History
During the 9th century, Muslim Berber and Tuareg merchants brought Islam southward into West Africa. Islam also spread in the region by the founders of Sufi brotherhoods (tariqah). Conversion to Islam linked the West African savannah through belief in one God and similar new forms of political, social and artistic accoutrements. Cities including Timbuktu, Gao and Kano soon became international centers of Islamic learning.
The most significant of the Mali kings was Mansa Musa (1312–1337), who expanded Mali influence over the large Niger city-states of Timbuktu, Gao, and Djenné. Mansa Musa was a devout Muslim who was reported to have built various major mosques throughout the Mali sphere of influence; his gold-laden pilgrimage to Mecca made him a well-known figure even in European history writing. It was under Mansa Musa that Timbuktu became one of Africa's and the world's major cultural centers.
Read more about this topic: Islam In Mali
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)