ABSTRACT
The Islamic culture ofthe ~anhiija Mulaththamun 1 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 or from the east. It is as though Arabic-speaking trading communities and such scholars as lived in southern towns like Ghana and A wdaghust left behind little legacy of scholarship to the Berber nomads in the wastes of Kiikudem who, all too stubbornly it seems, clung to illiterate and semi-pagan ways.
