There was no single moment of conversion. Muslim traders from North Africa and the Sahel were crossing Hausaland long before any king converted. The Kano Chronicle ties the first lasting institutions to the reign of King Yaji (1349–1385), when scholars of the Wangara from the Mali sphere reached the city and the first mosques and Muslim officials appeared.
The next stage came under Muhammad Rumfa (1463–1499), who is said to have invited the North African scholar al-Maghili to advise him on Islamic government. By the 16th century, Islam was the religion of the courts and the trading towns, while farmers in the countryside often kept older practices.
Salamone, drawing on Joseph Greenberg’s 1946 study, notes that direct contact between Hausa towns and North Africa was limited: Islam spread mainly through books and through local scholars, the mallams. Different authors therefore date “the arrival of Islam” differently, from the 14th to the 16th century, depending on whether they count the first court Muslims or the wider society.
Sources for this article
- Salamone 2010, ch. 1, p. 3; ch. 11, pp. 114–115 (citing Greenberg 1946)
- Greenberg 1946, general argument
- Last 1967, introduction
- Lovejoy 1978, whole article