tion was this: Ghana was on the
edge of the desert in the north, Mandingoland between the Niger and the
Senegal in the south and the western Sahara, Djolof was in the west on the
Senegal, and the Songhay on the Niger in the center. The Mohammedans came
chiefly as traders and found a trade already established. Here and there
in the great cities were districts set aside for these new merchants, and
the Mohammedans gave frequent evidence of their respect for these black
nations.

Islam did not found new states, but modified and united Negro states
already ancient; it did not initiate new commerce, but developed a
widespread trade already established. It is, as Frobenius says, "easily
proved from chronicles written in Arabic that Islam was only effective in
fact as a fertilizer and stimulant. The essential point is the
resuscitative and invigorative concentration of Negro power in the service
of a new era and a Moslem propaganda, as well as the reaction thereby
produced."[17]

Early in the eighth century Islam had conquered North Africa and converted
the Berbers. Aided by black soldiers, the Moslems crossed into Spain; in
the following century Berber and Arab armies crossed the west end of the
Sahara and came to Negroland. Later in the eleventh century Arabs
penetrated the Sudan and Central Africa from the east, filtering through
the Negro tribes of Darfur, Kanem, and neighboring regions. The Arabs were
too nearly akin to Negroes to draw an absolute color line. Antar, one of
the great pre-Islamic poets of Arabia, was the son of a black woman, and
one of the great poets at the court of Haroun al Raschid was black. In the
twelfth century a learned Negro poet resided at Seville, and Sidjilmessa,
the last town in Lower Morocco toward the desert, was founded in 757 by a
Negro who ruled over the Berber inhabitants. Indeed, many towns in the
Sudan and the desert were thus ruled, and felt no incongruity in this
arrangement. They say, to be sure, that the Moors destroyed Audhoghast
because it paid tribute to the black town of Ghana, but this was because
the town was heathen and not because it was black. On the other hand,
there is a story that a Berber king overthrew one of the cities of the
Sudan and all the black women committed suicide, being too proud to allow
themselves to fall into the hands of white men.

In the west the Moslems first came into touch with the Negro kingdom of
Ghana. Here large quantities of gold were gather