Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Only dogs and slaves are named by others. Why use Almoravids or Almoravides when the English transliteration is known? Only to get hits from beginners who only know the Spanish corruption.
I don't expect this thread to last long or go far. What follows is off the top of my head, will maybe flesh out with details if other people really contribute.
I first learned of the subject from deGraftJohnson, whom I found mostly rehashed Bovill, but soon discovered Levtzion's Ancient Ghana and Mali. A lot more's become known since then.
It was supposed that al~Murabitun took the name because of a ribat their founder built on an island in the river Senegal. Few modern sources even comment on that anymore though it has been criticised. It has been said their southern leader wanted to withdraw from Berber kaffirs and make a retreat among the blacks who were already "orthodox" Muslim (in Tekrur astride the river Senegal).
There is no criticism that confederated desert tribes under the name expanded northward conquering Morocco and founding Marakesh. They soon were invited to al~Andalus (Andalusia, Spain) which they conquered along with the west and westcentral Maghreb.
While conquering Berber, Arabo-Berber, and Arab polities they did not conquer any bilad es~Sudan states though they did do in Audaghast (a trans-Saharan trade city of Berbers).
At its height their empire stretched from the river Senegal to the Ebro river in Iberia.
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Originally posted February 17, 2010 by alTakruri:
Destruction? Region in turmoil? Only in the unread popular imagination.
Al~Murabitun never conquered Ghana nor did they disrupt trade nor cause any regional instability.
For those truly interested in learning about this episode in Africa's history I again present links. Yes, this is hours of reading, we're not talking Mother Goose, fairy tales and comic books here. We're talking about verifiable history of Africa which is important and vital to African people, well worth the time to "tell the children the truth" rather than "deceiving the people continually."
Although the Almoravids had substantial contacts with the Maghrib, influences from the black Sudanic kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai played an important role in Mauritania's history for about 700 years--from the 8th to the 15th century. Ghana, the first of the great West African Sudanic kingdoms, included in its territory all of southeastern Mauritania extending to Tagant. Ghana reached its apogee in the 9th and 10th centuries with the extension of its rule over the Sanhadja Berbers. This large and centralized kingdom controlled the southern terminus of the trans-Saharan trade in gold, ivory, and salt.
[u]The capture of Koumbi Saleh in 1076 by the Almoravids marked the end of Ghana's hegemony[/u], although the kingdom continued to exist for another 125 years. The Mandé, under the leadership of the legendary Sundiata, founded the second great Sudanic kingdom, Mali. By the end of the 13th century, [u]the Mali Empire extended over that part of Mauritania previously controlled by Ghana, as well as over the remaining Sahelian regions and the Senegal River Valley[/u]. Sundiata and his successors took over Ghana's role in the Saharan trade and in the administration and collection of tribute from vast stretches of the Sudan and the Sahel.
One of the Berber groups arriving in Mauritania in the 8th century was the Lemtuna. By the 9th century, the Lemtuna had attained political dominance in the Adrar and Hodh regions. Together with two other important Berber groups, the Messufa and the Djodala, they set up the Sanhadja Confederation. From their capital, Aoudaghast, the Lemtuna controlled this loose confederation and the western routes of the Saharan caravan trade that had begun to flourish after the introduction of the camel. At its height, from the 8th to the end of the 10th century, the Sanhadja Confederation was a decentralized polity based on two distinct groups: the nomadic and very independent Berber groups, who maintained their traditional religions, and the Muslim, urban Berber merchants, who conducted the caravan trade.
Although dominated by the Sanhadja merchants, the caravan trade had its northern terminus in the Maghribi commercial city of Sijilmasa and its southern terminus in Koumbi Saleh, capital of the Ghana Empire. Later, the southern trade route ended in Timbuktu, capital of the Mali Empire. Gold, ivory, and slaves were carried north in return for salt (ancient salt mines near Kediet Ijill in northern Mauritania are still being worked), copper, cloth, and other luxury goods.
Important towns developed along the trade routes. The easiest, though not the shortest, routes between Ghana and Sijilmasa were from Koumbi Saleh through Aoudaghast, Oualâta, Tîchît, and Ouadane. These towns along the route grew to be important commercial as well as political centers. The 11th century Arab chronicler, Al Bakri, describes Aoudaghast, with its population of 5,000 to 6,000, as a big town with a large mosque and several smaller ones, surrounded by large cultivated areas under irrigation. Oualâta was [u]a major relay point[/u] on the gold and salt trade route, as well as a chief assembly point for pilgrims traveling to Mecca. Koumbi Saleh was a large cosmopolitan city comprising two distinct sections: the Muslim quarter, with its Arab-influenced architecture, and the Black quarter of traditional thatch and mud architecture, where the non-Muslim king of Ghana resided. Another important Mauritanian trade city of the Sanhadja Confederation was Chinguetti, later an important religious center. Although Koumbi Saleh did not outlive the fall of the Ghana Empire, Aoudaghast and particularly Oualâta maintained their importance well into the 16th century, when trade began shifting to the European-controlled coasts.
By the 11th century, Islam had spread throughout the west Sahara under the influence of Berber and Arab traders and occasional Arab migrants. Nevertheless, traditional religious practices thrived. The conquest of the entire west Saharan region by the Almoravids in the 11th century made possible a more orthodox Islamization of all the peoples of Mauritania.
The breakup of the Sanhadja Confederation in the early 11th century led to a period of unrest and warfare among the Sanhadja Berber groups of Mauritania. In about 1039, a chief of the Djodala, Yahya ibn Ibrahim, returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca bringing with him a Sanhadja theologian, Abdallah ibn Yassin, to teach a more orthodox Islam. Rejected by the Djodala two years later, after the death of Ibn Ibrahim, Ibn Yassin and some of his Sanhadja followers retired to a secluded place where they built a fortified religious center, a ribat, which attracted many Sanhadja. In 1042 the al murabitun (men of the ribat), as Ibn Yassin's followers came to be called, launched a jihad, or holy war, against the nonbelievers and the heretics among the Sanhadja, beginning what later become known as the Almoravid movement. The initial aim of the Almoravids was to establish a political community in which the ethical and juridical principles of Islam would be strictly applied.
First, the Almoravids attacked and subdued the Djodala, forcing them to acknowledge Islam. Then, rallying the other Berber groups of the west Sahara, the Almoravids succeeded in recreating the political unity of the Sanhadja Confederation and adding to it a religious unity and purpose. By 1054 the Almoravids had captured Sijilmasa in the Maghrib and had retaken [u]Aoudaghast from Ghana[/u].
With the death of Ibn Yassin in 1059, leadership of the movement in the south passed to Abu Bakr ibn Unas, amir of Adrar, and to Yusuf ibn Tashfin in the north. Under Ibn Tashfin, the Berbers captured Morocco and founded Marrakech as their capital in 1062. By 1082 all of the western Maghrib (to at least present-day Algiers) was under Almoravid domination. In 1086 the Andalusian amirates, under attack from the Spanish Christian king Alfonso and the Christian reconquest of Spain, called on Ibn Tashfin and his Berber warriors to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and come to their rescue. The Almoravids defeated the Spanish Christians and, by 1090, imposed Almoravid rule and the Maliki school of Islamic law in Muslim Spain.
In Mauritania, Abu Bakr led the Almoravids in a war against Ghana (1062- 76), culminating in the capture in 1076 of Koumbi Saleh. This event marked the end of the dominance of the Ghana Empire. But after the death of Abu Bakr in 1087 and Ibn Tashfin in 1106, traditional rivalries among the Sanhadja and a new Muslim reformist conquest led by the [u]ZenataAlmohads (1133-63) destroyed the Almoravid Empire[/u].
For a short time, [u]the Mauritanian Sanhadja dynasty of the Almoravid Empire controlled a vast territory stretching from Spain to Senegal[/u]. The unity established between Morocco and Mauritania during the Almoravid period continued to have some political importance in the 1980s, as it formed part of the basis for Morocco's claims to Mauritania. But the greatest contribution of the Sanhadja and the Almoravids was the Islamization of the western Maghrib. This process would remain a dominant factor in the history of the area for the next several centuries.
alTakruri notes: War Ndiyay and the Tekrur were excluded from this essay, why?
Beginning with the Arab conquest of the western Maghrib in the 8th century, [u]Mauritania experienced a slow but constant infiltration of Arabs and Arab influence from the north[/u]. The growing Arab presence pressed the Berbers, who chose not to mix with other groups, to move farther south into Mauritania, forcing out the Black inhabitants. By the 16th century, most Blacks had been pushed to the Senegal River. Those remaining in the north became slaves cultivating the oases.
After the decline of the Almoravid Empire, a long process of arabization began in Mauritania, one that until then had been resisted successfully by the Berbers. [u]Several groups of Yemeni Arabs who had been devastating the north of Africa turned south to Mauritania[/u]. Settling in northern Mauritania, they disrupted the caravan trade, causing routes to shift east, which in turn led to the gradual decline of Mauritania's trading towns. One particular Yemeni group, the Bani Hassan, continued to migrate southward until, by the end of the 17th century, they dominated the entire country. The last effort of the Berbers to shake off the Arab yoke was the Mauritanian Thirty Years' War (1644-74), or Sharr Bubba, led by Nasir ad Din, a Lemtuna imam (see Glossary). This Sanhadja war of liberation was, however, unsuccessful; the [u]Berbers were forced to abandon the sword and became vassals to the warrior Arab groups[/u].
Thus, the contemporary social structure of Mauritania can be dated from 1674. The warrior groups or Arabs dominated the Berber groups, who turned to clericalism to regain a degree of ascendancy. At the bottom of the social structure were the slaves, subservient to both warriors and Islamic holy men. [u]All of these groups, whose language was Hassaniya Arabic, became known as Maures[/u]. The bitter rivalries and resentments characteristic of their social structure were later fully exploited by the French.
alTakruri notes: Missing from the essay is the first Arab attack against Ghana which was utterly smashed. A few Arabs fled back north across the Sahara but the majority of the invading forces settled down in the Tagant and the Hodh under suzeriegnty of Ghana where they became the Honethin (sp?)
posted
I also read somewhere that the Almoravids or Al-mauribtun were called "Those who wear the (Face)veil" as it was uncommon for men to wear a face veil in Andalucia.
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I find this part particularly interesting, so now they are admitting that Mauritania as a whole was orginally populated by blacks(Maur=Black in Greek) but the question is were the Moors/Mauritanians not Berbers? What Language Group did they belong to?
Beginning with the Arab conquest of the western Maghrib in the 8th century, [u]Mauritania experienced a slow but constant infiltration of Arabs and Arab influence from the north[/u]. The growing Arab presence pressed the Berbers, who chose not to mix with other groups, to move farther south into Mauritania, forcing out the Black inhabitants. By the 16th century, most Blacks had been pushed to the Senegal River. Those remaining in the north became slaves cultivating the oases.
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Its hard to say what al-Murabit even means. Is it simply 'one who is garrisoned'? Or does it refer specifically to cavalry? The New Encyclopedia of Islam associates "ribat" with "tethering a horse in enemy territory."
Supposedly the al-Murabit's original fort was called Ribat al-Fath or "The Camp of Victory."
While I can't remember where I read it, I know there is some dispute as to the function of these forts (like did they house chevaliers and religious clergy; did the serve as bases for foreign attacks, were they originally open to townspeople, etc). More importantly, did the ribat and zawiyya spring about simultaneously under the al-Murabitun? Did they function essentially like the monasteries in Europe?
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^ I have often heard the horse argument as supported by legends all over the Sahel of an Islamic ancestor who arrived from the north mounted on a horse as well as Saharan depictions from Roman times of horses. Remember, well before the Islamic conquest Berber groups during Roman times like the Numidians were already famed as horsemen.
quote:Originally posted by -Just Call Me Jari-: I find this part particularly interesting, so now they are admitting that Mauritania as a whole was orginally populated by blacks(Maur=Black in Greek) but the question is were the Moors/Mauritanians not Berbers? What Language Group did they belong to?
Beginning with the Arab conquest of the western Maghrib in the 8th century, [u]Mauritania experienced a slow but constant infiltration of Arabs and Arab influence from the north[/u]. The growing Arab presence pressed the Berbers, who chose not to mix with other groups, to move farther south into Mauritania, forcing out the Black inhabitants. By the 16th century, most Blacks had been pushed to the Senegal River. Those remaining in the north became slaves cultivating the oases.
LOL It seems the author fell into the [bad] habit of making 'Berbers' and 'blacks' exclusive groups. Of course Berbers were originally all black, but whether Berber was the only language group in Mauritania is another issue. Especially when the Sahara was green there could have been a number of language phyla spoken in the region.
quote: I also read somewhere that the Almoravids or Al-mauribtun were called "Those who wear the (Face)veil" as it was uncommon for men to wear a face veil in Andalucia.
Indeed not just in Andalucia but all over the Islamic world, veiling was usually a female habit yet even today in Africa the Tuareg are known as the 'Men of the Veil'.
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Big ups to Tukuler for this excellent thread and all the good links to past threads of this issue. I'll have to devout some time in reading all of them but they do confirm my suspicions about the touted claims of Al Murabitun/Moorish/Berber conquest of Ghana. Even authors on Saharan history like Marq de Villiers question such claims based on the shaky evidence. The Ghana Empire was too powerfully established as to be easily conquered by desert nomads. Often slave trade from Ghana is used as evidence though an African empire selling slaves from enemy states to another state is nothing new.
I wonder what info Dana has on this issue.
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The veil only caught on among the women of al-Andalus because they looked to the Mashriq for fashion cues. Once the Berbers took over they quickly discarded them.
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Yeah the original Saharan Berber al~muRabitun were al~muLithamun (Ar., litham weareres) of Saharan Kel taGelmust jealous of their muffler veil (Br.,gelmus) and forbade it to all non-Sanhadja on pain of punishment so as to mark only the desert bred foreign ruler class from "native" subjects in al~Andalus (Andalusia).
posted
Tukuler is probably right the Al murabitun aka Almoravid probably didnt conquer the Empire of Ghana of the Soninke and Akan people.I have a suspicion that In history book the conquest of a kingdom by another kingdom, the destruction of a kingdom by an invading power or the fall of a kingdom/Empire or a dynasty are sometime the arrange passassion of power from a Kingdom/Empire to another Kingdom/Empire or from a ruling dynasty to another ruling dynasty.Sometime it is a change of style of ruling from overt rule by a monarch to a covert rule by monarch.
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: ^^^ The idea (now in a new thread of AlTakruri's) is that the Almoravid aka Al Murabitin did not invade Ghana > is an alternative theory. Most scholars do not believe that The above article I posted if form Molefi Asante's History of Africa.
Your link, like your other link is to only page 1 intoduction of an article on JUSTOR
Asante is not "most scholars." His bibliography pertaining to Wagadu and al~Murabitun is sparse and outdated.
Invasion is not conquest. There was no al~Murabitun conquest of Wagadu and no such thing is written in any contemporaneous Arabic documents. It's as late as 300 - 400 years after al~Murabitun before such an idea appears anywhere in the literature.
Whether there was an invasion is even questionable.
In fact Wagadu invited help from al~Murabitun to quash insubordinate kingdoms seeking autonomy from Wagadu's empire.
The respect I recently accorded you is turning out to be unwarranted and about to be retracted as you prove yourself a liar by your statement "the Almoravid aka Al Murabitin did not invade Ghana > is an alternative theory. Most scholars do not believe that"
I contend most recent books on Africa or North Africa say that the Almoravids invaded Ghana. If you think otherwise please list some books or articles of the past 10 years which suggest it was unlikely
I am not sure if they did invade or not.
If Islamic scholars fabricated the invasion what was the motive? Isn't it better for the repuatation of Islam to have conversion be voluntarily?
I have given a respectful reply to your comment so please reply directly to the following questions:
Do you believe if the Al Murabitin did not invade Ghana that that means people who some people call Gnawa iof Morocco are not of Wagadu or Sahelian ancestry in the period directly prior and before to the spread of Islam in North Africa. Do you believe instaed that this means the people who some people call Gnawa of Morocco have deep prehistoric roots in the Morroco region?
If the Almoravids did not invade Ghana does it have any particular relevance to as African history beyond that they didn't Ghana. Does this mean they were nicer than thought to be?
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Sourcs? What are you stupid? Check post #2. Notice they're all specialist journals. Try supporting your view w/t same quality.
No doubt who the Gnawa are. One above source even has the earliest reference to the term.
I keep what I believe in an envelope separate from facts. Belief is about faith. I don't use faith to inform me on history.
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quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Sourcs? What are you stupid? Check post #2.
No doubt who the Gnawa are. One above source even has the earliest reference to the term.
I keep what I believe in an envelope separate from facts. Belief is about faith. I don't use faith to inform me on history.
asshole, I said books published past ten years
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Really, you must inspect a book's bibliography.
What difference does a book make if it came out today if its bibliography is a bunch of old inaccurate references not drawn from advances published in specialist African history journals?
posted
Im interested in Ancient Ghana, this culture interests me, on par with Axum, Kemet and Kush I think Old Ghana should be on par as the top 4 Empires to exist in Africa. Al-Marubitun and the Berbers were subject to this Sudani entity and not the other way around. Why would they bite the hand that fed them??
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Beginning with the Arab conquest of the western Maghrib in the 8th century, Mauritania experienced a slow but constant infiltration of Arabs and Arab influence from the north[ The growing Arab presence pressed the Berbers, who chose not to mix with other groups, to move farther south into Mauritania, forcing out the Black inhabitants. By the 16th century, most Blacks had been pushed to the Senegal River. Those remaining in the north became slaves cultivating the oases.
quote:Originally posted by -Just Call Me Jari-: I find this part particularly interesting, so now they are admitting that Mauritania as a whole was orginally populated by blacks(Maur=Black in Greek) but the question is were the Moors/Mauritanians not Berbers? What Language Group did they belong to?
I got critictized for quoting Molife Asante on Almoravids in Ghana, that his sources were outdated But more remarkable is this item above quoted by Tukuler as noted by Jari:
"the Berbers, who chose not to mix with other groups, to move farther south into Mauritania, forcing out the Black inhabitants. By the 16th century, most Blacks had been pushed to the Senegal River"
People have been arguing the berbers are black for quite a while in this forum, this quote does not support that view. My personal opinion? The berbers today are a mixture of various ethnicities including "black Africans" .
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^^^Not exactly, the Source like many Sources on this topic, that is the Ancient Mehgreb, rely heavily if not sole on Arabic Manuscripts and Geological terms, where Modern Europeans translate Bilad es-Sudan was applied to people who lived below the Desert or equate it with SSA. this seems to be a European mistranslation and misunderstanding, for example Many people have pointed out that Dark Brown Saharan and North Africans who can be called black by todays standard are left out, for example the Upper Egyptians, the Siwa, Tibou, Taureg etc. All these people are not included or do not inhabit the area of Sudan but are black none the less.
Again these Sources are relying on many vague and ambigious translations of what "Bilad Es Sudan" contained.
Also Dana has provided many authentic accounts of Berbers being described as black, the description of Ibn Tashfin's decribption fits well with many Saharan Berbers seen in Mauritania and Southern Morocco.
You have to take all these into account.
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Beginning with the Arab conquest of the western Maghrib in the 8th century, Mauritania experienced a slow but constant infiltration of Arabs and Arab influence from the north[ The growing Arab presence pressed the Berbers, who chose not to mix with other groups, to move farther south into Mauritania, forcing out the Black inhabitants. By the 16th century, most Blacks had been pushed to the Senegal River. Those remaining in the north became slaves cultivating the oases.
now let's look at Mr. Tukuler's 26 year old and older sources:
country-data.com
the complete source of that country-data.com entry is this:
posted
Uqba ibn Nafi (622–683) was an Arab general who was serving the Umayyad dynasty, in Muawiyah and Yazid periods and began the Islamic conquest of the Maghreb, By 698, the Arabs had conquered most of North Africa from the Byzantines. The area was divided into three provinces: Egypt with its governor at al-Fustat, Ifriqiya with its governor at Kairouan, and the Maghreb (modern Morocco) with its governor at Tangiers.
Most of the accounts which describe Arab conquests of North Africa in general and Uqba's conquests in particular date back to at least two centuries after the conquests have happened.
It should be pointed out that although much scholarship on the life and conquests of ibn Nafi are available, most have not been translated from their original Arabic into English or French
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
My bad
I was looking at Asante's Classical Africa not History of Africa which bibliography is more extensive though still out of date for Wagadu and the Murabitun.
Unlike in Asante's earlier work, this book goes missing from the later book's bibliography.
Yet had Asante consulted UNESCO's History of Africa, the 2nd book of his own bibliography, he'd have found
Note paragraph c has the excellent source (as yet unread by the wilfully ignorant and dissembling) given two weeks ago in this thread's second post
David Conrad and Humphrey Fisher The Conquest That Never Was: Ghana and the Almoravids, 1076. I. The External Arabic Sources History in Africa, Vol. 9 (1982), pp. 21-59
which examines all the known Arabic sources from the contemporaneous al~Bakri to the 400 year later al~Maqrizi who's the first to mention a conquest a full four centuries after the supposed event.
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Uqba ibn Nafi (622–683) was an Arab general who was serving the Umayyad dynasty, in Muawiyah and Yazid periods and began the Islamic conquest of the Maghreb, By 698, the Arabs had conquered most of North Africa from the Byzantines. The area was divided into three provinces: Egypt with its governor at al-Fustat, Ifriqiya with its governor at Kairouan, and the Maghreb (modern Morocco) with its governor at Tangiers.
Most of the accounts which describe Arab conquests of North Africa in general and Uqba's conquests in particular date back to at least two centuries after the conquests have happened.
It should be pointed out that although much scholarship on the life and conquests of ibn Nafi are available, most have not been translated from their original Arabic into English or French
ibn Nafi precedes the Murabitun by nearly four centuries nor has anything to do with Sahel and Savanna polities.
What's known about the Arab first incursion there is
Ubayda's c.754 Arab expeditionary force suffered leaving survivors known as Honeihin (Hunayhin) in the Tagant under the Kaya Magha converting from Islam to the Wagadu-Bida spirituality.
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Yet had Asante consulted UNESCO's History of Africa, the 2nd book of his own bibliography, he'd have found
Note paragraph c has the excellent source (as yet unread by the wilfully ignorant and dissembling) given two weeks ago in this thread's second post
David Conrad and Humphrey Fisher The Conquest That Never Was: Ghana and the Almoravids, 1076. I. The External Arabic Sources History in Africa, Vol. 9 (1982), pp. 21-59
which examines all the known Arabic sources from the contemporaneous al~Bakri to the 400 year later al~Maqrizi who's the first to mention a conquest a full four centuries after the supposed event. [/QB]
the above continues:
The conversion mentioned by al-Zuhrī — that the people of Ghana were converted by the Lamtūna in 469/1076 51 — could therefore mean merely an imposition of the orthodox Mālikite Islam on a previously Ibādite community as was earlier done in Awdāghust. The most important achievement of the Almoravid intervention was doubtless the conversion of the king and his court 52. Also rejected by revisionist scholars is the view that the conquest and enforced Islamization of Ghana led to a massive population movement of the Soninke who opposed Islam and preferred to leave their ancestral homes rather than abandon their traditional religious beliefs 53. Since no such conquest or enforced Islamization took place the migration which did occur could not be attributed to these factors. It would be, of course, mistaken not to acknowledge the profound impact of the Almoravids and the changes that their intervention brought to the Sudan. But these changes were of a quite different order to those supposed by the adherents of the migration theory.
UNESCO — General History of Africa Volume I. Methodology and African Prehistory M. El Fasi and I. Hrbek
same source, on ibn Nafi:
The oldest information about the contacts between the Arabs and the Saharan Berbers is an account of the expedition of 'Ukba ibn Nāfi' to southern Morocco. In 63/682 he attacked the Massūfa Berbers to the south of al-Sūs al-Aksā and after making some of them prisoners, he retired 24. It seems that that expedition had reached as far as Wādī Dar'a (Oued Dra). Although much embellished by the later 'Ukba legend, this expedition seems to have been only a kind of reconnaissance similar to that undertaken by the same Arab general in 47/666-7 to the south of Tripoli towards Fezzan and Kawar 25; it is highly improbable that such short forays would have led to the Islamization of the local people.
The basic gist of author M. El Fasi is that the spread of Islam in North Africa was often not by force( although record is thin)
Although generations of scholars have already clearly demonstrated that the image of the Muslim Arab warrior with sword in one hand and the Quran in the other belongs to the realm of mythology, this image still persists in popular writings on Islam and is generally believed in non-Muslim countries. This misinterpretation has arisen from the assumption that wars waged for the extension of Muslim domination over lands of non-Muslims were aimed also at their conversion 1. Islamic political theory, in fact, requires control of the body politic for the Muslims, but it does not require bringing every subject of the Muslim state into the fold. The conquests during the first century of the hidjra were made not for conversion's sake but actually for the extension of the Islamic sphere of domination (Dār al-Islam). The Muslims were more interested in the incorporation of non-Muslims into the Islamic state, which in their eyes represented the ultimate realization of a divinely ordained plan for mankind, than in their immediate conversion 2. Conversion was desirable from the religious point of view, but not necessarily from a governmental point of view. The ahl al-Kitāb were given substantial autonomy in all ecclesiastical matters on the condition that they paid djizya, the poll tax. The Muslims were exempted from this tax and Muslim Arab warriors and their families were paid pensions from the central state treasury (dīwān) and also enjoyed a privileged social position. The obvious advantages of belonging to the faith of the victors were not lost on conquered peoples and many of them went over to Islam. Under the Umayyads conversions became so numerous that the tax revenue in many provinces had fallen alarmingly low; the answer was an official policy which discouraged further conversions by ordering that the new converts should continue to pay land tax and poll tax as before. Only during the reign of the pious Caliph 'Umar II (99/717-101/720) who is said to have pronounced the famous sentence “God had sent Muhammad to call men to a knowledge of the truth and not to be a collector of taxes” 3, was this policy stopped for a short time, but later the general practice reverted to one of discrimination against newly converted Muslims. It was not until Abbasid times that the neophytes were integrated as full members into the Islamic community and that the Arabs lost their privileged position as the ruling class. Not until the second and third centuries after the hidjra did the bulk of the Near Eastern people profess Islam; between the military conquest of the region and the conversion of its people a long period intervened. The motives which led to conversion were manifold — some were attracted by the simple and straightforward teachings of Islam, others wanted to escape tribute and taxes, and still others sought to identify themselves with the ruling class and participate fully in the emerging Islamic culture......
The Islamization and Arabization of Egypt was also furthered by the steady influx of Arab Beduins from the Arabian peninsula and the Fertile Crescent who settled down as peasants, mixed with the native Copts and thus increased the number of Arab-speakers and Muslims. Another factor leading to conversions was the increasing corruption and degeneracy of the Coptic clergy from the fifth/eleventh century onwards which resulted in the neglect of the spiritual and moral needs of the people.
The religious situation in North Africa to the west of Egypt was at the time of Muslim advance more complex than the one found in Egypt. The Romanized population in the towns and on the coastal plains had for a long time adhered to Christianity, whereas the Berbers in the interior remained largely adherents of traditional religion although some of the mountain inhabitants had adopted Judaism. The dramatic story of the Arab conquest and of the fierce Berber resistance is fully discussed elsewhere in this Volume and does not need to be repeated here 9; our task in this chapter is to describe the Islamization of the Maghrib.
The information we possess about the spread of Islam in this region is rather meagre; moreover the beginnings of Islamization are coloured in later Arabic sources by the 'Ukba legend that transformed this gallant warrior into a peaceful missionary. It nevertheless remains true that through the foundation of Kayrawan in the year 5o/670 'Ukba ibn Nāfi' created not only a military base but also an important centre for the radiation and propagation of Islam.
UNESCO — General History of Africa Volume I. Methodology and African Prehistory M. El Fasi and I. Hrbek
Although we are not able — for lack of sufficient evidence — to answer precisely why and how various Berber groups (and there were many dozens of them) adopted the religion of Islam, we can at least discern some general trends characterizing this process in its successive stages. In the first stage many Berber groups, after offering a fierce resistance to the Arab armies, were subdued and converted. Conversions under these circumstances were largely formal and were probably restricted to chiefs and clan elders, who by this act recognized the sovereignty of their new masters. As soon as the Arab armies withdrew or were expelled — and this happened many times during the first/seventh century — the Berbers revertcd to their traditional beliefs, considering themselves to be free of any political or religious allegiance.
When the Arabs finally learned that it was beyond their capabilities to subjugate the Berbers by force 15, they changed their policies: the famous governor Musa ibn Nusayr started to select young men of noble origin from among the prisoners, liberate them on the condition that they embraced Islam and then appoint them to high commands in the army 16. This policy soon bore fruit as many Berber warriors encouraged by the example of their chiefs joined the Arab armies. The Arabs were aided in their effort to convert the Berbers by the successful invasion of Spain which almost immediately brought to their side large numbers of Berbers eager to participate in conquest and receive their share of booty. The Muslim army in Spain was composed mostly of recently converted Berbers and its first commander, Tdrik, was also a Berber. Thus shortly after the crushing of the last great resistance against the Arabs and Islam, thousands of Berbers joined both the armies and the faith of their enemy of yesterday. These conversions, however, only touched a minority of the population since large parts of present-day Algeria and Morocco remained beyond any effective Arab control and it took a long time before Islam penetrated into mountain areas. Nevertheless, it can be said that during the first three or four decades of the eighth century Islam made considerable progress among the urban, rural and partly even the nomadic population in the plains and coastal strips. And it was precisely at this time that the characteristic Berber attitude towards the Arabs and Islam began to manifest itself: the Berbers were ready to accept Islam as a religion, or even the Arabic culture, and did so massively, but at the same time they resented being politically dominated by a foreign bureaucracy, representing a faraway sovereign, which discriminated against new converts, exacting from them heavy taxes as if they were unbelievers. To this was added the injustice suffered by Berber warriors in Spain where they were allocated less-fertile lands, although they had played at least as much part in the conquest as the Arabs.
There was no foreign domination in the Maghrib after the Fātimids transferred the centre of their empire to Egypt and left the Maghrib under the governorship of the Berber Zīrīds who in due time proclaimed their independence and swore allegiance to the Sunnite Caliph in Baghdad. Shortly afterwards the western part of the Maghrib came under the domination of the Berber Almoravids who exterminated the last vestiges of Khāridjism, Shī'ism and the Barghawāta heresy in this area, and established definitively the domination of the Mālikite school of Sunnite Islam.
The oldest information about the contacts between the Arabs and the Saharan Berbers is an account of the expedition of 'Ukba ibn Nāfi' to southern Morocco. In 63/682 he attacked the Massūfa Berbers to the south of al-Sūs al-Aksā and after making some of them prisoners, he retired 24. It seems that that expedition had reached as far as Wādī Dar'a (Oued Dra). Although much embellished by the later 'Ukba legend, this expedition seems to have been only a kind of reconnaissance similar to that undertaken by the same Arab general in 47/666-7 to the south of Tripoli towards Fezzan and Kawar 25; it is highly improbable that such short forays would have led to the Islamization of the local people. Not much different were the campaigns of Mūsā ibn Nusayr, the Umayyad governor of Ifrīkiya who between 87/705-6 and 90/7o8-9 had conquered, pacified and allegedly converted most of the Moroccan Berbers. He, too, entered al-Sūs al-Aksā and even arrived at Sidjilmāsa and as far as to the town of Dar'a on the frontiers of the Massūfa territory 26. But the same sources maintain that the definitive conquest of al-Sūs al-Aksā and the conversion of its inhabitants occurred only as late as the 730s as a consequence of the expedition of Habīb ibn Abī 'Ubayda 27. The Arab army came back with many prisoners and a quantity of gold. Amongst the prisoners was a considerable number of the Massūfa; this indicates that these Berbers refused to accept Islam. Further Arab military expeditions to the western Sahara stopped after the great Berber revolts in the 740s which had led to the decadence of Arab domination and a general anarchy in the Maghrib. The first of the Saharan Berbers whose conversion is attested seem to have been the Lamtūna since Ibn Khaldūn wrote that they had accepted Islam shortly after the Arab conquest of Spain, in the second decade of the second/eighth century. On the other hand, al-Zuhrī (sixth/twelfth century) speaks of the conversion of the Lamtūna, Massūfa and Djuddāla during the reign of the Umayyad Caliph Hishām ibn 'Abd al-Malik (106/724-125/743 ) 28. Their Islam, however, must have been only a thin veneer for many centuries to come; the whole history of the beginning of the Almoravid movement offers eloquent evidence about the superficial Islamization among these three Berber peoples.
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Is the idea that Islam was peacefully spread true or somewhat Muslim propaganda? At this point it seems somewhat truthful. However looking at the religious aspect is one thing. The other things is Arabs coming into North Africa and taking over territory by force with fierce resistance from the berbers. The religious element, Islam can be seen as something that occurs after territorial exapnsion os the Islamic empire, the material aims of an empire that also happened to be Muslim. After they conquered the territory then people decided for various reasons to convert including such things as avoiding taxes which in a certain period you could be exempted from by becoming Muslim. And some of these North African people had already converted to Christanity and Judaism, prior
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Tukuler
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Ok so we see you have nothing on the Murabitun and refuse to retract your erroneous position.
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^ What's new from lyinass productions. Its only worth is to flush down the toilet.
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quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Ok so we see you have nothing on the Murabitun and refuse to retract your erroneous position.
My position is I'm not sure about an Almoravid conquest of Ghana because in the book The Almoravids and the Meanings of Jihad 2010 By Ronald A. Messier p 205 he mentions both Conrad and Fischer's articles in the bibliography
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Almoravids_and_the_Meanings_of_Jihad.html?id=Rfxoq5MzHa4C Archaeological Institute of America lecturer and host Ronald A. Messier’s teaching and research focus on Islam and the history and archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa. He is Professor Emeritus of History at Middle East Tennessee State University (MTSU), where he taught from 1972 to 2004. From 1992 to 2004, he was adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University, and full time Senior Lecturer from 2004 to 2008. Professor Messier received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan, and is the current president of the Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Seminar (SERMEISS). He has published over two dozen articles, and co-edited a book entitled Jihad and its Times. In 2010, he published two books: The Almoravids and the Meanings of Jihad and Jesus: One Man, Two Faiths: A dialogue between Christians and Muslims. Professor Messier has won several teaching awards, including the CASE Tennessee Professor of the Year Award for 1993. Flushing Djehutie down the toilet Award 2003
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Yet had Asante consulted UNESCO's History of Africa, the 2nd book of his own bibliography, he'd have found
Note paragraph c has the excellent source (as yet unread by the wilfully ignorant and dissembling) given two weeks ago in this thread's second post
David Conrad and Humphrey Fisher The Conquest That Never Was: Ghana and the Almoravids, 1076. I. The External Arabic Sources History in Africa, Vol. 9 (1982), pp. 21-59
which examines all the known Arabic sources from the contemporaneous al~Bakri to the 400 year later al~Maqrizi who's the first to mention a conquest a full four centuries after the supposed event.
This makes sense. I have my suspicions Yusuf ibn Tashfin was at least partly Soninke himself. He supposedly had a daughter named Ghaniya. The al-Murabit maritime cohort, the Banu Ghaniya, were said to be named after her. Yes, its thin. But I'd be surprised if the name had nothing to do with Wagadu. I'm also encouraged by Yaqut's reference to the king of Zafun, who met with Ali Ibn Yusuf when the al-Murabitun were in decline. Chances are he was Soninke. The passage made it seem as though they and the al-Murabitun were related.
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Tukuler
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