Islam in Africa

Islam reached Africa within the first century of its history and spread by conquest in the north, by trade across the Sahara, and by scholarship and settlement along the eastern coast. The resulting societies were not peripheral to Islamic civilisation but central to it: Timbuktu held one of the medieval world's great concentrations of manuscripts, and the pilgrimage of Mansa Musa reshaped Mediterranean perceptions of West African wealth.

This collection gathers the encyclopaedia's African coverage: the early conquest of the Maghreb under Uqba ibn Nafi and Musa ibn Nusayr; the Fatimid caliphate; the empires of Mali and Songhai and the rulers Mansa Musa and Askia Muhammad; Timbuktu as a centre of learning; the Horn of Africa and Islamic Ethiopia; Egypt from antiquity through Muhammad Ali Pasha's reforms; the scholar Fatima al-Fihri, founder of the Qarawiyyin; the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta and the historian Ibn Khaldun of Tunis; the corsair captains who held Algiers and Tripoli and Sayyida al-Hurra, governor of Tétouan; and later figures including Nana Asma'u, Amina of Zazzau, and the Libyan resistance leader Omar al-Mukhtar.