Note 58 — Chapter XI · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN AFRICA.

We have ampler details of a more recent movement of the same kind, which had been set on foot in the south of Senegambia by a Mandingo, named Ṣamudu, commonly known by the name Samory, a pagan soldier of fortune born about 1846, who became a Muhammadan early in the course of his career and founded an empire, south of Senegambia, in the country watered by the upper basin of the Niger and its tributaries. An Arabic account of the career of Samory, written by a native chronicler, gives us some interesting details of his achievements. It begins as follows: “This is an account of the Jihād of the Imām Aḥmadu Ṣamudu, a Mandingo.… God conferred upon him His help continually after he began the work of visiting the idolatrous pagans, who dwell between the sea and the country of Wasulu, with a view of inviting them to follow the religion of God, which is Islam. Know all ye who read this—that the first effort of the Imām Ṣamudu was a town named Fulindiyah. Following the Book and the Law and the Traditions, he sent messengers to the king at that town, Sindidu by name, inviting him to submit to his government, abandon the worship of idols and worship one God, the Exalted, the True, whose service is profitable to His people in this world and in the next; but they refused to submit. Then he imposed a tribute upon them, as the Qurʼān commands on this subject; but they persisted in their blindness and deafness. The Imām then collected a small force of about five hundred men, brave and valiant, for the Jihād, and he fought against the town, and the Lord helped him against them and gave him the victory over them, and he pursued them with his horses until they submitted. Nor will they return to their idolatry, for now all their children are in schools being taught the Qurʼān, and a knowledge of religion and civilisation. Praise be to God for this.”58 It is not possible here to trace the course of his conquests, which were marked by wholesale massacres and devastation.59 He reached the height of his power about 1881, shortly after which he came in conflict with the French, who took him prisoner in 1898 after a series of harassing campaigns. He died in 1900. Though the effect of his conquests was the destruction of large numbers of pagans who were massacred by his ruthless armies, while others were terrified into a nominal acceptance of Islam, he does not appear to have put before him the same distinctly religious aim as al-Ḥājj ʻUmar did.60 He left to the Qādiriyyah marabouts the task of propaganda, and they with their accustomed traditions of toleration are said to have done much to mitigate the savagery of his proceedings.61 They opened schools in the conquered towns, established there the organisation of their order, and both instructed the new converts and sought to win fresh ones.