MOHAMMEDANISM IN AFRICA.

In the month of June last, I received a pressing and often repeated invitation from the Bishop of Lichfield, and the organizing secretaries of the Church Congress, to read a paper, during the October session of that body, on the subject of Mohammedanism in Africa. There was much that was attractive to me in the proposal. It was a question which I had studied long and deeply. I was alive to its profound interest and importance. More than this, I had published, thirteen years previously, in my lectures on Mohammed and Moham medanism, certain views upon the subject, which had only dawned upon me gradually in the course of my inquiries, and were many of them, at that time, new, or almost new, to the Christian world. They were truths-if truths indeed they turn out to be-many of which had not then risen above the horizon. After much consideration I declined the invitation. I did so entirely on the ground that, during the twenty minutes allowed by the inexorable laws of the Congress, it would be impossible to give even the barest outline of the facts of Mohammedan progress in Africa, much less to draw the inferences which I should wish to draw from them, and to hedge them in with all the qualifications and reserves which so complex and so sacred a subject must needs suggest to any serious mind. By flinging the bare conclusions, at which I had ultimately arrived, at the heads of my hearers, without indicating the processes by which I had arrived at them, I should give needless offence. I should be misunderstood and misrepresented; and-what was much more important the cause which I had most at heart, the sympathetic appreciation of a great and, after all, a kindred religion, would be retarded rather than advanced.

I gave up the project with much reluctance, and I am bound to say that that regret was intensified when, a few days ago, I came across the report, given in the newspapers, of the epigrammatic and telling paper by Canon Isaac Taylor of York, to whom, as I presume, the invitation had, on my declining it, been transferred by the authorities of the Congress. I could see, at a glance, that without, so far as appeared, any adequate preparation or study of the subject at first hand, he had rushed with headlong heedlessness upon all the dangers which had deterred or daunted me; and, what more nearly concerned me, that, while the views which he thrust on a sensitive and excited audience were as nearly as possible identical with those which, thirteen years ago, I had promulgated in my book Mohammed and Mohammedanism, they were couched in an exaggerated form, and without any of the modifications or explanations which I should have thought essential. Whatever Canon Isaac Taylor's intentions,

the net result of his paper has been well expressed by one of his critics, who has long lived in Algeria, thus:

"Canon Taylor has constructed, at the expense of Christianity, a rose-colored picture of Islam, by a process of comparison in which Christianity is arraigned for failures in practice, of which Christendom is deeply and penitently conscious, no account being taken of Christian precept; while Islam is judged by its better precepts only, no account being taken of the frightful shortcomings in Mohammedan practice, even from the standard of the Koran.'

One good result, though it is difficult, under the circumstances, for me to feel any gratitude to Canon Taylor for it, may, no doubt, indirectly follow from the crudities which he promulgated before so influential a gathering. More attention has been and will be called to the subject, and out of the heated discussion which is now going on, we may hope that the truth will ultimately emerge. But even this advantage has, in the meantime, its serious drawbacks, for thoughtless and vehement eulogy naturally provokes an equally vehement and unreasoning detraction.

And now I will endeavor to do here what I could not have done in the twenty minutes allowed me by the Church Congress, and set forth, in outline at least, what I conceive to be the main facts connected with the progress of Islam in Africa; what, as appears to me, it has done, is doing, and can do what also it cannot do for the Negro race; what Christendom or Christianity-for the two are not, as Canon Taylor appears often to imagine, synonymous and convertible terms have done, or not done, or may yet do for them; what attitude, in view of these facts and inferences, should be taken by Christians in reference to the great opposing, and yet kindred, creed, and how, in particular, Christian missions will be affected thereby. If I often appear to agree with Canon Taylor in his statements and conclusions, it is little wonder, for, in so doing, I am only agreeing with myself, and seem to be hearing my own book of years past read aloud to me. If I differ from him, as I sometimes shall, it is, partly, for the reasons which I have already indicated; partly also, because in the thirteen years which have passed since the first edition of my book appeared, I have, as far as possible, amid other permanent occupations and special studies, not shut my eyes or ears to what was going on in Africa. As the result of what I then wrote on the subject, it has been my happiness to receive many private communications, and to form many intimate friendships with Negro missionaries, Negro philanthropists and Negro princes. In particular, I have been in frequent communication, both by letter and in person, with Mr. Edward Blyden, whom I regard as one of the most remarkable men, and whose book, entitled Christianity, Mohammedanism, and the Negro Race,* which has recently appeared, I *See LIBRARY MAGAZINE, December, 1887,

regard, taking into consideration all the circumstances, as one of the most remarkable books I have ever met.

Many scattered lights have, no doubt, been thrown upon the complex questions connected with the condition of Africa and its religious future by the long line of enterprising travelers, of self-sacrificing missionaries, of earnest philanthropists who have visited the country, from the times of Ibn Batuta or Leo Africanus down to those of Mungo Park or Barth, Moffat or Livingstone. These men have gone to Africa, have traveled or lived among the natives, have studied their manners, have endeavored to sympathize with and understand them, and have come back to their homes, laden with the guesses, the hopes, or the fears, the difficulties, the dangers, or the disappointments, which any attempt to grapple with so vast a problem must needs involve. But, hitherto, no light has shone, no voice has come, audible at all events to the outer world, from Africa itself. It is in the pages of Mr. Blyden's book that the great dumb, dark continent has, at last begun to speak, and in tones which, if I mistake not, even those who most differ from his conclusions will be glad to listen to and wise to ponder. The essays they contain have been written at very different times and cover widely different portions of the African field, but they are all inspired by a common purpose, and converge toward the same conclusions, and in their pathos and their passion, their patriotic enthusiasm and their philosophic calm, their range of sympathy and their genuine reserve of power, they will, I think, quite irrespective of the importance of the questions which they handle, arrest the attention of even the most casual reader.

If ever any one spoke upon his special subject with a right to be heard upon it, it is Mr. Blyden, and, for this simple reason, that his whole life has been a preparation for it. With physical energy, and literary ability, and general intellectual power, which, had he been a European, would have enabled him to fill and to adorn almost any public post, a great traveler and an accomplished linguist, equally familiar with Hebrew and Arabic, with Greek and Latin, with five European and with several African languages, he has deliberately chosen to consecrate all his gifts to what must, once and again in his career, have seemed to him an almost thankless and hopeless task, the elevation and regeneration of his race. A Negro of the Negroes, and keenly alive to their sufferings, their short-comings and their vices, he has, nevertheless, an unwavering belief in their future; and that future, who can say how much his single efforts may, with the help of those whom his book may, now and hereafter, influence, go far to secure? He has studied the Negro wherever he is to be found-in the West Indies, where he was himself born; in the United States, both before and since emancipation; in the English settlement of Sierra Leone, and in the republic of Liberia, where a thin

varnish of European civilization often serves only to mask or to destroy his individuality; and, in the Muslim and Pagan communities of the interior, where a white face has been but rarely seen. His book may make its way slowly at first; but I venture to think it will form a new starting-point in the history of his race, and will seriously and permanently modify the views which Europeans have hitherto held of them and of their future. I wish I had space to quote largely from his pages, but must content myself here by referring those who are interested in the subject to the work itself; and, meanwhile, not content to say with Pontius Pilate that "what I have written, I have written," and, availing myself of the advantages to which I have referred, I would endeavor to handle again the subject of Islam in Africa, modifying, or strengthening, or unsaying any statements which, in the light of longer study and a wider knowledge, may appear to me to require it.

First, then, what are the leading facts as regards the geographical extent of Islam in Africa? They are very imperfectly realized, even now, by many of those who speak and write upon the subject. Ever since the conqueror Akbar swept in one sweep of unbroken conquest from the Nile to the Pillars of Hercules, and spurred his horse into the waves of the Atlantic, indignant that he could carry the Koran no further in that direction, Islam has kept its grip for over twelve hundred years, that is on the whole of the Barbary States; in other words, on the whole of the regions which, in ancient times, served as the only connecting link between Africa and the outer world, the field of Egyptian and of Phoenician, of Roman and of Vandal civilization; the headquarters of African and the birthplace of Latin Christianity, as the great names of Tertullian and of Cyprian, of Arnobius and of Augustine, may well remind us. Turned southward by the bend of the continent, Islam next crossed the Great Desert, asserting its sway over the wild nomad races, who had never owned any other control, moral, political, or religious-the Berbers, the Touaricks, and the Tibbus. Wherever in this vast expanse, this waterless ocean, three times as large as the Mediterranean, there is a salt-mine, a spring of brackish water or a few palm trees, there are to be found the uncouth followers of the Prophet. In the larger oases of Aderer and Agades, Tafilet or Tidikelt, Wargla and Ghadames, Bilma and Tibesti, they are to be found in numbers, and the great caravans which pass and repass the desert, twice in each year, from Morocco to Timbuctoo, or from Tripoli to Lake Tchad, exchanging the hardware and cotton stuffs of England with the ground-nuts, or gold dust, or ostrich feathers, or slaves of the Soudan, are managed by Muslims only, and pass from none but Muslim, to none but Muslim

countries.

South of the Sahara, Islam holds almost exclusive possession of the

most fertile and the most populous region of Africa, the enormous stretch of country called Negroland, or the Soudan, extending from the Niger to the Nile, or, to speak more accurately, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and including the powerful, and organized, or at least, semi-civilized, governments of Futa Jallou, of Bambarra, of Massena, of Gando, of Sokoto, of Bornu, of Baghirmi, of Wadai, of Darfur, Khordofan, and of Sennaar. Beyond this region, toward the Gulf of Guinea, some of the most widely extended and vigorous and intelligent Negro tribes-tribes whose prowess we have experienced, whether fighting on our side or fighting against us, in the Ashantee or other wars-the Mandingoes and the Foulahs, the Jollofs and the Haussas, are, to a man almost Mohammedan. And, even along the coast-line, where various European powers, the French, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Danes, the English, the Spaniards, or the Germans, have, at various times, planted their commercial settlements, and where they can boast of a narrow and superficial fringe of Christianity and Civilization as the result, the trader-missionaries, or missionary-traders of Islam-for, in Africa, they are, generally, both in one-are pushing their encroachments, and manage to make many converts, alike from the Pagan and the semiChristianized natives. Sierra Leone and Lagos, the two chief English settlements where Islam had been, till within a few years ago, quite unknown, now possess large and flourishing and self-supporting Muslim communities.

Nor is this all. The great Eastern horn of Africa has been, for centuries, peopled by Mohammedan races, ferocious and fanaticial, such as the Somalis and the Gallas. Far to the south, Mohammedanism is dominant along the whole extent of the Suaheli coast, in the Arab Sultanate of Zanzibar. The followers of the Prophet are settled in considerable numbers in Northern Madagascar and in Mozambique; and far inland-chiefly, it is sad to say, as slave-traders— around all the great lakes, and along all the upper reaches of the Congo; and, southward of this again, they are to be found scattered here and there, always anxious to propagate their creed, even among the "unbelieving" Kaffirs, and, still further afield, in Cape Colony. It is hardly too much to say that one-half of the whole of Africa is already dominated by Islam, while, of the remaining half, one-quarter is leavened and another threatened by it. Such is the amazing, the portentous problem which Christianity and Civilization have to face in Africa, and to which neither of them seems, as yet, half awake. And, now, what is the character of the religion which is thus extending itself by leaps and bounds over the most backward and unfor tunate and ill-treated of all the continents of the earth, and what is the nature of the change which, speaking with the necessary breadth of view, it produces in the inhabitants? So persistent and so gross