Note 43 — Chapter XI · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN AFRICA.

The introduction of law and order into Southern Nigeria has favoured the propaganda of Islam as in other parts of Africa that have come under European rule. The Hausa Muslims, some of whom belong to the Tijāniyyah order, have been able to move freely about the country and to penetrate among pagan tribes which had hitherto kept all Muhammadan influences rigidly at bay. In the Yoruba country particularly Islam is said to be rapidly gaining ground. There is a legend of an unsuccessful attempt made by a Muslim missionary as early as the eleventh or twelfth century; he was a Hausa who came to Ife, the religious capital of the pagan Yoruba country, and used to call the people together and read them passages from the Qurʼān; he could only speak the Yoruba language imperfectly, and with a foreign accent he would repeat to his listeners, “Let us worship Allāh: He created the mountain, He created the lowland, He created everything, He created us.” He did this from time to time without succeeding in winning a single convert, and died a few months after his arrival in Ife. After his death his Qurʼān was found hanging on a peg in the wall of his room, and it came to be worshipped as a fetish.43 Where this early apostle of the faith failed, his modern co-religionists have achieved a remarkable success. During the period of anarchy before the British occupation, the Muslims were for the most part congregated in large, walled towns, but under the new conditions of security they are able to reside permanently in villages, and near the scenes of their agricultural labours, and Muhammadan influences have thus become more widely extended over the country. As in German East Africa, the presence of Muhammadans among the native troops has been found to be favourable to the extension of their faith, and the pagan recruits often adopt Islam in order to escape ridicule and gain in self-respect.44 In the Ijebu country also, in Southern Nigeria, a quite recent propagandist movement has been observed; Islam was only introduced into this part of the country in 1893, and in 1908 there was one town with twenty, and another with twelve mosques.45 This rapid spread of the Muslim faith is particularly noticeable along the banks of the river Niger in Southern Nigeria; a Christian missionary reports: “When I came out in 1898 there were few Mohammedans to be seen below Iddah.46 Now they are everywhere, excepting below Abo, and at the present rate of progress there will scarcely be a heathen village on the river-banks by 1910.”47