ABSTRACT
On their part, Muslims reached Africa in the lifetime of their founder, the Prophet Muhammad (c. 570-632 CE). This was when they sought refuge in Christian Axum – an event tradition has termed the First Hijra, which occurred in 615 CE. Less than a century later, they had conquered Egypt and North Africa. By the twelfth century, they had become absolute masters of the latter, even as Christian elements remained in the region until the eighteenth century.4 Out of Tripoli’s estimated 40,000 inhabitants in the 1680s, for example, about 2,000 are said to have been Christians.5 Besides North Africa and Egypt, the eastern part of Africa also received Muslim immigrants probably as early as the seventh century. Zanzibar was the gateway through which they accessed the hinterland mostly peacefully, satisfied with establishing trade links with local leaders rather than with subduing them. The local leaders were not Christians, however, and a Muslim-Christian encounter in eastern Africa would happen much later. From the aforesaid, it can be safely concluded that Muslims and Christians
have interacted at different times, and in different places, within Africa since the seventh century. The mode of this interaction differed from one context to another depending on socio-political factors like numerical strength, economic power and military capacity. What seems to have remained constant is a tendency to think of “the religious other” as a stranger who did not quite belong. Stemming from this regard were relations that ranged from outright conquest (subduing “the other” by means of violence) to tolerance (quietly suffering the irritating presence of “the other”), and from simulated mutual ignorance to laudable acts of understanding across the creedal divide. Historically, cases of all-out conquests for purely religious motives have been
limited. The early scene in North Africa is instructive in this regard. By the end of the eighth century, the entire expanse from Morocco, Algeria, Tunis and Tripoli, all the way to Egypt, had changed from being predominantly Christian to becoming primarily Muslim. Yet, the region’s conquest can scarcely be seen as one that pitted Muslims against Christians, much less Islam against Christianity. When Muslims arrived, Christianity had lost its potency, weakened more by internal heresies and Rome’s imperial collapse than by marauding “Mohammedan” armies.6 Muslims met little or no organized Christian resistance. Moreover, Islam was not always the main reason for conquest, even when it fuelled it. Muslim conquerors in North Africa were quick to declare independence from all control. By the early tenth century, the Fatimid dynasty, which controlled parts of the region and then dominated Egypt (969-1171 CE), had even instituted a caliph, thus cementing its political freedom with theological independence from and equality with the original Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad.7 Viewing these events for what they were, some authors speak of an “Arab” rather than a “Muslim” conquest of North Africa. “If the pace of advance was rapid”, emphasizes Alan Jamieson in a more general argument, “this had less to do with the religious fervour of the attackers than the weakness of the societies under attack, where the Arabs found populations ready to forsake their imperial masters”.8
