ABSTRACT
The Islamic culture o f the Sanhaja Mulalhthamun' when they first enter history is shrouded behind an impenetrable veil. A lack of documentary evidence conceals the extent to which literary Arabic was used in the Western Sahara before the Almoravids. Accounts are vague or local in their description. Scholars remain nameless or have come as missionary teachers from the north o r from the east. It is as though Arabic-speaking trading communities and such scholars as lived in southern tow ns like Ghana and Awdaghust left behind little legacy of scholarship to the Berber nomads in the wastes o f Kakudem who, all too stubbornly it seems, clung to illiterate and semi-pagan ways.
