Discourses of Muslim Scholars in Colonial Ghana
by John Hanson and Muhammad al-Munir Gibrill
European Colonial Expansion
Europeans were active along the West African coast for centuries. Europeans rented forts where they initially traded for gold but eventually traded in slaves sent across the Atlantic to work in plantations in the Americas. Britain, the dominant slave-trading power in the eighteenth century, became the leading abolitionist power in the nineteenth century. They secured a series of Atlantic ports along the coast of West Africa and sent the Royal Navy to seize slave ships and liberate Africans held on board at Freetown in today’s Sierra Leone. As Britain and other European nations became industrial powers, demand increased for raw materials from West Africa. Commerce in palm oil, used an industrial lubricant in Europe, and other products expanded as steam-powered ships connected West Africa and Europe more closely. Competition for access to West African raw materials also increased, and a series of political and economic events, combined with new military technologies, led to European colonial expansion in the late nineteenth century. The process involved treaty-making followed by the use of force when West African political elites refused these initiatives.
Britain became the dominant power along the Gold Coast from its bases along the coast, with French claims in the Ivory Coast to the west and German claims in Togoland to the east. Britain invaded the Asante Empire several times in the late nineteenth century and finally incorporated it, as well as the middle Volta River basin, known as the Northern Territories, into the British Gold Coast. Muslim scholars serving the Asantehene made amulets for Asante soldiers in their various military engagements with advancing British colonial forces. Others in the savanna supported Muslim militant movements that fought British, French, and German colonial armies. But Muslim scholars eventually came to working relations with colonial powers. European officials valued Muslim scholars because of their literacy in Arabic, their connections to merchants, and their ability to help collect caravan taxes in the early colonial era.
Over time the British turned to Africans educated in English-language Christian mission schools to work in the colonial apparatus and other positions. Traditional Muslim schools produced only small numbers of scholars learned in Arabic, and Muslim reformers articulated criticisms of this pedagogical tradition. These Muslim reform movements advocate modern methods of Arabic-language education and have gained supporters in the post-colonial era. The West African Muslim scholarly tradition expressed in the writings of al-ḥājj 'Umar Krachi is an important aspect of the West Africa Muslim heritage.
Britain became the dominant power along the Gold Coast from its bases along the coast, with French claims in the Ivory Coast to the west and German claims in Togoland to the east. Britain invaded the Asante Empire several times in the late nineteenth century and finally incorporated it, as well as the middle Volta River basin, known as the Northern Territories, into the British Gold Coast. Muslim scholars serving the Asantehene made amulets for Asante soldiers in their various military engagements with advancing British colonial forces. Others in the savanna supported Muslim militant movements that fought British, French, and German colonial armies. But Muslim scholars eventually came to working relations with colonial powers. European officials valued Muslim scholars because of their literacy in Arabic, their connections to merchants, and their ability to help collect caravan taxes in the early colonial era.
Over time the British turned to Africans educated in English-language Christian mission schools to work in the colonial apparatus and other positions. Traditional Muslim schools produced only small numbers of scholars learned in Arabic, and Muslim reformers articulated criticisms of this pedagogical tradition. These Muslim reform movements advocate modern methods of Arabic-language education and have gained supporters in the post-colonial era. The West African Muslim scholarly tradition expressed in the writings of al-ḥājj 'Umar Krachi is an important aspect of the West Africa Muslim heritage.