ABSTRACT
Of the regions of tropical Africa which are our concern in this book, Islam made its earliest, most con~erted inroads in the Eastern Sudan and Horn of Africa. While the southern part of what is today the Sudan Republic, with its largely Nilotic and negroid populations remained until recently for the most part shielded from any intensive Muslim influence, the north was from early times subject to Islamic penetration along three main paths. From the seventh century Islam began to infiltrate with trade from the east, through the Red Sea ports of Badi, A ydhab, and Suakin (and from the Dahlak Archipelago after A.D. 702.) Later, a western stream of influence through Darfur assumed some importance. But these two distinct lines of Muslim contact pale into insignificance in comparison with the impact of the main channel of early Islamization from Egypt and the north.
