From the seventh to the eleventh centuries, Arab and Berber Muslim traders made their way into and across the Sahara, established colonies in the Sudan, and inspired the adoption of Islam by a succession of local rulers. Then, from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries, African-Muslim traders, scholars, and communities settled in Mauritania, Senegambia, and the Guinean regions. From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, some of these Muslim communities launched jihads and created new Muslim states. At the same time they were faced with European competition, colonization, and empire formation.

The Kingdoms of the Western Sudan

The Arab conquests opened the way to contacts among Muslim Arabs and Berbers and Saharan and Sudanic peoples. (See Map 21.) North African Berbers had been converted to Khariji Islam in the seventh century; in the eighth century Tahert, Sijilmassa, and other Moroccan towns were centers of Ibadi Kharijism. Mauritanian Berbers were converted to Islam in the ninth century. By the tenth century, Muslim traders from North Africa were established in Awdaghust and Tadmekka. By the late tenth and eleventh centuries most of the Sudanese trading towns had a Muslim quarter, and Muslims were important as advisors and functionaries at the courts of local rulers.