430 ray a. kea
In 666–667, an Islamic force from the Rashidun caliphate invaded the Fazzan,
bringing about the collapse of the Garamantian dynastic authority. One postulation is
that the Muslim onslaught led to a migration of Christians and horsemen from the
Fazzan to the Kawkaw/Gao Kingdom in the later seventh and eighth centuries.
Between the eighth and tenth centuries a continuous process of Islamization—in
effect a political process—occurred in the Fazzan. From there Kharijite merchant-
scholars and clerics visited and/or settled in middle-Niger and middle-Senegal basin
urban centers. In northern and central Saharan oasis-towns, Islamic proselytizing
efforts involved competing orthodoxies, Sunni Malikism, Shiism, Kharijism, and
Mutazilism, in a multilingual and multi-confessional environment (including
Christianity and Judaism). Multiple identity/social groups mixed with and were
connected to different communities and networks, each of which defined itself by a
different label. Muslim geographers and other writers provide evidence of these
relationships and their nomenclatures.
Conversion of warrior-merchant clans in the southern Sahara was a slow and une-
ven (political) process; out of it came the eleventh-century Almoravid reform move-
ment and state-building project. Initially centered in the middle Senegal valley and
the western Sahara, the reform-minded warrior-merchant clans instituted a new geo-
political and geo-cultural framework stretching from the Ebro River in Iberia to the
Senegal River in the south. At its beginning the movement promoted a millenarian
idea of social egalitarianism but in later stages evolved into a state-centered, empire-
building enterprise based on the legitimating authority of Sunni Malikism.
Mediterranean hinterlandsDevelopments in the middle Niger basin gave rise to different political and urban
forms. There were polities like the Ghana Kingdom (c. third–twelfth century ce), the
confederated Kawkaw/Gao Kingdom (late first millennium bce–thirteenth century
ce), the imperial Almoravid Emirate (eleventh–twelfth century ce), the Mali Empire
(thirteenth–fifteenth century ce), and the Songhay Empire (fifteenth–sixteenth
century). There were cities and city-state polities like Dia-Shoma (c. 800 bce–c. 1600
ce), Jenne-jeno (c. 250 bce–c. 1400 ce), Tadmakka (c. fourth–thirteenth century ce),
Gao Ancien (fourth century ce to present), Jenne (eighth century ce to present),
Walata (twelfth century ce to present), and Timbuktu (eleventh century ce to pre-
sent). All of these political and urban formations became Muslim in the course of their
histories, in which the relationship between political, socio-economic, and cultural
elements must be considered.
There were also different urban forms, three of which are of particular historical
importance. The middle Niger floodplain and the banks of its larger tributaries were
sites of intensive urbanization and significant population growth from the first
millennium bce to the second half of the first millennium ce. The earliest form con-
sisted of large central nodes surrounded, at distances of up to 10 kilometers, by
occupationally-specialized satellite settlements of different sizes. This “clustered
urban system” first appeared in the first millennium bce (its origins to be sought in
market- orientated agro-pastoral communities) and remained important until the
early first millennium ce. The second urban form consisted of a double city, with
one section, a royal residence and political-administrative center, separated from the