Africa’s triple heritage

Roland Ngam

Ibrahima Thiam

May 6, 2024

Introduction

Modern Africa is the product of what the Kenyan Historian Ali Mazrui famously described as a triple heritage. Consequential upheavals and encounters have shaped the continent’s cultures and reality in ways that other parts of the world have not experienced. Although the continent’s entanglements with other empires were often violent, these different experiences have been incorporated into a new, uniquely African identity. Like Amilcar Cabral said in his seminal essay National Liberation and Culture:

Culture plunges its roots into the physical reality of the environmental humus in which it develops, and it reflects the organic nature of the society, which may be more or less influenced by external factors. History allows us to know the nature and extent of the imbalances and conflicts (economic, political and social) which characterize the evolution of a society; culture allows us to know the dynamic synthesis which have been developed and established by social conscience to resolve these conflicts at each stage of its evolution, in the search for survival and progress.

A unique example of this synthesis of cultures is the Mourid movement in Senegal, which we shall revisit later. First, a brief look at the continent’s triple heritage.

‍

Jan Mostaert’s Portret van een Moor. Wikimedia Commons

‍

Home-grown civilisations

There is, firstly, Africa’s homegrown ways of being, living and worshipping developed by the first human beings who emerged from the Rift Valley and elsewhere and created significant civilisations whose influence spanned the entire globe. Kemet, Zimbabwe, Mali, Kush and others exported education, religion, innovations and many commodities around the world and finds in faraway places like Australia attest to this. Our chapter on origins covers this at length. Not only did Africans trade and exchange goods and services with the rest of the world, they also went and settled in faraway places, putting a forever stamp on how those people lived. Here, we can talk about the long period when Moors occupied the Iberian Peninsula from 711 until when they were forced out by the Portuguese king Alfonso III. The Moors introduced many innovations to the Iberian peninsula: chemistry, physics, mathematics, geography, architecture, etc. They opened seventeen universities, and during and long after their occupation, that was the highest concentration of learning centres in the world. They brought new foods that are still a mainstay of Spanish and Portuguese cuisine: orange, lemon, dates, ginger, saffron, sugar cane and rice. Civilisations are not static, doomed to inertia or stagnation.

After the Reconquista, Portugal and Spain rebuilt their forces and then used some of the innovations that they had learned from the Africans (geography and the Catalan Atlas for example) to discover the source of Africa’s gold mines. Many trips to the Guinea coast later, the Europeans of course jumped from the gold trade to selling Africans. Much effort was made to whitewash any contribution that Africans had made to global development. Painting Africa as the dark hole or slow child in the planet’s forward march to enlightenment, a place filled with unregenerate heathens and Kaffirs, as typified by the Dum Diversas and the Arab world, was the convenient excuse to enslave the continent’s people on the scale never seen before or since in human history. This whitewashing of history is mocked in a number of books, notably Aime Césaire’s Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal or Notes on a Return to the Native Land.

‍

A second heritage: the spread of Islam by both jihad and evangelism

The second influence was Islam (which appears in pre-20^th century Anglophone writing as Mohamedanism). The entire East African coast (Kilwa, Sofala, Malindi, etc.), the Sahel Kingdoms (Ghana, Mali, Songha), the Hausa States and many other African civilisations had numerous trade routes connecting the continent to the Middle East. Trans-Saharan trade routes were key to the growth of Sahel states and so leaders were understandably keen to maintain them. One way of showing loyalty to trade partners in order to be a part of this monopoly was by converting to Islam. Arab discourse, just like Christianity, preached that those who did not practice Islam were heathens…Kaffirs.

Islam came to the Sahel largely as a consequence of monarchs showing their trade partners that they were keen to adopt their religion and culture. As first limited to the nobility and ruling elite, it soon spread to the rest of society. However, as it spread, it found root in the African word, language and worldview. The Malian writer and historian Amadou Hampâté Bâ explains in In the Living Tradition how African languages and memory helped Islam take root on the continent. As Islam spread across West Africa, he notes, it was embraced because it taught a similar belief in a supreme being. At the same time, it its growth and development was anchored on African beliefs and rote learning based on skills that griots and community historians had cultivated for centuries:

The great Arab-Berber family of the Kunta islamised the region well before the eleventh century. As soon as they learned Arabic, the autochthonesbegan to use their ancestral traditions for transmitting and explaining Islam.

Great Islamic schools that were purely oral taught the religion in the vernacular tongues (except for the Koran and the texts that form part of canonical prayer). I might mention, among many others, the oral school of Djelgodji (called Kabe), the school of Barani, Amadou Fodia's school in Farimake (Niafounke district, in Mali), Mohamed Abdoulaye Souadou's school at Dilli (Nara district, Mali), and Shaykh Usman dan Fodio's school in Nigeria and Niger, where all teaching was in Fulfulde. Closer to us there was Tierno Bokar Salif's Zawiya in Bandiagara and the school of Shaykh Salah, the great Dogon marabout, who is still alive.

To give an idea of what the African memory is capable of: most children leaving the Koranic schools knew the entire Koran by heart and could recite it all, in Arabic and in the desired psalmody, without understanding what it meant!

In all these schools, the basic principles of African tradition were not repudiated but on the contrary used and explained in the light of Koranic revelation. Tierno Bolear, who was a traditionalist both in African matters and in Islam, became famous for his intensive application of this educational method.

Quite apart from their having a common vision of the universe as sacred, and the same conception of man and the family, we find in both traditions the same concern for always citing one's sources (isnad, in Arabic) and never changing anything in the master's words, the same respect for the chain of initiatory transmission (sibila or chain, in Arabic), and the same system of initiatory ways of life that make it possible to deepen through experience what is known through faith (in Islam, the great Sufi congregation or tariqa, plural turuq, the 'chain' of which goes back to the Prophet himself).

To the existing categories of traditional masters of knowledge were now added those of the marabouts (widely read in Arabic or in Islamic jurisprudence) and the great Sufi Shaykhs, although the structures of society (castes and traditional crafts) were preserved even in the most Islamised environments and continued to convey their particular initiations. Knowledge of Islamic subjects constituted a new source of ennoblement. Thus Alfa Ali (d. 1958), a Gaolo by birth, was the greatest authority on Islamic subjects in the Bandiagara district, like his whole family before him and his son after him.

Elsewhere, on the East African coast, Islam came through the Omani influence. Many states emerged along the coast to do business with both Africa and Asia. Fine silk cloth, porcelain, furniture, spices and jewellery came from Asia and ivory, rhino horns, timber, etc., went in the other direction. Asia’s taste for many African exotic animals did not start today. Throughout this period, one of Africa’s biggest export to the Middle East as well as the Latin/Ottoman Empire and Europe was slaves and indeed the East African/Trans-Saharan slave trade lasted longer than the transatlantic one. Tippu Tip, the second wealthiest Muslim slave trader in history, made a massive fortune selling slaves from the Congo, Tanzania and other neighbouring areas. Regrettably, that not enough work has been done to shine the light on the atrocities that occurred in the Trans-Sahara/East Africa trade, especially because widespread practices like castration and genocide ensured that slaves could not have children where they were sold.

The Muslim presence in East Africa influenced the architecture, cuisine and even the lingua franca, Swahili (many Swahili words were borrowed from Arabic). Music produced in East Africa has a lot of Asian and Arabic instrumentation. The furniture, sartorial influences, and even the way people socialise and perform certain moments like weddings and so on borrow heavily from both Bantu and Arabic traditions.

After the fall of the Sahel states, a number of mystics and scholars took it upon themselves to spread Islam across the area by force. The most notable ones include Usman Dan Fodio and Samory Toure of the Wassoulou Empire. These leaders who inflicted a lot of violence on the areas that they invaded also set up a resistance to fight European colonisers. This part of their lives garnered them hero status in some countries.

The final heritage that has had long-lasting impact on Africa is of course the entanglement with Judeo-Christian Europe. After the Reconquista, as mentioned above, there ensued a competition between Portugal and Spain to discover the source of West Africa’s gold. A second, often-quotes reason was the ambition to spread Christianity, but really the massive efforts to set up the investment companies that laid the foundations for modern stock exchanges was not about spreading the teachings of Christ: it was about winning the lottery. The Portuguese used their innovations in navigation to good effect and a LONG line of explorers eventually opened the way to la Mina – the Mine, also known as Elmina today: Henry, João Gonçalves Zarco, Tristão Vaz Teixeira, Gil Eanes, Álvaro Fernandes, Fernão Gomes, João de Santarém, Pedro Escobar, Lopo Gonçalves, Fernão do Pó, and Pedro de Sintra, Diogo Cão, Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama, Pêro da Covilhã…

There was a lot of determination to get to the money. When they eventually struck gold, it unleashed unprecedented competition among European countries, and pretty soon, world wars were fought on African and American coasts. Europe’s encounter with Africa created a number of upheavals. First, there was chattel slavery, which Europe funded with weapons, cash and goods. The period of chattel slavery also coincided with the first efforts to evangelise the continent. Early converts later played a key role in the colonial process and connecting Africa to global markets within capitalism. Those who became Christians and allies of the new colonial masters were fast-tracked to leadership status in the society, with power they could never have dreamed of before the arrival of Europeans. Suddenly powerful kings suddenly found themselves answering to people who had never occupied any position of power in their kingdoms. This experience still affects African politics and the way legitimacy is perceived and obtained.

The same brutal exploitation that was unleashed on black bodies was also directed at the African environment. Machines and tunnels went down where they had never been before to extract gold, diamond and other precious stones. The commons were enclosed and assigned to individual white owners. Riparian rights turned over water rights to white farmers. Forests were cleared and farmed to exhaustion and then just abandoned for new plots…the environment never had time to rest. Africa’s rich diversity of foods was whittled down to a handful of choices. This entanglement birthed a kind of capitalism that has continued to suffocate both man and planet for decades.

‍

Section II: Mouridism; religious independence or black Islam?

Introduction

The contribution of Islam to Wolof and African beliefs has been analysed by Mamadou Dia as a unifying monotheism that replaced family, traditional and tribal religions based on blood ties with a more universalist culture.¹In a lecture on the theme of "Islam in Africa", Régine Levrat highlighted two major currents in Islam:²

A Western Islam of Berber origin in West Africa, characterised by the role of marabouts with the veneration of saints and the custom of pilgrimages to holy places, by the triad of God, the master (sheikh) and the disciple. This Islam is confraternity-based and therefore linked to the marabouts. This is the case of the Mouride brotherhood in Senegal, with its many associations. According to Régine Levrat, these brotherhoods give this Islam an often popular character with a mystical and sometimes even magical tendency. However, she does not rule out its economic and political dimension in the case of the Mourides. Islam in West Africa is also marked by a country like Nigeria, whose northern states are predominantly Muslim with Christian enclaves. This country is experiencing fundamentalist tendencies, especially with the adoption of Sharia law.
Eastern Islam in East Africa and Chad, of Arab origin and Arabic language in countries such as Somalia and Sudan. This Islam is very orthodox, but this does not rule out the existence of ancestral traditions.

Senegal's saints and scholars certainly honoured Muslim thought and tradition, but they also drew on African spirituality through their creativity. We can mention for example El Hadji Malick Sy, Thierno Bokar and Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba. Thierno Bokar, better known as the sage of Bandiagara, placed great emphasis on values such as charity, kindness, tolerance and love of neighbour in his teaching. What sets him apart is

To have built his teaching on a technique of symbols developing concepts from the ideological soil: "and the sun and the bird and the grain of millet, and the blanket and the mud", thus giving his theology a cultural root that could only win over and convince, because it was expressed in the very language of the people to whom it was addressed.³

We should mention in passing the work of Sheikh Ibrahima Niasse, which spans some one hundred works in various fields, the Tafsir⁴ of the Koran by El Hadj Amadou Dème, a monument in twenty volumes, and many others.

Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba's main concern was the spread of Islam in Wolof society that is making African and Senegalese Muslims his disciples. To achieve this, it was essential to take into account the realities of Senegalese culture. This idea led to the following reflection:

He is more or less proposing and bringing us a break, a disalienation not from Islam, which he 'Africanises' and domesticates, but from an Arab-Islamic world whose habits and customs are not necessarily our own, whatever our interest in this brotherly people.⁵

The importance of these cultural factors lies in the fact that Islam as a religion takes into account the social psychology of peoples, the inner forces that guide the behaviour of groups and individuals, and the pulsating life of the peoples and individuals it addresses. Its preaching should be based on an objective knowledge of the socio-cultural environment.⁶

The Islam of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba fits into this philosophy. With a non-violent, subtle and courageous approach, the Sheikh took a stand against French colonisation and the risk of assimilation by Arabs.

Mouridism thus confers on its followers a certain originality, cultural value and imminent dignity. This, according to Bara Diouf, is what will make Bamba's postulate: to colonise Islam and not allow ourselves to be colonised by its Arab version. Mouridism appears as a new and purely African creation. Its legacy is a spiritual heritage and an affirmation of cultural autonomy. It was a struggle that the intellectuals of the negritude movement (Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire) would later experience in the 1960s.

In a personal account, Mamadou Dia had this to say about Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba:

His work is Negro in its poetic technique and original versification. It is Negro in its imagery, colour and rhythm, which spontaneously breaks with all foreign techniques, whether from the West or the East, Europe or Arabia. This alone makes it one of our earliest literary monuments, one of the foundations of our national literature. And this work, so rich in form, is even more valuable for the doctrine it embodies. For Mouridism has completely rethought Islam, in accordance with the orthodoxy and genius of our people. Through this doctrinal effort, Islam in Senegal has ceased to be an 'imported' religion and has become a popular religion, a truly national religion embodied in the very depths of our being.⁷

The originality of the Sheikh's thinking was therefore to have rethought Islam and to have integrated it into the life of Wolof society in such a way that this religion would not be a destructuring factor, if not a structuring one. According to Bamba, adherence to Islam should in no way cause the Wolof to abandon their usual way of life. He thus succeeded in reconciling Islamic dogma with the everyday life of the Wolof.⁸

The purpose of this sub-chapter is to study some of the factors in the religious emancipation of the Mourides through the teaching of the Koran, the tools and instruments of calligraphy and artistic creation.

‍

Assimilation

The reason why the Wolofs rediscovered their cultural values and dignity in the Mouride brotherhood is that Bamba’s theology was rooted in his culture.

The fact that he re-thought Islam and drew on African spirituality enabled him to integrate it into the Wolof way of life. So this religion did not present itself as a destructuring or invasive factor.

However, this confraternity of Mouride Islam has not failed to be criticised and described as heresy. Whereas Paul Marty writes about the « Wolofisation » of Islam⁹, one should also note that Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa has been described by some as Black Islam. This characterisation has caused a lot of debate.

Firstly, during the colonial period, it had a negative connotation, because colonial masters regarded it as a form of religious domination and:

A sign of Africans’ lack of culture because they could not resist something as serious as a different religion.¹⁰

Régine Levrat offers another, closer definition of Africans claiming their identity in Islam. Analysing it in the sense of a fight against a kind of acculturation, she believes that:

It is the expression of Africa identity that resists the spiritual hegemony of arabs who brought the Prophet’s religion to Sub-Saharan africa as well as Western cultural hegemony.¹¹

This type of religious belief, embodied by the heads of the Senegalese brotherhoods, was well supported for two reasons. On the one hand, the French administration saw it as peaceful, even if it was critical of this Islam. The Lieutenant-Governor of Haut Sénégal-Niger, Clozel, made this point in his Note sur l'état social des indigènes et sur la situation présente de l'islam au Soudan français, published in 1908:

Fortunately, West African Islam still retains a somewhat special character that we have a great interest in maintaining. Our Muslims have not accepted the Koran as absolute. Whatever their devotion, they wanted to preserve their ancestral customs [...]. As a result, Sudanese Islam appears to be deeply influenced by fetishism. It is a mixed religion resulting from two originally diverse beliefs, which, as soon as they came into contact, both ceased to evolve in their original form.¹²

On the other hand, the colonial administration was clearly motivated by a desire to isolate the Muslim countries south of the Sahara (Senegal, Sudan and Chad) and the Maghreb (Algeria and Morocco). In North Africa, the colonial order was constantly undermined by religious leaders. The Administration's strategy was therefore to avoid any rapprochement between the two shores of the Sahara that might create the sense of a large Muslim family (Umma).

The expression "Black Islam" was greeted with great reluctance by African Muslims, especially those of the reformist persuasion. El-Haj Shaykh Touré, one of the leading lights of Muslim reformism in Senegal, rejects the concept of Black Islam. His criticism stems from the fact that people want to stick a label on Islam, whereas when it comes to Christianity, nobody talks about "black Christianity". The universal dimension of the Koran comes form its ability to adapt to all people and all cultures. This explain why Mouridism accommodates traditional beliefs and customs.

This opinion is shared by Amadou Hampathé Bâ who finds parallels between the veneration of ancestors and celebration of saints. On this score, he says:

Let's talk the way we do back home - with images! When children are young, they are given milk; meat comes later. Gris-gris bring peace of mind; Islam tries to purify them by putting the name of God on them. My great-grandfather was fiercely opposed to Islam, and today I'm a Muslim and never wear gris-gris. You have to give the child time to grow up [...] And isn't the unknown soldier also a fetish?¹³

In the same vein, Cheikh Ahmad Tidiane Sy commented on the question of the tam-tam, which people want to equate with the works of Satan, saying that he saw a spiritual dimension in the tam-tam. The sound reminded him of God, the musician represented human beings and the skin of the tam-tam and the wooden mortar represented animal and plant species respectively. So here he saw a symbol of union between creatures and the Creator.¹⁴

African Muslims believe in the universality of the Koran, which in their view goes beyond an Arab approach to Islam. It lies in the fact that the Koran adapts to everyone and to the values of all cultures. It is in this sense that Mouridism accommodates traditional beliefs and customs. To borrow a phrase from Léopold Senghor, the encounter between Islam and the African continent has been a meeting of give and take. This is why Joseph Cuoq believes that there has been a "reciprocal acculturation" through the Islamisation of Africa and the Africanisation of Islam.¹⁵

‍

Conclusion

Islam is a melting pot of values. It recognises the cultural values of each people in accordance with God's laws. Its contribution to Wolof and African beliefs is above all a unifying monotheism in the face of family, traditional and tribal religions based on blood ties. Islam has also added more rationality to beliefs, restored dignity to African man and enriched his thinking with new themes and concepts.

‍

¹ Mamadou Dia: Islam et Civilisations Négro-africaines. Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines. Dakar- Abidjan Lomé. 1980. Page 34

² Régine Levrat: L’Islam en Afrique. Document pédagogique – Conférences UTA-Lyon 2002/2003 – Page 7 Disponible sur le site http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:QF7M57wJZ10J:uta.univ-lyon2.fr/IMG/pdf/doc-600.pdf+:+identite+culturelle+mouride&hl=de&ct=clnk&cd=70&gl=fr consulté le 18.05.08

³ Dia. Page 99

⁴ Le tafsir est la traduction suivie de commentaire du coran

⁵ La chronique de Bara: Le Mouridisme, un messianisme de développement et d’indépendance nationale

⁶ Dia. Page 105

7 Article du journal Wal Fadjri du mardi 6 Mars 2007. consultation le même jour.

⁸ Opus déja cité. Cheikh Tidiane Sy. Page 143

⁹ Sy. Page 142

¹⁰ Bakary Samb: Islam “noir”: Construction identitare ou réalité socio-historique? CERIP- Centre de Politologie de Lyon. Page 6

¹¹ Régine Levrat. Page 8