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INTRODUCTION Patterl1S DflslamizatiDl1 al1~ Varieties DfReligiDus €xl'eriel1ce amDl1g Muslims DfAfrica Nehemia Le"nion ano Ranoa{{L POWVel' 15J.:'IM1 rC.:'lchc~ Afric.:'l through two gateways, from the east and the north. From both directions the carriers of Islam navigated across vast empty spaces, the waters of the Indian Ocean, and the desert sands of the Sahara. Both ocean and desert, which so often are considered barriers, could be crossed with appropriate means of transportation and navigational skills, and they were, in fact, excellent transmitters of religious and cultural influences. Densely populated lands, on the other hand, functioned as fiiters, their numerous layers slowing down the infiltration of religious and cultural influences. From Egypt, Islamic influence extended in three directions, through the Red Sea to the eastern coastal areas, up the Nile valley to the Sudan, and across the western desert to the Maghrib. In the eleventh century, Arab nomads drove southward from Egypt to the Sudan and westward across North Africa. These nomads contributed to the Islamization and Arabization of the Sudan and North Africa. At the same time, Muslim seamen from Egypt and Arabia established commercial centers along the Red Sea and Africa's east coast. By the twelfth century, the last indigenous Christians disappeared from North Africa, and by the fifteenth century the Christian Coptic population of Egypt itself was reduced to a minority of some 15 percent. The Christian Nubians, who resisted Muslim expansion for almost six centuries, steadily lost ground between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries (chapter 5). It was only in the Horn of Africa that the power struggle between Islam and Christianity remained undecided. Ethiopia endured as a Christian state even after the number of Muslims had grown considerably; Muslims could not own land and were excluded from higher government offices. NeJ1emia Levtzion ano Ran(}a{{ L. Pouwe(j On the East African coast, Islam faced the challenge of Christianity between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Religion was important in the struggle of Arab and Swahili Muslims. The struggle concluded with the withdrawal of the Portuguese from the coast north ofMozambique after 1698. However, Muslims lost to the Christians the control of the maritime trade in the Indian Ocean. Muslims had dominated this trade for more than seven centuries, though they had faced competition from Asian Hindus and Buddhists. The Saharan trade, on the other hand, remained completely at the hands of Muslims. Europeans interfered in the Saharan trade only indirectly after the fifteenth century, when they began diverting some of the gold to the coast. Because Islam spread to West Africa from North Africa, Muslims there followed the Maliki school of law dominant in North Africa. On the other hand, in East Africa, where Islam came from the Arabian peninsula, Muslims followed the Shafl'i school of law that prevailed in Arabia. Both regions, however, were exposed to the influence ofthe Ibadiyya sect. Ibadi merchants opened up trade across the Sahara , and were among the first Muslims who reached western Sudan-as early as the eighth and ninth centuries. But whatever converts they had made were reconverted to Maliki Islam by the eleventh century. The Ibadiyya had been established in Eastern Arabia during the first centuries of Islam and became dominant in Zanzibar after the Omani conquest of this island in the eighteenth century. The Ibadis of Zanzibar maintained their distinct Arab identiry, and did not engage in missionary work among Africans. The Progress oflsJ~m it1 North ~t1~ West Afric~ 2 Soon after they had defeated the Byzantine imperial forces in the middle of the seventh century, the Arabs gained control over coastal North Africa. But for some time, the Arabs failed to impose their authority over the Berber tribes of the interior . Successive revolts of the Berbers, that forced the Arabs to withdraw, were referred to as ridda, the same term used when Arab tribes deserted the young Muslim community after the death of the Prophet. In both cases, political submission and conversion to Islam were considered one and the same act. Similarly, when the Arabs consolidated their rule over the Berbers the text reads "after the islam of the Berbers had been made good" (ba'da ma hasuna islam al-barbar); the word islam here carried the two meanings of submission and conversion. The next phase of the Berbers' resistance to Arab rule occurred within Islam, through adherence to heterodox sects, first the Ibadiyya and then the Ismailiyya. The Almoravids finally secured the victory of Sunni...

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