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rural Central Asia, in Slavic Review 54:3 (1995), 822.Mitra RahebSub-Saharan AfricaThis entry traces women’s contributions to Mus-
lim African societies during the colonial period that
generally lasted from the 1890s to 1960.
The history of Islam in colonial Sub-Saharan
Africa is often depicted through men’s participa-
tion in trade routes and Sufi orders. There has been
little mention of women in culture or politics.
While Islam expanded and changed during Euro-
pean colonial administration, local historical pro-
cesses and colonial policies de-emphasized gender
and women’s roles. Yet Muslim African women
continued to influence diverse social arenas. In the
process, African women reshaped Muslim identity
and local gender ideologies.
Islam had a long history in Africa by the time of
European colonial expansion in the late nineteenth
century. In British East Africa, Swahili-speaking74 colonialism and imperialism
Muslims populated coastal Kenya and Tanzania
(formerly German Tanganyika). Indian Ocean con-
tacts dating to the eighth century and a long history
of adaptation of Islam resulted in a unique Swahili
society. Marriage and local migration patterns may
have been important to Islam’s spread into the East
African interior during the colonial period (Sper-
ling 1999, 282). In the Horn of Africa, Britain,
France, and Italy carved up largely Muslim territo-
ries. Prior to European intervention, Egyptian
imperialism shaped women’s and men’s attitudes
toward both Islam and external intervention in that
region (Boddy 1988). In West Africa, the Sahelian
region just south of the Sahara Desert had been the
site of Islamic learning from at least the fourteenth
century, though the earliest contacts date back to the
eighth century. Women served as crucial links in
these networks through economic activity, mar-
riage, and religious scholarship (Boyd and Last
1985, Robinson 2000, 166). In West Africa, the
British claimed Nigeria with its northern Hausa-
Fulani speaking Muslims and an increasing number
of southern Yoruba-speaking Muslims. Otherwise,
France colonized most of West Africa. Finally,
South Africa’s Muslim population mainly resided in
Cape Town, Durban, and later Transvaal. Many
South African Muslims were Asian immigrants
forced out of Southeast and South Asia by the sev-
enteenth century. Enslaved African women and
men who converted to Islam also made up part of
the Muslim population by the nineteenth century
(Shell 1999). These diverse contexts provided chal-
lenges and opportunities for women to contribute
to local society and Islamic culture.
European colonial policies and attitudes acted as
another variable in Muslim African communities.
On one hand, European officials saw Islam as an
improvement over indigenous African religious
practices. On the other, European official and pop-
ular discourse also viewed Islam negatively, partic-
ularly in its treatment of women. In an uneven
fashion, European policymakers portrayed Islam as
local “tradition” or as an alien imposition. For
example, Great Britain applied its famed practice of
“indirect rule” in different ways. Based on a model
developed in Muslim northern Nigeria, indirect
rule ideally made use of existing power structures
and recognized local leaders as intermediaries. In
northern Nigeria, British policies maintained the
emirate system while restricting access to Western
education and other resources in the name of
Muslim “tradition.” Yet British officials ignored
women’s positions of power in precolonial Muslim
Hausa-Fulani society (Cooper 1998). Using a dif-
ferent approach, despite the centuries-long influ-