Africa south of the Sahara Africa to the First World War

Abstract

In the long perspective of historical development, as well as the nineteenth century, sub-Saharan Muslim societies have developed different expressions of 'Islamic religious culture'. The wars that ended with the victory of Muslim religious scholars were legitimised in religious terms and came to be regarded as jihads. This chapter focuses on four cases of Islamic governance, namely the Sokoto jihad and the Bornu response; the jihad of al-Ḥājj ʿUmar Taal; and Masina. Traditions of coexistence of Islam and pre-Islamic communal cults became, at the same time, increasingly obsolete, and pre-Islamic religious traditions were marginalised. Whereas seas of sand connect the northern and southern reaches of the Sahara, the Indian Ocean and the monsoons connect the East African coast with the shores of India and Arabia. In the nineteenth century, the societies of the East African coast came to experience a series of crises which were linked, in political terms, with the rise and demise of the sultanate of Zanzibar-Oman.