Dating of beginnings of the spread of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa According to archaeological evidences

Abstract:
 The issue of dating the beginnings of the spread of Islam in the cities and kingdoms of sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most important topics that has been the subject of many questions and disagreements; because the spread of Islam there through peaceful means through migrations, traders and preachers makes determining a specific date for the spread of Islam a distant matter; because the Islamization of the people of these countries did not occur as a result of an invasion. As a result, dating the beginnings of the entry of Islam into the cities and kingdoms of sub-Saharan Africa has become subject to different and sometimes conflicting interpretations, some of which aim to prove the delay in the entry of Islam into those cities and kingdoms.
     These are deliberate efforts aimed at proving the delay in the spread of Islam in East Africa until the sixth century AH in order to reach the opinion that non-Arab migrations played an important role; Especially the Shiraziyya in spreading Islam there, and likewise the aim of trying to prove the delay in the spread of Islam until the fifth century AH in the countries of the Western Sudan (West Africa) was to link the Almoravids presence and the spread of Islam through the jihadist campaigns of the Almoravids, meaning that they forced the Sudanese to convert to Islam by force, not by peace and persuasion, and the aim of that was also to link the conversion of the kings to Islam first and the process of spreading Islam among their subjects, which is an attempt that we think was deliberate to prove that the spread of Islam in those countries was the result of commercial interests between the kings of those countries and the Muslim merchants who came to them, and that Islam needed official recognition and political power to protect it, and this is completely contrary to reality; evidenced by the spread of Islam among the subjects first and then the kings’ adoption of it, as is the case in the Kingdom of Ghana and the city of Gao. 
 In light of the above; We will present, through the material sources, a very important issue, which is the history of the beginnings of the spread of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa, by presenting models of some kingdoms and cities of sub-Saharan Africa from East and West Africa, especially the sites where some excavations were conducted during the past decades, by examining what the historical and geographical recorded sources provided in terms of data about the beginnings of the spread of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa, compared to what the archaeological evidence provided in terms of new data, to reach important conclusions regarding the subject of this study.