Note 16 — Chapter X · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN CHINA.

From the Sahara the knowledge of Islam first spread among the Negroes of the Sudan. The early history of this movement is wrapped in obscurity, but there seems little doubt that it was the Berbers who first introduced Islam into the lands watered by the Senegal and the Niger; here they came in contact with pagan kingdoms, some of them (e.g. Ghāna and Songhay) of great antiquity.16 The two Berber tribes, the Lamṭūna and the Jadāla, belonging to the Ṣanhāja clan, especially distinguished themselves by their religious zeal in the work of conversion,17 and through their agency the Almoravid movement reacted on the pagan tribes of the Sudan. The reign of Yūsuf b. Tāshfīn, the founder of Morocco (A.D. 1062) and the second amīr of the Almoravid dynasty, was very fruitful in conversions, and many Negroes under his rule came to know of the doctrines of Muḥammad.18 In 1076 the Berbers who had been spreading Islam in the kingdom of Ghāna for some time, drove out the reigning dynasty, which was probably Fulbe, and this ancient kingdom became throughout Muhammadan; at the beginning of the thirteenth century it lost its independence and was conquered by the Mandingos.19