Historic links between the Maghreb and West Africa: On the Sanusiyya and anti-colonialism.
The modern separation of Africa into a “Mediterranean” North and a “Sub-Saharan” South had little basis in the historical geographies and political relationships of the pre-colonial period.
This Hegelian misconception, which is predicated on the belief that the Sahara was an impenetrable barrier, contradicts the historical evidence, which shows that the desert can be likened to an inland sea, facilitating cultural and economic exchanges between ancient societies along its ‘shores’ and within the desert itself.1
The ancient cities and oases of the Sahara. Map by D. J. Mattingly et.al
In the western half of the Sahara, the emergence of large kingdoms in what is today Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, and Morocco during the Middle Ages enabled the creation of a broadly similar cultural economy across multiple societies that were interlinked through trade, travel, and Islamic scholarship.
The Almoravid empire (1040-1147), whose founder Yaḥyā ibn Ibrāhīm hailed from what is today southern Mauritania, was closely allied with the kingdom of Takrur in Senegal, which provided contingents for the empire's conquests into Morocco and Spain.
The Almoravids established close ties with West African states such as the Ghana empire (700-1250), and the enigmatic kingdom of Zafun, about whose king the Almoravids were said to “acknowledge his superiority over them.”
Their successors, such as the Almohads (1121-1269) and the Marinids (1244-1465), continued in this tradition, enabling the career of celebrated scholars like Ibrahim Al-Kanemi (d. 1211), and the exchange of several diplomatic missions with medieval Mali in 1337, 1348, 1351, and 1361.
By the close of the Middle Ages, scholarly exchanges between the intellectual communities of Timbuktu and Djenne (Mali) with those in Fez and Marrakesh (Morocco), as well as the expansion of trade between Sijilmasa (Morocco), Taghaza (Mali), and Walata (Mauritania) resulted in more direct links between both ends of the Sahara.
Palm grove of Tafilalet in Sijilmassa, Morocco. The oasis of Sijilmasa was a crucial hub in the trade route between medieval Ghana and Morocco.
The competitive political landscape engendered by these long-distance exchanges facilitated the expansion and inevitable clash between the Songhai and Saadian empires, which ended with the latter’s brief occupation of Timbuktu and Djenne in the 17th century. Forced to withdraw due to local resistance, the Moroccans retained some ties with the old towns of Mauritania in the 18th century.
However, the old scholarly and economic links between the two regions continued to flourish.
Movements such as the Tijaniyya attracted prominent scholars across the region during the 19th century, and its main zawiya (sufi lodge) in Fez remains an important cultural link between communities in Senegal and Morocco, and today forms the lynchpin of the two countries' religious and political diplomacy.
Zawiya of Ahmad al-Tijânî in Fez, Morocco. This Sufi lodge is a major pilgrimage site for Tijani scholars from Senegal and Mali.
In the central regions of the Sahara, the empire of medieval Kānem (800-1472) in Chad and the Oasis towns of Kawar in eastern Niger maintained cultural and economic ties with societies in the Fezzan (Southern Libya) and the mediterranean coast since the middle ages.
After the conquest of the Fezzan by medieval Kanem in the 13th century, diplomatic missions from the latter were sent to the Hafsid court in Tunis in 1257. Kanem's successor, the empire of Bornu, continued this tradition, sending embassies to neighbouring Tripoli in 1526, 1535, 1551, 1574, 1581, and 1586.
Diasporic communities were established in Tunis and Tripoli, which facilitated trade and diplomatic exchanges between Bornu and the Ottomans of Tripoli during the 17th century, as well as the movement of pilgrims and scholars, some of whom settled in the oases of Murquz and Kufra in Libya.
View of Murzuk, Libya. ca. 1890. GettyImages. Some of the streets of Murzuq still bear Kanembu and Kanuri names, and the town was the birthplace of the Bornu ruler al-Kanemi
Historical ties between the Maghreb and West Africa were thus unimpeded by the Sahara. As previously explored in my essay on the colonial myth of Sub-Saharan Africa, this separation was never a historical reality for the people living in either region, but is instead a more recent colonial construct with a fabricated history.
This is especially evident in the expansion of the political-religious movement known as the Sanusiyya, a sufi order which emerged in eastern Libya during the 19th century.
The Sanusiyya, which was founded by a scholar from Mostaganem in Algeria, attracted scholars from across Africa and Arabia. Its adherents established numerous zawiyas in Tunisia, Egypt, and Algeria, as well as in; Kawar and Zinder (Niger); Kano (Nigeria); Wadai and Kanem (Chad); and Darfur (Sudan).
The order provided a unified identity among the lineage-based acephalous societies of the Sahara, as every member considered themselves to be Sanusi, rather than Teda, Tuareg, or Arab. Scholars from across the central Sahara converged at its capital, Jaghbub, which was described as the “Oxford of the Sahara.”
During the colonial onslaught at the turn of the 20th century, Sanusi lodges became rallying points for anti-colonial resistance, providing modern firearms to the armies of Wadai and Darfur, and sustaining the independence of this region until the end of the First World War. The Sanusi-dominated central Sahara was thus the last region on the continent to fall under colonial control.
The history of the Sanusiyya and their anti-colonial resistance is the subject of my latest Patreon article. Please subscribe to read more about it here.
Urbanisation and State Formation in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond edited by Martin Sterry, David J. Mattingly, Mobile Technologies in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond edited by C. N. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, D. J. Mattingly, Burials, Migration and Identity in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond edited by M. C. Gatto, D. J. Mattingly, N. Ray, M. Sterry
Thank you, Isaac Samuel!