Page 36 - Empires of Medieval West Africa

t h e G h a n a E m p i r e

1085. The Almoravid Empire eventually reached from the Sénégal
River through the Maghrib into Spain.

The alMoravidS
Some time during the eighth century, the Zanata and other Berbers of
the Atlas region became Muslims. Later, the Sanhaja were also con-
verted to Islam. The religious conversion gave them all wider commer-
cial connections with the Muslim world. This increased the scale and
complexity of their trade, and generally made them more prosperous.
It was in the century following the Soninke takeover of the city of
Awdaghust, that the Sanhaja became involved in the Almoravid move-
ment. This had a great influence on the spread of Islam, which was a
major factor in West African history.
At the beginning of the 10th century, the Sanhaja were masters
of the Western Sahara. But they were spread over a vast territory and
were divided into clans. They dominated trade routes and salt mines.
The clans living in the southern part of the desert were the Juddala
and the Lamtuna, who bordered the kingdom of Ghana. Control of
Awdaghust was disputed between the Lamtuna and the Soninke.
Islam was spreading through the region, but it was weaker and less
strict in the south than it was in the north. Around 1035, the chief of
the Juddala clan, Yahya ibn Ibrahim (d. ca. 1039; his name is Arabic
for “John, son of Abraham”), made a pilgrimage (a journey to a special
sacred place) to Mecca (in today’s Saudi Arabia). During his long jour-
ney to the Muslim holy land, Yahya realized that his people back in the
Western Sahara had only a very basic idea of what Islam was about.
They were not behaving like the stricter Muslims in Arabia and North
Africa.
On his way home, Yahya visited with a famous Muslim theologian
(someone who studies religion) in the city of Qayrawan. Yahya asked
the theologian if he had a very wise follower who could come back
with him to the Sahara to teach true Islam. But nobody at Qayrawan
was willing to suffer the hardships of living in the desert. So they sent
Yahya to a religious center in southern Morocco, where he met Abdal-
lah ibn Yasin (d. 1059). Yasin’s mother was a Sanhaja of the Jazula clan
from a desert town near Ghana, and Yasin had no fear of living in the
Sahara.
In 1039, Yahya arrived back at the tents of his Juddala people. Yasin
was with him. As a teacher of Islam, Yasin proved to be a strict master.

3