History of Islam in Africa: course description
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David Northrup, Boston College
This course examines how African societies adopted Islam with particular attention to sub-Saharan West and East Africa during the past millennium. Islam spread slowly and generally peacefully in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily through contacts with Muslim traders from North Africa and the Middle East. Islam came as a religion but also introduced a legal system, a language (Arabic), and systems of writing and learning. The spread of Islam was also gradual, first embraced by rulers and merchant elites in trading cities of the savannas and Swahili coast, then slowly incorporating rural peoples. In West Africa indigenously led jihads in the nineteenth-century produced a period of major growth and reform. The adoption of Islam and profound and varied effects on religious practices, governance, law, dress, architecture, and learning, but the gradual incorporation of Islam also meant that Islam was profoundly affected by indigenous African cultures. Ironically the period of greatest expansion of Islam came during the decades of European colonial rule in Africa from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, which was also the period of the greatest spread of Christian growth below the Sahara. Muslims Africans were slower than Christian Africans to join the nationalist movements that restored African self-governance, but Muslims have taken leading roles since independence. Today there are some 250,000,000 Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa, more than in the Middle East (if one does not include the states of North Africa).
The course is structured around historical events but includes considerable explorations of theology, law, social change, and gender issues. A part of most classes will be spent doing close analysis of representative primary sources from Arab, African, and European sources. Two required books are works of fiction by modern West Africans that will enable students to engage Islamic societies at an individual level. The course assumes no prior knowledge.
Students completing the course successfully will be able to explain when and how Islam spread in different parts of Africa and how African societies have changed to accommodate Islam and how they have incorporated Islamic practices and beliefs into existing cultures. They will also be able to compare the influences of Muslim and European contacts in the modern era.
The course is structured around historical events but includes considerable explorations of theology, law, social change, and gender issues. A part of most classes will be spent doing close analysis of representative primary sources from Arab, African, and European sources. Two required books are works of fiction by modern West Africans that will enable students to engage Islamic societies at an individual level. The course assumes no prior knowledge.
Students completing the course successfully will be able to explain when and how Islam spread in different parts of Africa and how African societies have changed to accommodate Islam and how they have incorporated Islamic practices and beliefs into existing cultures. They will also be able to compare the influences of Muslim and European contacts in the modern era.
