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Virtually all Mauritanians are Sunni Muslims. They adhere to the Maliki madhhab, one of the four Sunni schools of law. Since independence in 1960, Mauritania has been an Islamic republic. The Constitutional Charter of 1985 declares Islam the state religion and sharia the law of the land.
The Umayyads were the first Arab Muslims to enter Mauritania. During the Islamic conquests, they made incursions into Mauritania and were present in the region by the end of the 7th century. [1] Many Berber tribes in Mauritania fled the arrival of the Arabs to the Gao region in Mali. [2]
It was not until the nineteenth century that the brotherhoods (Sufism and tariqa) assumed importance when they attempted to make religion a force for expanding identities and loyalties beyond the limits of kinship. The relative peace brought to the area by French administration and the growing resentment of colonial rule contributed to the rapid rise in the power and influence of the brotherhoods. In recent decades, these orders have opposed tribalism and have been an indispensable element in the growth of nationalist sentiment. Since the Ahmadiyya Islamic movement has a large presence in West Africa, the African Muslim Congress met in Mauritania in 1976 to call upon African nations to regard Ahmadi Muslims as apostates, though with little success. [3]
In the 1980s, two brotherhoods (tariqa), the Qadiriyyah and the Tijaniyyah, accounted for nearly all the brotherhood membership in Mauritania. The Qadiriyyah and Tijaniyyah were essentially parallel "ways," differing primarily in their methods of reciting the litanies. Their Islamic doctrines and their religious obligations were basically similar. Two smaller brotherhoods also existed — the Shadhiliyyah, centered in Boumdeït in Tagant Region, and the Goudfiya, found in the regions of Tagant, Adrar, Hodh ech Chargui, and Hodh el Gharbi.
The original inhabitants of Mauritania were the Bafour, presumably a Mande ethnic group, connected to the contemporary Arabized minor social group of Imraguen ("fishermen") on the Atlantic coast.
Sheikh is an honorific title in the Arabic language, literally meaning "elder".
Beni Ḥassan is a Bedouin Arab tribe which inhabits Western Sahara, Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria. It is one of the four sub-tribes of the Beni Maqil who emigrated in the 11th century from South Arabia to the Maghreb with the Bani Hilal and Banu Sulaym Arab tribes. In the 13th century, they took the Sanhaja territories in the southwest of the Sahara. In Morocco, they first settled, alongside their Maqil relatives, in the area between Tadla and the Moulouya River. The Sous Almohad governor called upon them for help against a rebellion in the Sous, and they resettled in and around that region. They later moved to Mauritania, and from the 16th century onwards, they managed to push back all black Mauritanians southwards to the Senegal Valley river. The Beni Hassan and other warrior Arab tribes dominated the Sanhaja Berber tribes of the area after the Char Bouba war of the 17th century. As a result, Arabs became the dominant ethnic group in Western Sahara and Mauretania. The Bani Hassan dialect of Arabic became used in the region and is still spoken, in the form of Hassaniya Arabic. The hierarchy established by the Beni Hassan tribe gave Mauritania much of its sociological character. That ideology has led to oppression, discrimination and even enslavement of other groups in Mauritania.
The Tijāniyyah is a Sufi tariqa, originating in the Maghreb but now more widespread in West Africa, particularly in Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, Niger, Chad, Ghana, northern and southwestern Nigeria and some parts of Sudan. The Tijāniyyah order is also present in the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in India. Its adherents are called Tijānī. Tijānīs place great importance on culture and education and emphasize the individual adhesion of the disciple (murid). To become a member of the order, one must receive the Tijānī wird, or a sequence of holy phrases to be repeated twice daily, from a muqaddam, or representative of the order.
The Banu Hilal was a confederation of Arab tribes from the Najd region of the central Arabian Peninsula that emigrated to the Maghreb region of North Africa in the 11th century. Masters of the vast plateaux of the Najd, they enjoyed a somewhat infamous reputation, possibly owing to their relatively late conversion to Islam and accounts of their campaigns in the borderlands between Iraq and Syria. When the Fatimid Caliphate became the rulers of Egypt and the founders of Cairo in 969, they hastened to confine the unruly Bedouin in the south before sending them to Central North Africa and then to Morocco.
Islam is the dominant religion in Libya, with 97% of Libyans following Sunni Islam. Article 5 of the Libyan Constitution declared that Islam was the official religion of the state. The post-revolution National Transitional Council has explicitly endeavored to reaffirm Islamic values, enhance appreciation of Islamic culture, elevate the status of Quranic law and, to a considerable degree, emphasize Quranic practice in everyday Libyan life with legal implementation in accordance to Islamic jurisprudence known as sharia. Libya has a small presence of Ahmadis and Shias, primarily consisting of Pakistani immigrants, though unrecognized by the state.
The Qadiriyya are members of the Sunni Qadiri tariqa. The tariqa got its name from Abdul Qadir Gilani, who was a Hanbali scholar from Gilan, Iran. The order relies strongly upon adherence to the fundamentals of Sunni Islamic law.
The dominant religion in Sudan is Islam practiced by around 90.7% of the nation's population. Christianity is the largest minority faith in country accounting for around 5.4% of the population. A substantial population of the adherents of traditional faiths is also present.
The Reguibat is a Sahrawi tribal confederation of mixed Arab and Sanhaja Berber origins. The Reguibat speak Hassaniya Arabic, and are Arab in culture. They claim descent from Sidi Ahmed al-Reguibi, an Arab Islamic preacher from Beni Hassan who settled in Saguia el-Hamra in 1503. They also believe that they are, through him, a chorfa tribe, i.e. descendants of Muhammad. Religiously, they belong to the Maliki school of Sunni Islam. Their population in 1996 exceeded 100,000 people.
The Oulad Delim are a Bedouin Sahrawi tribe of Arab descent which originated in Yemen. They are descended from Delim bin Hassan, who was from the Ma'qili tribe of Beni Hassan which settled in the Sahara in the 12th century. They were formerly considered of Hassane status i.e. part of the ruling warrior stratum. The Oulad Delim speak Hassaniya Arabic, a Bedouin dialect which is very close to pure classical Arabic. They traditionally live in the southern regions of Western Sahara, especially around the city of Dakhla. They are also found in Morocco in the region of Rabat, Marrakech, Sidi Kacem and El Jadida, where their ancestors received lands from the Moroccan sultans for their participation in warfare, as a Guich tribe, as well as in Mauritania in the region between Nouadhibou and Idjil.
Islam is the predominant religion in Senegal. 97 percent of the country's population is estimated to be Muslim. Islam has had a presence in Senegal since the 11th century. Sufi brotherhoods expanded with French colonization, as people turned to religious authority rather than the colonial administration. The main Sufi orders are the Tijaniyyah, the Muridiyyah or Mourides, and to a lesser extent, the pan-Islamic Qadiriyyah and the smaller Layene order. Approximately 1% are Shiites.
Islam in Niger accounts for the vast majority of the nation's religious adherents. The faith is practiced by more than 99.3% of the population, although this figure varies by source and percentage of the population who are classified as Animist. The vast majority of Muslims in Niger are Malikite Sunni with Salafi influences. Many of the communities who continue to practice elements of traditional religions do so within a framework of syncretic Islamic belief, making agreed statistics difficult. Islam in Niger, although dating back more than a millennium, gained dominance over traditional religions only in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and has been marked by influences from neighboring societies. Sufi brotherhoods have become the dominant Muslim organization, like much of West Africa. Despite this, a variety of interpretations of Islam coexist—largely in peace—with one another as well as with minorities of other faiths. The government of Niger is secular in law while recognising the importance of Islam to the vast majority of its citizens.
The BanuMa'qil is an Arab nomadic tribe that originated in South Arabia. The tribe emigrated to the Maghreb region of North Africa with the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym tribes in the 11th century. They mainly settled in and around the Saharan wolds and oases of Morocco; in Tafilalt, Wad Nun, Draa and Taourirt. With the Ma'qil being a Bedouin tribe that originated in the Arabian Peninsula, like Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym, they adapted perfectly to the climatic desert conditions of the Maghreb, discovering the same way of life as in the Arabian Peninsula. The Ma'qil branch of Beni Hassan which came to dominate all of Mauritania, Western Sahara, south Morocco, and south-west Algeria, spread the Hassaniya Arabic dialect, which is very close to classical Arabic.
Sudanese Arabs are the inhabitants of Sudan who identify as Arabs and speak Arabic as their mother tongue. Some of them are descendants of Arabs who migrated to Sudan from the Arabian Peninsula, although the rest have been described as Arabized indigenous peoples of Sudan of mostly Nubian, Nilo-Saharan, and Cushitic ancestry who are culturally and linguistically Arab, with varying cases of admixture from Peninsular Arabs. This admixture is thought to derive mostly from the migration of Peninsular Arab tribes in the 12th century, who intermarried with the Nubians and other indigenous populations, as well as introducing Islam. The Sudanese Arabs were described as a "hybrid of Arab and indigenous blood", and the Arabic they spoke was reported as "a pure but archaic Arabic". Burckhardt noted that the Ja'alin of the Eastern Desert are exactly like the Bedouin of Eastern Arabia.
Precolonial Mauritania, lying next to the Atlantic coast at the western edge of the Sahara Desert, received and assimilated into its complex society many waves of Saharan migrants and conquerors.
Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a sovereign country in Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to the north and northwest, Algeria to the northeast, Mali to the east and southeast, and Senegal to the southwest. By land area, Mauritania is the 11th-largest country in Africa and the 28th-largest in the world, and 90% of its territory is situated in the Sahara. Most of its population of approximately 4.3 million lives in the temperate south of the country, with roughly one-third concentrated in the capital and largest city, Nouakchott, located on the Atlantic coast.
Maghrebi Arabs or North African Arabs are the inhabitants of the Maghreb region of North Africa whose ethnic identity is Arab, whose native language is Arabic and trace their ancestry to the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. This ethnic identity is a product of the centuries-long Arab migration to the Maghreb since the 7th century, which changed the demographic scope of the Maghreb and was a major factor in the ethnic, linguistic and cultural Arabization of the Maghreb region. The descendants of the original Arab settlers who continue to speak Arabic as a first language currently form the single largest population group in North Africa.
The people of Mauritania are overwhelmingly adherents of Sunni Islam, of the Maliki school of jurisprudence.
The Zawaya are tribes in the southern Sahara who have traditionally followed a deeply religious way of life. They accepted a subordinate position to the warrior tribes, whether Arab or Berber, who had little interest in Islam. The Zawaya introduced Sufi brotherhoods to the black populations south of the Sahara. The jihad movements of the Fula people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have their origins with the Zawaya. Today the Zawaya are one of the two noble castes of Mauritania.
The Malikization of the Maghreb was the process of encouraging the adoption of the Maliki school of Sunni Islam in the Maghreb, especially in the 11th and 12th centuries, to the detriment of Shia and Kharijite inhabitants of the Maghreb. The process occurred as Maliki scholars increasingly gained influence, resulting in the widespread acceptance of the Maliki legal school and the subsequent marginalization of other forms of Islam. Malikism was considered a more conservative and mainstream variant of Sunni Islam.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain . Country Studies. Federal Research Division.
