Published on Saturday, 29 December Civilizations were altered without being fully drawn into a single Islamic statement. A similar pattern developed in sub-Saharan Africa, as Islam provided new influences and contacts without amalgamating African culture as a whole to the Middle Eastern core. New religious, economic, and political patterns developed in relation to the Islamic surge, but great diversity remained.
Those originating within the continent are generally termed traditional, although it would be wrong to think of traditional beliefs and practices as static or unchanging.
Cultural borrowing from parts of the Middle East and Europe began in North Africa well before the beginning of the Common Era, twenty centuries ago. Because of the absence of written records outside the Nile Valley, little is known about the early history of traditional cultures in Africa other than that they had millennia to develop and spread.
Detailed descriptions of some African societies south of the Sahara occur in Islamic accounts from the later Middle Ages and from the s in European accounts of the Atlantic coasts.
Consequently, pockets of African Muslims and Christians came into existence south of the Sahara. Although some Africans learned languages and beliefs from abroad, Islam and Christianity were also Africanized as they spread.
Those Africans whom the slave trades transported across the Sahara, the Indian Ocean, and the Atlantic brought their cultures with them and, in turn, their cultures were altered by contact with other societies.
The greatest cultural changes within Africa have come within the last two centuries under the influence of European colonial rule and Muslim and Christian missionaries. Despite profound changes, Africans maintain and cherish strong cultural continuities with their past.
General Overviews The systematic, comparative study of African religion and culture largely began in the colonial era, when Western anthropologists were preceded by Christian missionaries. Historians took up studies even later, but the important introduction and case studies in Ranger and Kimambo show what historians should and can do.
Vansina is a guidebook to recovering history from oral traditions, while Herbert uses physical objects as a basis for exploring ideas and beliefs.
Horton is an intellectual rigorous effort to define the cultural boundaries of African religious thought, though nonspecialists may find the account of African religions in Ray more accessible. Lapidus places African Islam in the larger Islamic world.
Mintz and Price is essential reading for the development of African-derived cultures in the Americas. Iron, Gender, and Power: Rituals of Transformation in African Societies.
Indiana University Press, Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West: Essays on Magic, Religion, and Science. Cambridge University Press, Taking off from an attempt to understand African religion, these essays by an influential anthropologist range over many aspects of African intellectual life and propose an original way of thinking about religion.
A History of Islamic Societies, 2d ed. This sweeping history of the entire Islamic world allows one to understand the Islamization of African societies and the Africanization of Islam. The Birth of African-American Culture: The Historical Study of African Religion. University of California Press, A pioneering work on religion from antiquity through the colonial period, this scholarly collection is primarily concerned with traditional religions in eastern Africa.
Symbol, Ritual, and Community. Upper Saddle River, NJ: This wide-ranging, well-organized introduction to African religious history focuses primarily on traditional African religions but also includes substantial treatment of religion, nationalism, African Islam, and African independent churches.
Oral Tradition as History. University of Wisconsin Press, The first major change in the Islamic world from to CE was around CE when Islam was created, a religious combination of Jewish, Christian, and Arabic faiths.
African Civilizations And The Spread Of Islam Introduction The spread of Islam, from its heartland in the Middle East and North Africa to India and Southeast Asia, revealed the power of the religion and its commercial and sometimes military attributes.
"Evaluate The Cultural And Religious Continuites And Changes Resulting From Islam S Presence In Africa During The Period " Essays and Research Papers Evaluate The Cultural And Religious Continuites And Changes Resulting From Islam S Presence In Africa During The Period Was the begining of Prince Henry the NAvigator's expiditions along Africa.
This was the begining of religious influence from the Christans.
The first major change in the Islamic world from to CE was around CE when Islam was created, a religious combination of Jewish, Christian, and Arabic faiths. In the beginning of CE a man called Muhammad experienced a spiritual revelation and became the prophet of Allah, the one, true God, and spread his beliefs.
Organization and Impact of Islam. From the Umayyads to the Abbasids. Much of this religious diffusion was the result of the rise of Sufism in Islam. Islam would retain a presence in Spain, however, until the last Muslim stronghold at Granada was defeated in