Abstract
The spread of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula to the Maghreb (north Africa) has been attributed to many factors, including commerce, missionary evangelization, and political expansionism. In the case of kingdoms south of the Sahara, especially the Kanem-Bornu kingdom (today’s northeastern Nigeria), missionary evangelization and commerce are the chief means through which Islam came into the area. In addition, besides the activities of traders and Islamic teachers who primarily came in for business, there was a focus of converting or convincing political leaders and elites to embrace Islam. Therefore, eventually such leaders began applying Islamic principles in administration and judicial activities in their communities or states. Also some local converts to Islam eventually assumed the honorable role of spreading the faith among their relations and friends. 1 These same factors were largely responsible for the spread of Islam in the Hausa states until the jihad of Usuman dan Fodio.
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Notes
See Toyin Falola, Key Events in African History—A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), 85–86.
Ibid., 93 and J. D. Fage, —A History of Africa (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 187–212.
For more details about the ethnicities and languages in Kanem-Bornu, see C.C. Ifemesia, “States of the Central Sudan,” in A Thousand Years of West African History—A Handbook for Teachers and Students, ed. J. F. Ade Ajayi and Ian Espie (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1967), 72–74.
For more details see Ifemesia, “Bornu under the Shehus” in A Thousand Years of West African History—A Handbook for Teachers and Students, eds., J.F. Ade Ajayi and Ian Espie (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1967), 284–293.
Ibid., 286. For further information on the correspondence between the dan Fodio camp and al-Kanemi’s on this issue, see Roland Cohen and Louis Brenner, “Bornu in the Nineteenth Century,” in History of West Africa, vol. 2, eds. J.F.A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 96ff.
For a complete version of this correspondence, cf. Thomas Hodgkin, Nigerian Perspectives, an Historical Anthology (London, Ibadan, Accra: Oxford University Press, 1960), 198–205.
J.O. Hunwick, “Islam in West Africa,” in A Thousand Years of West African History—A Handbook for Teachers and Students, eds. J.F. Ade Ajayi and Ian Espie (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1967), 124f
Lissi Rasmussen, Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa: The Cases of Northern Nigeria and Tanzania Compared (London and New York: British Academic Press, 1993), 6.
cf. Thomas Hodgkin, Nigerian Perspectives, an Historical Anthology (London, Ibadan, Accra: Oxford University Press, 1960), 75.
Ibid., 92ff and Robert W. July, A History of the African People, 5th ed. (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1998), 72ff.
Peter B. Clarke, West Africa and Islam: A study of religious development from the 8th to the 20th century (London: Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd., 1982), 60–66
Michael Crowder, A Short History of Nigeria (Revised and Enlarged Edition) (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 91ff.
J.D. Fage, A History of Africa (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 193ff.
E. D. Morel, Nigeria—Its People and Its Problems (London, Great Britain: Frank Cass, 1968), 99f;
Sidney John Hogben and A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, The Emirates of Northern Nigeria, a Preliminary Survey of Their Historical Traditions (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 116–123.
See R. A. Adeleye, Power and Diplomacy in Northern Nigeria 1804–1906: The Sokoto Caliphate and Its Enemies (New York, NY: Humanities Press, 1971), 31–33.
Also see Murray Last, The Sokoto Caliphate (New York, NY: Humanities Press, 1967), 63f.
See Lamin Sanneh, Piety and Power: Muslims and Christians in West Africa (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 2.
See Chukwulozie, Muslim-Christian Dialogue in Nigeria (Ibadan, Nigeria: Daystar Press, 1986), 28f.
Uthman Dan Fodio, “The Origins of the Fulani Jihad,” in Nigerian Perspectives, An Historical Anthology, ed., Thomas Hodgkin (London, Ibadan, Accra: Oxford University Press, 1960), 192.
See Yusufu Turaki, The British Colonial Legacy In Northern Nigeria: A Social Ethical Analysis of the Colonial and Post-Colonial Society and Politics in Nigeria (Jos, Nigeria: Challenge Press, 1993), 39f.
N. I. Okonjo, British Administration in Nigeria, 1900–1950: A Nigerian View (New York: NOK, 1974), 2f.
See Hamman, “Inter-Ethnic Relations and Inter-Ethnic Conflicts,” in Islam in Africa, eds., Nur Alkali et al. (Ibadan: Spectrum Books Ltd., 1993), 458.
Ivor Wilks, “The Juula and the Expansion of Islam into the Forest,” in The History of Islam in Africa, eds., Nehemiah Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels (Athens, OH; Oxford, UK; and Cape Town, South Africa: Ohio University Press; James Curry Ltd.; & David Philip Publishers Ltd., 2000), 95.
Adeleye. Power and Diplomacy in Northern Nigeria 1804–1906, 1971.
Andrew E. Barnes, “‘The Great Prohibition’: The Expansion of Christianity in Colonial Northern Nigeria,” History Compass 8/6 (2010), 441.
For more on this argument, see Murray Last, The Sokoto Caliphate (New York: Humanities Press, Inc., 1967), 90ff;
Mohammed Ayoob and Hassan Kosebalan, Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia: Wahhabism and the State (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009);
Hiskett, Mervyn, The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usman Dan Fodio (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 62f.
See Global Security.org, “Salafi Islam” in Military. Retrieved on October 10, 2011. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/islam-salafi.htm.
Abdulai Iddrisu, Contesting Islam: “Homegrown Wahhabism,” Education and Muslim Identity in Northern Ghana, 1920–2005 (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009), 6.
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© 2013 Marinus C. Iwuchukwu
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Iwuchukwu, M.C. (2013). Precolonial Sokoto Caliphate and Kanem-Borno Empire and the Advent of Islam. In: Muslim-Christian Dialogue in Post-Colonial Northern Nigeria. Palgrave Macmillan’s Christianities of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137122575_1
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