Batı Afrikaʼda İslamʼın Tarihi

The founding phase: the Niger River as artery, the gold mines of Bambuk, Soninke governance, and the salt trade of the Amazigh. Everything that made West Africa a civilization before Islam arrived.

From the first Ibadi merchants to the Ghanaian court with Muslim ministers, from Takrur's state religion to the Almoravid movement and the decline of Sosso. A centuries-long, gradual Islamization.

From Sundiata Keita's victory at Kirina to the Hajj of Mansa Musa and the slow erosion that followed. The first great Islamic empire of West Africa, with Timbuktu as its scholarly capital.

Sonni Ali Ber, Askia Muhammad, al-Maghili as jurist-adviser, the intellectual flowering of Timbuktu and Djenné, and the Moroccan invasion that shattered everything at Tondibi (1591). The regional sultanates of Hausa, Agadez, and Bornu also flourished alongside Songhai during this period.

A parallel period: the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Muslims caught in it. Omar ibn Said ﵀, Bilali Muhammad ﵀, Ayuba Suleiman Diallo ﵀. Not a West African regional epoch but a diaspora story that runs concurrently with Mali, Songhai, and Sokoto.

Usman dan Fodio ﵀'s hijra (1804), the Fulani jihad, the building of Sokoto under Muhammad Bello ﵀ and Abdullahi dan Fodio ﵀, Nana Asma'u ﵀'s women's-ulama network, the neighboring Hamdullahi Caliphate of Seku Amadu ﵀, the Tijaniyya jihad of Umar Tall ﵀ — and the fall at Burmi in 1903 when the British arrived.