African-Arab Relations: From Slavery to Petro-Jihad

Abstract

The history of the Arabs in Africa has included a number of contradictions. The Arabs have been both conquerors and liberators, both traders in slaves and purveyors of new ideas. With the Arabs came both Islam and commerce. Indeed, trade and Islam have been companions throughout much of the modern history of Africa north of the Zambezi. In Northern and West Africa caravans of Muslim traders go back for centuries. In East Africa others have come for a millenium from the Gulf of Oman and Southern Arabia, consciously engaged in cultural dissemination. The spread of Islam in Africa has been due far less to consciously organized missionary activity than to trade and conquest. Ali A. Mazrui