misconception that has to be confronted in understanding the importance of Islam in the West African savannah and the Sahel relates to the extent of urbanization that was characteristic of the region well before the emergence of jihād as a factor in the late seventeenth century and certainly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Beginning with the medieval empires and continuing through the fall of Songhay in the last decade of the sixteenth century, West Africa was heavily urbanized, although by modern standards the size of towns and cities was small. This urbanization was identified frequently with city walls that were constructed for defensive purposes and with public spaces associated with mosques and city markets. The governments of these urban spaces built palaces, as well as overseeing the maintenance of mosques, markets, and defensive walls. These towns and cities were connected through long-distance trade, commercial networks that were Muslim, and locations of craft production, especially cotton textiles, leather goods, and ironware. Well before the spread of the jihād movement, these centers were closely associated with Islam and Muslims who had migrated from elsewhere but had settled to pursue economic opportunities. Wherever there was an indigenous, non-Muslim society, the urban centers were usually divided into twin cities, one that housed the local community and the other that was home to Muslims and the center of trade and craft production. As Paulo Farias has emphasized, the separation between Muslims and non-Muslims that was realized through distinct urban quarters spatially separated from each other was more than symbolic. Muslims honored a tradition that tolerated non-Islamic practices and religious worship but specifically avoided syncretism and insisted on orthodoxy with respect to the basic tenets of Islam.15
The Muslim networks were tied together through commercial interaction and also education and religious study that were common features of Muslim society not only in West Africa but throughout the Islamic world. Travel and distant learning were valued in the Muslim context because of the emphasis on pilgrimage and the obligation to visit the holy places of Mecca and Medina if possible. The glorification of this tradition was symbolized in West Africa by the legendary pilgrimage of the Malian emperor Mansa Mūsā, whose famed visit to Egypt and the Holy Lands is remembered because of the vast quantities of West African gold that he took with him. Similarly, the coup d’état that brought Askia Muhammad Ture to the throne of Songhay in 1493 was sanctified through his pilgrimage to Mecca as a step in the imposition of Muslim government and adherence to Islamic law. Study abroad (taghrīb) was encouraged as a means of acquiring an education and also promoted connections among Muslims, sustained orthodoxy, and linked communities.16
The Islamic sciences flourished in West Africa for many centuries before the advent of the jihād movement.17 This can be seen with respect to historical scholarship, which flourished in such places as Timbuktu and is displayed in such histories as ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Saʿdī’s Taʾrīkh al-Sūdān (History of the Sudan) (ca. 1655) and Taʾrīkh al-fattāsh fī akhbār al-buldān wa ’l-juyūsh wa-akābir al-nās (The chronicle of the researcher into the history of the countries, the armies, and the principal personalities), attributed to Maḥmūd Kaʿtī (d. AH 1 Muḥarram 1002; 27 September 1593) and continued after his death, with the surviving version ending in AH 1074 (1654–55 CE).18 The legal tradition was historical in orientation because of the practice of citing previous fatwa in issuing opinions on contemporary legal questions. The intellectual tradition of quoting the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīth privileged historically documented chains of authority in the construction of arguments and establishing legitimacy. Among Muslims there was the scholarly tradition of isnād, which traced an individual’s intellectual and religious pedigree with reference to one’s teachers and in turn their teachers. The identification with a chain of authority (silsila) that was historical established specialization and knowledge of a specific curriculum. The extensive bibliography that has been assembled of indigenous writings and the distribution of books brought from North Africa and other parts of the Islamic world further attests to the level of Islamic scholarship of long standing, to which the jihād tradition owes its origins.19 By the late seventeenth century this literate component of Islam had been consolidated in West Africa, largely under the leadership of the Qādiriyya brotherhood and its standardized curriculum. Children, particularly boys, learned the rudiments of Arabic from Muslim scholars wherever there was a Muslim community in West Africa. Those students who showed particular promise were encouraged to study further. Commercial households and the political elite were most seriously committed to assuring that the literate tradition was sustained.20
That Islam was deeply rooted in West Africa is occasionally questioned because of the presence of certain practices that some people who are not Muslims have considered non-Islamic, including the widespread use of amulets, divination, and spirit possession. Amulets were small leather pouches that contained excerpts from the Qurʾān written in Arabic and sometimes have mistakenly been thought to be charms or survivals of non-Muslim practice. Rather, they were associated with writing and the mysticism associated with the Qurʾān. Those who made these amulets were usually Muslim scholars and teachers who sold them as a way of securing an income, and the people who bought them included both Muslims and non-Muslims because of the mystical powers that were attributed to them.21 Similarly, divination was a recognized Islamic science and was studied at mosques and with scholars along with other subjects, like jurisprudence (fiqh), the study of the sayings of the Prophet (Ḥadīth), theology (kalām), and astrology. Forms of Islamic divination are thought to have influenced the spread of divination among non-Muslims, including the Ifá divination of the Yoruba and the river-pebble divination (aŋ-bere) of Poro society in the interior of Sierra Leone and Liberia.22 Finally, spirit possession (bori, gnawa, zar), which is sometimes thought to be in violation of Islamic practice and hence a remnant of pre-Islamic belief or non-Muslim behavior, was in fact very much a part of Islamic tradition and was found throughout West Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East.23 Rather than perceiving the use of amulets, divination, and spirit possession as deviant features of Islam or evidence of non-Muslim syncretism, it is more accurate to consider that these mystical expressions and practices were integral to Islam in West Africa.
The tradition of jihād was closely associated with the Qādiriyya brotherhood, which was predominant among Muslims in West Africa by the late seventeenth century and particularly in the eighteenth century. The brotherhood (ṭarīqa) traces its origins to the teachings of ʿAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī (1077–1166) of Baghdad, a respected scholar and preacher originally from the Iranian province of Mazandaran. The order relies strongly on adherence to the fundamentals of Islam, particularly to the outward practices of Islam as determined by the Sunna, that is, the documented practices and customs of the Prophet Muhammad. Those who adhere to the Qādiriyya are very well disciplined, are known for a commitment to the “inner” jihād, and attempt to display saintly living. Jīlānī specifically emphasized what he described as the desires of the ego, the “greater struggle” or jihād against greed, vanity, and fear. Although the brotherhood has had a strong influence across the Islamic world, my concern here is with its influence in West Africa. By the end of the eighteenth century, the most prominent Qādiri intellectual was Sīdī al-Mukhtār al-Kuntī (1729–1811), who was based in Azawad, in the Sahara, northwest of Timbuktu. Al-Kuntī was associated with the caravan towns (qṣar) of the Sahel, especially Walāta, Tichitt, Timbuktu, Wadan, Asawan, and Shinqīt, where the Ḥassāniyya had established centers of education focused on a core curriculum that emphasized jurisprudence (uṣūl) and syntax (Arabic-language study). Through the scholars at these centers, the Qādiriyya was transformed from an essentially private commitment into a corporate identity that emphasized public membership.24 Although the emphasis on jihād was personal and peaceful, and al-Mukhtār was respected for his ability to negotiate among Muslims in dispute, especially the Tuareg of the desert, this commitment could extend to violent confrontation. Indeed, al-Mukhtār al-Kuntī clearly reached this conclusion in extending his support to the jihād of ʿUthmān dan Fodio, one of his former students, in 1809, thereby providing his blessing for the formation of the Sokoto Caliphate as a jihād state.
Finally, there is a common misconception that jihād is a movement directed against
