The History of Islam in Africa: 11 Books to Read

The history of Islam in Africa is almost as old as Islam itself, stretching back to the 7th century. Below, Mustafa Briggs lists 11 books that highlight different aspects of this deep-rooted tradition, the achievements (at times even existence) of which are often overlooked. 

1. African Dominion by Michael A. Gomez 

 

In African Dominion, seasoned Atlantic world historian Michael Gomez expands a scholarly understanding of West African empires well beyond earlier works, even while using many of the same sources, and analyses the Muslim West African empires of the Middle Niger River, arguing that scholars must reimagine how they think about Mali and Songhay’s role in a global history of the world. 

Gomez discusses the kingdoms and empires that existed prior to Mansā Mūsā’s reign over the Mali Empire, particularly in locales such as Gao. He discusses Mansā Mūsā’s pilgrimage to Mecca (which gave him and his empire the spiritual prestige he needed to become a peer of other leaders in the Arabic world), as well as the establishment and expansion of the Songhay Empire under Sunni Ali and Askia Muhammad Toure. He considers the scholarly community that developed in the region as well as the legacy of Mali and Songhay after Songhay, fell to Morocco in 1591. 

2. Beyond Timbuktu: an Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa by Professor Ousmane Kane

3. The Walking Qur’an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge and History in West Africa by Rudolph T. Ware III

4. The African Caliphate: The Life, Works and Teaching of Shaykh Usman Dan Fodio by Ibraheem Sulaiman

5. One Woman’s Jihad: Nana Asma’u, Scholar and Scribe by Beverly Blow Mack and Jean Boyd

6. Muslim Societies in Africa: A Historical Anthropology by Roman Loimeier

 

Loimeier provides a concise overview of Muslim societies in Africa, in light of their role in African history and the history of the Islamic world. 

 

7. Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853-1913 by Cheikh Anta Babou

 

Fighting the Greater Jihad explores the life and times of Sheikh Ahmad Bamba, the famous Senegalese Sufi sheikh, pacifist, and social activist, whose brotherhood flourished under colonial rule, despite attempts to suppress and contain it by the French Colonial Authorities. It still plays a huge role in all areas of Senegalese society, politics and economy.

 

8. Living Knowledge in West African Islam: The Sufi Community of Ibrāhīm Niasse by Zackary Valentine Wright

 

Wright investigates the rise and spread of the movement of Sheikh Ibrahim Niasse of Senegal, which was named by certain prominent academics to be the single largest Muslim movement in Africa. It examines the history of Islam in the region and the development of the clergy and intellectual tradition that gave birth to the movement, alongside the relationship between Ibrahim Niasse’s movement and the manifestation of African Liberation Theory, Pan-Africanism and Postcolonialism and Global Islamic Solidarity, which highlighted the later years of Ibrahim Niasse’s international career.

 

In light of the thousands of Arabic manuscripts being found in West Africa (some of which date back over 800 years to a time when Mali was home to a university with a library that had the largest collection of books in Africa since the Library of Alexandria), this amazing series of articles seeks to explore the history of the trans-Saharan book and paper trades, the scholarly production and teaching curriculum of African Muslims, and the formation, preservation and codicology of library collections. It explains how this literary culture flourished and the conditions that these African intellectuals thrived in, as well as how they acquired scholarly works and the writing paper necessary to contribute to knowledge.

This collection is also essential to debunking the myth that West African culture is largely an oral tradition without literacy or literature; since reading and writing are the cornerstones of civilisation, reducing a people to oral tradition alone, without taking into account the vast literary tradition that has existed in West Africa for nearly a millennium, is essentially implying that West Africans have made no real contribution to world civilisation, which is not at all the case.

Beyond Jihad: The Pacifist Tradition in West African Islam by Lamim Sanneh

In a world where Islam is often wrongly accused of promoting extremism and terrorism, and after hundreds of years of Orientalist propaganda which promotes the theory that Islam was solely spread by the sword and through holy war, this book seeks to study a different and mostly untold narrative within Islamic History. Using West Africa as a case study, Lamin Sanneh shows us how Islam was successful in Africa, not because of military might, but through the origin and evolution of the African pacifist tradition in Islam, which was largely the result of a highly educated scholarly clerical class within West African society who spread the religion though education, spiritual training, and legal scholarship. These scholars provided continuity and stability in the midst of political changes and cultural shifts, through their policy of religious and inter-ethnic accommodation, and promoted a spiritually centred pacifist form of Islam which spread throughout the West African region, a model which many argue is ideal for our modern context and should be revisited and adopted by the modern Muslim world today.

Muslims Beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of Ajami and the Muridiyya by Fallou N’Gom

For anybody who wants to know about Islam in West Africa, or to have an understanding of West African culture and history in general, it is essential to understand the vital role ‘Ajami’ has played and still plays in West African Society today. Ajami is the practice of using the Arabic alphabet and script to write traditional West African languages, and in this book, Fallou N’gom “demonstrates how ‘Ajami materials serve as essential resources of indigenous religious, socio-cultural, and historical knowledge necessary for understanding the spread of Islam and its many adaptations in sub-Saharan Africa and the Muslim world at large.”

See also

Mustafa Briggs

The Prophetic Poetry of Medina Baye

This is vital, as for years, people have reduced West African culture to being merely an oral tradition, ignoring the vast amounts of literature that have been produced in the region in local languages for hundreds of years. As a case study, N’gom explores the role that ‘Ajami materials played in the rise of the Muridiyya as one of the most resilient, dynamic, and influential Sufi movements in sub-Saharan Africa and uncovers the vital role Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba and the Ajami poets who followed him played in the formation and perpetuation of the current religious traditions of Muridiyya, showcasing a prime example of how important this practice and tradition was in the development of West African culture and society.

Editor’s note: this list was updated to include more books. Last updated June 2020.

For more about the history of Islam in Africa, listen to our podcasts: Islam in West Africa, Islam in East Africa, and Islam in South Africa.