By the eighteenth century Muslim societies had come into being throughout Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Each was built on the interaction of Middle Eastern Islamic state, religious, and communal institutions with local social institutions and cultures, and in each case the interactions generated a different type of Islamic society. Although each society was unique, they resembled one another in form and were interconnected by political and religious contacts and shared values. Thus they made up a world system of Islamic societies.

Islamic societies from the tenth to the nineteenth centuries had a complex structure. In some cases Muslim communities were isolated pastoral, village, or urban minorities living within non-Islamic societies. Examples of this type are lineage groups united by shrine veneration in the northern steppes of Inner Asia and parts of the Sahara and merchant communities in China or West Africa. In African societies the Muslim presence was centered around small communities such as lineage groups, teachers and disciples, Sufi brotherhoods, or networks of merchants. Merchant communities were established as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the western Sudan. By the eighteenth century, there were Muslim merchant enclaves in the central Sudan, Berber holy lineages in the Sahara region (zawaya or insilimen), cultivator and merchant communities and scholarly lineages such as the Saghanughu (called Wangara or Dyula) in the Volta River basin and Guinean forests, and Jakhanke lineages of cultivators and scholars in the Senegambia region. In East Africa, Muslim communities were settled in the coastal towns. In Ethiopia and Somalia they were present among Galla and Somali peoples. In general the Muslim communities were scattered, had no territorial identity, and did not constitute governments.