread of Islam into North Africa:- narrative of armies sweeping across land, establishing Caliphates
- took the names of family leaders (eg Umayyads, Abbassids, Fatimids, Almoravids…)
-- dynasties falling like dominos to more powerful armies
- mostly about movement of Arabs, not of Islam per se
- conquest is not conversion: describes government not people
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Complicating Robinson’s ‘gateway’ approach (again):
- North Africa – combination conquest and integration with Berber economics, culture, religion
- Sahara – combination conquest and rooting of religious movement/network: the Almoravids
Islam in North Africa and Sahara
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Islam in North Africa
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Islam and North Africa
Across North Africa, what unifies historical study is agreement on:
- early Arab conquest (‘by the sword’)
- gradual attraction of Berbers to Arab military power and Islamic religion/culture
- unevenness of sources (creating biases, gaps): combination archaeology (local), ‘texts’ (mostly Arab)
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Islam and North Africa
Archaeological work limited:
- few excavations
- emphasis on Roman rather than Islamic era
- predominance of French academic influence/politics (determines what projects receive funding)
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Islam and North Africa
Work (to date) shaped by interest in:
- Trans-Saharan trade (commodities, markets, change-over-time)
- patterns Arab settlement (not always shaped by trade, also by agricultural interests)
- where trade is major interest, settlement oriented to major commercial markets- otherwise scattered in hinterland
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Islam and North Africa
Market orientation:
-markets, trade in hands of indigenous animist Berbers
- archaeology can trace where ‘Arabs’ settled vis-à-vis Berber quarters: architecture, tools, household utensils etc)
- can trace cultural exchange, with respect to material culture (eg. burial sites)
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Islam and North Africa
Islamization:
- can trace process of Islamization into Berber areas through building mosques [as we saw in East Africa]
- limited evidence to date shows process ‘mixed’
- archaeology does not explain ‘why’
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Islam and North Africa
Findings:
- Non-muslim Berbers continued to co-exist with Muslims, especially in interior (Mountains, desert)
- Even converts (Muslim Berbers) did not always ‘adapt’fully to religion:
- retained some animist gods- often transposed ritual of worship onto Islamic ‘saints’
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Islam and North Africa
Muslim Berbers accepted religion but resisted cultural conversion:
- continued local ‘shrine’ architecture/worship- ‘incorporated’ tombs, shifted worship to Muslim saints- retained Berber as language- retained Berber dress, custom, culture (music, literature, crafts etc)
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Islam and North AfricaTunisia
Local Berber Shrine (above)
Shrine of Sidi Mhammed(right)
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Islam and North Africa
Ibn Battuta (Moroccan): Berber by ‘ethnicity’; qadi (jurist) by training; major ‘source’ for historians:
- experienced many ‘forms’ of Islam in his travels across North Africa:
- formal ‘official’ Islam of cities - ascetics, marabouts of countryside- witnessed centrality of ‘tombs’ and associated medersas (Qur’anic schools)
[see ‘Ibn Battuta – North Africa’, Additional Readings]
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Islam and North Africa
In the Wake of Conquest:- Morocco, Algeria: several sites where Arab settlers following in wake of ‘conquest’) colonized hinterland and interior
- introduced new agriculture: replaced Berber/coastal ‘tree-culture’ (olives, citrus fruits) with grain growing, pastoralism sheep, goats
- invited gradual integration: ‘Berberization’ of Arab communities and ‘Islamization’ of Berber neighbours
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Islam and North Africa
Archaeological work only suggests alternative understanding of ‘spread of Islam’ but is more consistent than ‘conquest/conflict’ theory with other known factors:
- apart from initial moves of ‘Arabs’ from Arabian peninsula into North Africa, most so-called ‘Islamic conquest’ was carried out, physically, by Berber warriors
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Islam and North Africa
- Berbers attracted by ‘rewards’ of Arab armies and hierarchy
- not required to totally relinquish aspects of culture while benefitting from new political ‘masters’
- emergence of Almoravids is itself example of this ‘process’ in context of Saharan tribes[case study, below]
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Islam and North Africa
‘Typical’exampleNorth Africanwarrior:
Arab ?…
…Or Berber?
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“Warriors of the Faith” (North Africa) – Berbers not Arabs
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• Tariq ibn Ziyad
Berber Muslim and Umayyad General who led the conquest of VisigothicHispania (Spain)in 711 under orders of the Umayyad Caliph
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
Story of the Almoravids:
- well known to European, African history
- in Europe: succeeded Umayyid dynasty in Spain (11th C.), - ‘Moors’, left scholarly and architectural legacy
- in North Africa (Morocco): created capital out of Marrakesh- made it centre of scholarship, Koutoubia Mosque world renown
- in Africa, understood as ‘origin’ of Islamization of West Africa(‘Conquest of Ghana’, see next day ‘Sahara, West Africa’)
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
Koutoubia Mosque, Marrakesh (Morocco)
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
11th Century:- leader of Saharan Berber Sanhaja tribe made the hajj
- on return, visited with Islamic scholar in ‘Ifriqiyya’(Tunisia – origine of name ‘Africa’)
- convinced that his people were Muslim but not ‘good Muslims’
- returned to Sahara with cleric from Morocco: Abd Allah ibn Yasin’
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
Goal:
- to help his people ‘turn from pre-Islamic habits and fully embrace Islam’
- first articulation of issue that continues to be central to Muslim communities in Africa: what does ‘fully embracing Islam’ mean?
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
Result:
- some fractions of the Sanhaja followed him but…
- the important Lamtuna clan (family) resisted: rejected him and his ‘message’
-Yasin returned to North Africa for ‘advice’
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
Advice: return to the Sahara, launch jihad [‘holy war’]
- offered resisters opportunity to convert, recognize him as legitimate religious leader
- ‘retreated’ with followers (similar to the Prohpet’s hijra to Medina; here called ‘ribat’ – blurs physical location, still debated, with ‘physical process’)
- After: returned to desert and successfully defeated opposing tribes
- ultimately, continued ‘holy war’ into West Africa and into Spain
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Almoravids: Spain, Morocco, Sahara
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Almoravid Leader
Yusuf ibn Tashfin
Cousin of initialAlmoravid Leader ,third Emir of Almoravid empirein North Africa and Al-Andalus(Moorish Iberia/Spain).
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
Narrative seems to ‘fit’ with idea of spread of Islam into North/West Africa ‘by the sword’:
- not challenged until 1992 article “What’s in a Name? The Almoravids of the 11th century…” [see ‘Additional Readings’]
- H J Fisher (and subsequently others) argued convincingly against paradigm
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
Key Issue: idea of ‘ribat’ as physical place and/or holy war
- ‘disagreement’ derives different uses/mis-uses textual documentation
- sources not local chronicles (as elsewhere East, West Africa) - accounts by Arab geographers, most never visiting places described
-Ibn Battuta being the exception!
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
Arab sources ‘compiled’: reading back through archives of accounts
- as problematic as archaeological sites where ‘evidence’has been spread through several layers of ‘time’
- scholar in 12th century will ‘read’ texts from earlier centuries differently from scholar writing in 14th or 15th
centuries
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
Fisher’s critique of existing scholarly interpretations rests largely on this point:
- that contemporary interpretations have not adequately differentiated between these ‘chronologically specific’understandings
- critical argument: ribat was neither a place nor a war – it was a religious network
- as such, suggests different process by which Islam became entrenched in Sahara (and by extension), West Africa
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
His argument is largely linguistic (that is, he looks at how earlier Arab writers, writing at time of Almoravids, use the term ribat):
- concludes that it is only later writers who interpret term as ‘place’ or ‘war’
- these interpretations reflect who they are and political situation when they’re writing NOT what 11th century writers were saying
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
- if right, this is earliest suggestion that Islam is spread through religious network (leader, scholarly legitimacy, followers, centres of learning) that will later become the ‘norm’: tariqa
- such networks later carry the name of their leader: in this case, those of the ‘ribat’ indirectly did exactly that --‘Almoravids’ [‘those of the ribat’]
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Islam in North Africa and Sahara
Fisher does not deny a role to conflict:
- argues it was primarily about leadership: competing for power between Saharan clans
- in this case Sanhaja against Zenata
- under Ibn al-Yasin, one of those tribes claimed the right to be ‘truly Muslim’
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Conclusions
(1) For those who were of ‘the centre’ (Mecca, Cairo –perhaps even Ifriqiyya), Sahara and regions beyond were both physically and conceptually ‘distant’
- caution about what remains major source of information about North and West Africa – texts produced in ‘the centre’-- needs to be heeded.
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Conclusions
(2) - Hajj used to integrate ‘centre and periphery’:
- travels of Ibn al-Yasin, direct consequences for Western Sahara and West Africa- also ‘information’: ‘literary’ integration (published accounts of travels)
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Conclusions
(3) Prototypes in Islamic History:
- Fisher draws attention to both the ‘physical re-enactment’ of Islamic history and ‘motif’
- ‘real’ history of birth of Islam became enshrined in ‘ritual’of being Muslim: eg. the hijra
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Conclusions
In all subsequent histories of societies ‘becoming Muslim’we see both:
- ‘real’ attempts to re-enact ‘birth of Islam’ (eg Usman danFodio, Case Study of Sokoto Caliphate)
- and ‘literary motifs’: those who wish to present history in ‘acceptable Islamic terms’ to their audience
- both ‘endeavours’ pose problems for historians
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Conclusions
Almoravids:- paradigm of ‘Islamic conquest by sword’ (born of history of early Islam) has long shaped unquestioning acceptance of Almoravid narrative
- Fisher addressed one aspect of that story -- the ribat, arguing for its derivation from the hijra part of the traditional story of Islam
Point: we need to keep both observations (real, literary) in mind when interpreting all sources about Islamization in North and West Africa
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Conclusions
(4) Tendency to overemphasize military action in story of Islamization:
- arguably ‘overemphasized’ even in narrative of ‘birth of Islam’ [our discussion of video ‘Islam: empire of Faith]
- recent archaeological work allowed us to extend critique to North African narratives
- Fisher’s argument underscores tendency in context of Almoravids in West Africa
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Conclusions
(5) Fisher identifies another factor shaping modern historiography: politics
- as in ‘real past’, profession reflects contemporary politics
- eg. Nigerian scholar who (recently) argued for complete dismissal of Arabic sources (and all subsequent scholarship based on them)
- earlier references to French dominance in North African history, obsession with the Roman (rather than Muslim) era
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Conclusions
Final Conclusion:
“ The pattern of events described in this paper [article on Almoravids] is, if stripped to the bare essentials, a prototypical model of innumerable such interventions in the history of Black Africa , up to and including today.”
If true, this is a concept we need to keep in mind throughout the course:
- what does Fisher mean? - why is it so significant?