WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Islam promoted trade between West Africa and the Mediterranean. The religion developed and widened the trans-Saharan Caravan trade. The trade enriched the West African and the Muslim traders. Muslims from North Africa came in their numbers and settled in the commercial centres.

Detailed explanation-2: -Multiple Trajectories of Islam in Africa Between the eighth and ninth centuries, Arab traders and travelers, then African clerics, began to spread the religion along the eastern coast of Africa and to the western and central Sudan (literally, “Land of Black people”), stimulating the development of urban communities.

Detailed explanation-3: -Arab traders first introduced Islam to the Swahili coast in the ninth century. Appreciating its religious value, the Swahili people also recognized that adopting their neighbor’s religion would help their trading relationships as well, granting them new access to trade networks.

Detailed explanation-4: -Following the conquest of North Africa by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century CE, Islam spread throughout West Africa via merchants, traders, scholars, and missionaries, that is largely through peaceful means whereby African rulers either tolerated the religion or converted to it themselves.

Detailed explanation-5: -The oldest stratum of religion in western and central Africa is Orisha religion, which mutually obligated humans and members of the extraordinary realm of divine and ancestral beings. Beginning in the ninth century of the Common Era, varieties of Islam would become familiar to the region.

Detailed explanation-6: -As Islam spread throughout West Africa, centers of Islamic education emerged. Beginning in the fourteenth century, West African cities such as Timbuktu in Mali, Agadez in Niger, and Kano in Nigeria emerged as centers of Islamic intellectual learning. These schools emphasized respect, inclusion, and tolerance.