ABSTRACT
Although Islam spread rapidly to North Africa during the first century after its introduction in the Arabian Peninsula and to West Africa by the tenth century A.D., its major penetration into the Sudan (specifically the modern borders of the nation-state and not the generic term used for the western Sahara) was relatively recent, its establishment traceable to the sixteenth century. Its spread from the north in Egypt, which was conquered and Islamized in the seventh century A.D., was effectively blocked by the presence of the Christianized kingdoms of Nubia, which in themselves were the result of missionary endeavor from Egypt only the century before. There a treaty between the Emir of Egypt, Abdalla Ibn-Sa‘d Ibn-Abisarh, and the Chief of the Nuba in 652 A.D. secured the region of Nubia in the Sudan as the dar al-aman (the region or place of peace) conforming to the classical Muslim division of the world into the dar al-islam (dwelling place of the Muslims) and the dar al-harb (the place of war, defined as non-Muslim). This unusual status given to the region by treaty established Nubia as a Christian outpost for seven more centuries, and only gradually did Muslim trade and teaching permeate the area. The Arabs in Egypt seemed to regard the First Cataract at Aswan as the southernmost outpost of their influence and were interested in Nubia as a tranquil area at their border to be intruded upon only for a supply of slaves (Trimingham, 1949: 76). Moreover the Nubians mounted a fierce resistance to their would-be Arab conquerers and the Emir of Egypt was advised to make peace with those people ‘whose booty is meagre and whose spite is great’ (Yusuf Fadl Hasan, 1967: 114).
