Race in Muslim West Africa
Local concepts of race and racial differences in the West African Sahel and savanna zone nations of Senegal, Mauritania, Niger, and Gambia require academic inquiry. In light of the recent Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali that has since been seized by Ansar Dine, the Islamic fundamentalists who have imposed a harsh form of sharia law in the region of northern Mali the Tuareg call Azawad. Executions, destruction of historical sites, and other immoral actions have taken place that necessitate international attention, but the rambles of the Malian government only recently requested permission of the UN for intervention from foreign troops, something that should have happened several months ago. Indeed, ECOWAS should have intervened months ago to help prevent some of the recent excesses of Islamic fundamentalists' rule of Mali. Furthermore, Malian civilians themselves have stepped up their desire for militias to liberate the northern half of their nation. Unlike the MNLA, Ansar Dine are not seeking independence for a Tuareg homeland, but rather sharia law encapsulated within a theocratic Malian state, which will likely never happen. Nevertheless, the political crisis that has engulfed Mali for the last several months has yet to receive the critical attention it needs. Indeed, it is only mentioned in passing by the American media to highlight the links to Al Qaeda that Ansar Dine possesses, no calls for critical analyzes of the historical development of the crisis. In my humble opinion, the political crisis in Mali and, specifically, Tuareg nationalism, which has manifested itself in rebellions in the past, is directly linked to local concepts of race, 'racism' and religion.
Although somatic differences between populations do exist and are sometimes obvious to the observant eye, particularly skin color, local concepts of 'race' in the precolonial southern Sahara, Sahel, and West Africa were often linked to culture. First, Berber-speaking peoples, whose descendants are currently the Tuareg and Mauritanians, were hardly a homogenous group. Though often assumed to be 'white,' many Berber-speaking groups were and are thought of as 'black.' Indeed, some Arabic writings refer to certain historical Berber groups in the Sahara as "Sudan," or black. One Arabic writer from medieval Fatimid Egypt, for example, a dynasty which relied on military slaves, included the Masmuda among the black slaves purchased to keep the Shia dynasty in power from 969-1171. Other Berbers, includings the Zenaga (the root of the Senegal) were linked with or associated with the "Bilad al-Sudan," an Arabic geographic term associated with black or dark-skinned people in Africa. However, definitions of blackness varied across the medieval Muslim world. For instance, one Afro-Iraqi philosopher and scientist, Al-Jahiz, wrote a book on the superiority of the blacks over the whites which included Copts, Berbers, and other populations as "black" that are not often thought of as such. Clearly, many "Copts" and Berbers are indeed black, and both Egyptians and Berbers were thought of as descendants of Ham alongside other African populations, such as the Zanj, Habashi (Ethiopians and people from the Horn of Africa), Nuba (Nubians), and others, such as the many ethnic groups and kingdoms writers using Arabic from North Africa and the Mediterranean used to describe the Mandinka, Songhai, Wolof, Fulani, Kanuri, and Hausa peoples (along with many others) of West Africa who actively participated in the trans-Saharan trade.
Another assumption often made by those ignorant of West African history is to believe that all states that developed in ancient West Africa were the result of trade accelerated by the Islamic world's demands for gold. Though it is true that the gold used for dinars of various Islamic states in North Africa and the "Middle East" were necessary for those economies, states and long-distance trade within western Africa have existed for millenia before the rise of Islam. Ghana, or Wagadu, an ancient Soninke state, had likely existed for at least 600 years before the rise of the prophet Muhammad. These Soninke peoples had controlled a large state encompassing parts of southern Mauritania, Mali, and Senegal, and was ranked by many writers from North Africa as the most powerful of the kingdoms of the Western Sudan. In addition, Kawkaw, Takrur, and other polities, including city-states such as Jenne-Jeno, were part of this political context. These states developed largely before the rise of Islam and the presence of Arab traders. In fact, archaeological work in Mauritania and Mali (as well as across West Africa) have shown stone settlements and fortifications, long-distance trade items, developments of more centralized and hierarchical communities, and high population densities in the historic core of the Western Sudan (particularly the Mema region of Mali). Many archaeologists and historians now believe that the Soninke-dominated Wagadu polity emerged out of the Tichitt-Walata civilization that dates back to 2000 BCE, and provides the earliest evidence of walled settlements and towns in western Africa. These communities were agro-pastoral, and likely interacted with Berbers and other Saharan populations, especially since rock art from the area depicts horsemen and cavalry. These Soninke and other ancient "black" West Africans have also intermarried and interacted with Berbers for millenia, and an ancient hybrid "Berber-Soninke" language developed that is still spoken in Mauritania, an "Arab" nation.
Perhaps this ancient interaction between Berbers and Soninke is what a historian of the Western Sudan from Timbuktu alluded to when he claimed that the kings of Wagadu had 'white' blood in their veins. Such a claim linked 17th century Timbuktu society's definitions of race, and thus must be considered in that light. "White" by this time was linked to lineages claiming Arab descent and honor to be closer to Muhammad as well as a term, "bidan," that implied non-slavery. These "bidan" were likely Saharan populations speaking a Berber tongue, and based on the presence of tifinagh, or ancient Tuareg and Berber scripts in the rock art, could have been linked to the Garamantes of the Central Sahara in ancient Roman times. These Garamantes were hardly "white" in the contemporary sense. If one looks at contemporary Berbers, Mauritanians, and other Saharan populations, diversity was always present, but one's subsistence patterns and culture played a larger role in determining race. Based on the semi-nomadic Fulani of West Africa, many "bidan" or whites were referred to by other West Africans as "red," and yes, some were quite light-skinned. However, based on Arabic writings mentioned above, and including some pertaining to Berber dynasties which took power in Iberia (Almoravid and Almohads), many of these "bidan" Massufa, Zenaga, and Sanhaja were considered "black" or perceived as dark-skinned. In this case, one Almoravid leader of the 11th century was described as brown and wooly-haired. However, as pastoralists many were distinct from sedentary farming communities of "black" West Africans and considered different, despite frequent intermarriage mutual dependencies. Regardless of projected labels to describe different groups, some physical differences did and do exist, particularly obvious in some Mauritanians and some Tuareg compared to Wolof, Mandinka, Dogon, Hausa, and other West Africans. However, one must point out the phenotypical diversity within Mauritanian "Arabs" and other Saharan populations goes back several thousands of years. Based on discoveries of ancient human remains, rock art (hardly an ideal source, but it does display phenotypical variation across the Holocene Sahara), and the writings of the Greco-Roman period, "blacks" or "Ethiopians" were well-known and inhabited the Sahara and North Africa.
Many of these ancient Berbers that crossed the Sahara or lived within it's vast borders would have included many autochthonous "blacks" who were already Berbers or part of its spread to West Africa. Furthermore, many ancient Saharan and Sahelian populations contain phenotypical variation due to the dry, arid climate which tends to lead to longer limbs and longer, narrower noses that may explain some of the different phenotypes among Fulani and Tuareg peoples. Regardless of the impact of the environment on human phenotypes within the region, a large degree of heterogeneity likely persisted for milennia, something noted by archaeologists uncovering the remains of two chronologically distinguished populations in Gobero, Niger, which I write about here. They claimed that the first population consisted of tall men and women with "Mediterranean" features, but many of those so-called "Mediterranean" features can be found within West or East Africa. In fact, ancient human remains uncovered in Kenya dating to a similar Late Paleolithic period were labelled "Mediterranean" for being tall peoples lacking stereotypical "Negroid traits. Moreover, the Mediterranean is a sea surrounded by lands inhabited by diverse peoples, including "blacks" from ancient Egypt and other regions of North Africa. Equally problematic is labels such as "sub-Saharan," since "sub-Saharan" Africa includes a region with incredible range in physical characteristics, encompassing 92% of world variation. And Saharan and Sahel populations clearly straddle both North and "sub-Saharan" Africans, although one does not need to be from south of the Sahara to be "black" or "African" since an entire continent is a large landmass with massive heterogeneity.
An Arab identity only developed in the Sahara during the 17th century when Hassaniya Arab migrants conquered local Berbers and the latter gradually adopted an Arab identity. These people, referred to as "Moors" by European contemporaries, were also described by white European writers as predators on sedentary black agriculturalists and perceived as only fit for slave labor. This color-coded scheme for labor and local concepts of race was also present among other neighboring West African societies considered "black" by outsiders, such as the Fulani of Niger and the Songhai of Mali and Niger. This concept of "bidan" or whiteness was always linked to a broader context of Islam, Arabs, and the Arabic language, however. And many self-proclaimed "bidan" or peoples labelled as such would be considered "black" in another context, like the Maghreb or Europe. This seems to be the case for many of the Almoravid leaders and soldiers during their 11th century conquest of the Maghreb and Iberia. Furthermore, when 14th century Moroccan Arab traveler Ibn Battuta visited the Mali empire and Sahel, he did not attribute any racial identity such as bidan to the Sahelian Berbers, mostly Massufa and others in desert-edge cities such as Walata. He on only one occassion references any whiteness, and presumably does not refer to their "whiteness' because culturally they're so far from the standard Arabo-Islamic way of life to the north. Among these southern Saharan and Sahelian Berbers, women often did not wear the veil, matrilineal practices deviated from the patrilineal Arabs, and the perceived freedom of Massufa women shocked Ibn Battuta. Thus, regardless of their skin color, these Berber-speaking groups could not be 'white' since they were not following established Arab Muslim cultural pratices. In addition, during Ibn Battuta's stay in 14th century Mali, he noticed no sign of 'racial' animus or conflict between groups such as the Massufa and the "black" Mandingo rulers of Mali whose representatives carried out order and justice in Sahelian cities such as Walata.
In addition to fictitious lineages and patrilineal Arab Muslim culture, "bidan" was also built on distinguishing slaves from non-slaves. To be a slave implied someone not being a Muslim, and since most slaves in West African societies were black and non-Muslim, many found further reason to distance themselves from 'blackness.' Thus, black Fulbe and Soninke people of non-slave or lower-castes often identitified themselve sin contrast to 'blacks,' though all groups were considered black by Europeans and "Arab" North Africans. For Arabo-Berbers, their lineages also put them in position where blacks were in "tutelage" for the Islamic knowlege and culture they possess, meaning that they were also incapable of being slaves because they were "white," Muslim, and Muslims could not be enslaved, thereby making them white and Islam "white." Of course, one must keep in mind that these lineages did not often correlate with one's phenotype, so many of these "whites" were dark-skinned people. If blackness came to define servile status, then why would anyone want to identify with it?
Clearly, these precolonial and colonial period definitions of race have cast long shadows. The contemporary crisis in Mali or ongoing slavery in Mauritania are directly linked to these notions of black as servile and equated with slavery. Relations between Senegal and Mauritania have also been strained by these issues of race and racial identity. Meanwhile, "Moors" from Mauritania have immigrated to Senegal and other West African nations while Tuareg have spread further into some places such as northern Nigeria while those in Mali and Niger continue to live on the margins of these modern West African states. Tuareg communities faced further marginalization from Mali when Modibo Keita and successive rulers defined Mali in terms exclusive of Tuareg or "non-blacks" while also focusing on the southern half of the nation where the majority of the population lived.
The World is Robert: Race in Muslim West Africa
and the alleged slave camp in which even the narrator admitted the allged slaves were free but still slaves