African Art. Maurice Delafosse

      The Almoravide Movement

      Under the direction of the fiery preacher Abdallah ben Yassine, a Berber of North African origin, as fierce a religious reformer as an indefatigable warrior, and under the nominal command of Yahia ben Ibrahim, chief of the Goddala, then of Yahia ben Omar of the Lemtuna tribe, a movement occurred which affected only ephemeral political results among the Negroes but which had very durable and quite important ones from a religious point of view. It was indeed to the Almoravides that we must attribute the conversion to Islam of the Sudanese groups who have since then propagated this religion over a notable part of Africa: Tekrurians or Tukulors, Sarakolle, Jula, and Songhoy.

      From the middle of the 11th century, a sharp and merciless struggle began between the Almoravide bands, who represented Islam and who were stimulated by the desire to shake off the yoke of the Negroes, and the Sarakolle kings of Ghana who, although always having been hospitable to the Muslims were considered to be the champions of paganism. In 1054, Howdaghost, though the capital of a Berber kingdom, was attacked, taken and pillaged by Abdallah ben Yassine, under the pretext that the town paid tribute to the king of Ghana.

      At the same time, an active religious propaganda was carried on by the efforts of the same Abdallah among the Negroes who then resided on both banks of the Senegal, and also among the Nigerian populations. But it often met with a resistance which, when it could not manifest itself otherwise, was expressed by an exodus of the inhabitants. It is thus that a majority of the Serers emigrated to the left bank of the river in the Tekrur (which almost corresponds to the province we call the Futa-Tooro), whence a considerable number went to form groups in the Sine, where we still find them today. They left the field clear for the Berbers in what has since become Mauritania, hunted at the same time by the desire to escape the constraint and the exactions of the Almoravides and by the need of seeking more fertile lands. It is thus again that, pushed by analogous motives, the Fulani of Termes and of the Tagant began to swarm with their herds towards the same region of the Futa-Toro, where, for a long time, they must have energetically defended paganism against Muslim enterprise.

      However, certain royal families of the Negro country, attracted to the new religion by the prestige which attached to its adepts, ranged themselves deliberately under the banner of Mohammed. Such was the case of the princes who then held the power in the Tekrur, under the more or less distant tutelage of the emperors of Ghana, and who, like the latter, must have belonged to the Sarakolle race. They reigned over a people who were probably very composite, formed of Sarakolle, Mandinka, Serers, and perhaps Wolof elements, who ended by adopting the language of the Fulani, their neighbours, and known to us today under the name of Tukulors, this word being only a modification of the primitive name of the kingdom and city of Tekrur.[8]

      A disciple of Abdallah ben Yassine, about whom there are currently numerous legends and whose memory has been handed down to us under several different names, among which that of Abu-Dardal, converted to Islam the princes and notables of the Tekrur, who became effective allies of the Almoravides.

      A Lemtuna Berber, who, according to Leo the African, was none other than the very father of Yahia ben Omar and the famous Abubekr or Bubakar, travelled as far as Mandinka and succeeded in enrolling in the new religion of the king of the country, named Baramendana, whom he is supposed to have influenced to undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca.

      However, one should not exaggerate the importance of these conversions effected among the Negroes by the Almoravides, or claim, as is sometimes done, that they gained the entirety of Sudan for Islam. In reality, the conversions do not seem to have been serious and lasting except among the princes and higher officials and their immediate circle. The mass of the people either resisted Islamisation by migration, as we have seen in the case of the Serers and the Fulani, or else they did not let themselves be persuaded by the efforts of the Almoravide preachers, as was the case with the Wolof and the Mandinka[9] or else again, accepted the new faith only to abandon it when the ephemeral power of the disciples of Abdallah ben Yassine came to an end. It is only among the Tekrurians or Tukulors, among the Songhoy, and, strange to say, among the Sarakolle and the Jula, their descendants, that Islam penetrated widely and strongly.

      The Sarakolle, in fact, who represented the pagan element in all its vigor, finished, under constraint and force, by accepting, after their defeat, the religion of their conquerors, afterwards becoming the staunchest Muslims of all the western Sudan, carrying with them the Muslim faith into the numerous regions of the Senegal, the Sahel and the Massina where they settled after the fall of Ghana and the dispersion of its inhabitants, passing the religion on to that curious population, commercial and enterprising, the Jula, who are considered to be an issue of the Sarakolle of Dia or Diakha (Massina) and of the Djenné and who, in their turn, propagated Islam as far as the northern boundary of the great equatorial forest. From the end of the 11th century, less than fifty years after the first preaching of Abdallah and his missionaries, Islam attained some points situated at least 400 kilometres from the coast of the Gulf of Guinea; the Muslim Jula, attracted into this region by the abundance of kola-nuts, had founded Bego near the elbow formed by the Black Volta at the height of 8 north latitude, not far from the present village of Banda or Fougula (English Gold Coast). This city soon became a very important metropolis and an active centre of commerce and Islamic propaganda; towards the end of the 14th or the beginning of the 15th century, its inhabitants dispersed and went to settle farther to the west near modest hamlets, such as Gotogo (Bonduku) and Kpon (Kong), situated in the present French colony of the Ivory Coast, transforming them rapidly into veritable cities, enriching themselves by commerce in kolas, cattle, fabrics, and gold-powder, and introducing habits of intellectual research which have continued a long time after.