Note 65 — Chapter XI · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN AFRICA.

But the proselytising work of the order that is now to be described has never in any way been connected with violence or war and has employed in the service of religion only the arts of peace and persuasion. In 1837 a religious society was founded by an Algerian jurisconsult, named Sīdī Muḥammad b. ʻAlī al-Sanūsī, with the object of reforming Islam and spreading the faith; before his death in 1859, he had succeeded in establishing, by the sheer force of his genius and without the shedding of blood, a theocratic state, to which his followers render devoted allegiance and the limits of which are every day being extended by his successors.65 The members of this sect are bound by rigid rules to carry out to the full the precepts of the Qurʼān in accordance with the most strictly monotheistic principles, whereby worship is to be given to God alone, and prayers to saints and pilgrimages to their tombs are absolutely interdicted. They must abstain from coffee and tobacco, avoid all intercourse with Jews or Christians, contribute a certain portion of their income to the funds of the society, if they do not give themselves up entirely to its service, and devote all their energies to the advancement of Islam, resisting at the same time any concessions to European influences. This sect is spread over the whole of North Africa, having religious houses scattered about the country from Egypt to Morocco, and far into the interior, in the oases of the Sahara and the Sudan. The centre of its organisation was in the oasis of Jag͟habūb66 in the Libyan desert between Egypt and Tripoli, where every year hundreds of missionaries were trained and sent out as preachers of Islam to all parts of northern Africa. It is to the religious house in this village that all the branch establishments (said to be 121 in number) looked for counsel and instruction in all matters concerning the management and extension of this vast theocracy, which embraced in a marvellous organisation thousands of persons of numerous races and nations, otherwise separated from one another by vast differences of geographical situation and worldly interests. For the success that has been achieved by the zealous and energetic emissaries of this association is enormous; convents of the order are to be found not only all over the north of Africa from Egypt to Morocco, throughout the Sudan, in Senegambia and Somaliland, but members of the order are to be found also in Arabia, Mesopotamia and the islands of the Malay Archipelago.67 Though primarily a movement of reform in the midst of Islam itself, the Sanūsiyyah sect is also actively proselytising, and several African tribes that were previously pagan or merely nominally Muslim, have since the advent of the emissaries of this sect in their midst, become zealous adherents of the faith of the Prophet. Thus, for example, the Sanūsī missionaries laboured to convert that portion of the Baele (a tribe inhabiting the hill country of Ennedi, E. of Borku) which was still heathen, and communicated their own religious zeal to such other sections of the tribe as had only a very superficial knowledge of Islam, and were Muhammadan only in name;68 the Tedas of Tu or Tibesti, in the Sahara, S. of Fezzan, who were likewise Muhammadans only in name when the Sanūsiyyah came among them, also bear witness to the success of their efforts.69 The missionaries of this sect also carry on an active propaganda in the Galla country and fresh workers are sent thither every year from Harar, where the Sanūsiyyah are very strong and include among their numbers all the chiefs in the court of the Amīr almost without exception.70 In the furtherance of their proselytising efforts these missionaries open schools, form settlements in the oases of the desert, and—noticeably in the case of the Wadai—they have gained large accessions to their numbers by the purchase of slaves, who have been educated at Jag͟habūb and when deemed sufficiently well instructed in the tenets of the sect, enfranchised and then sent back to their native country to convert their brethren.71 It would appear, however, that the influence of this order is now on the decline.72