Cultural Interplay: A Review of the Interconnectivity between Arabo- Islamic and African Cultures in the Northern and Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

It is an established fact that contacts between the Arabs and the people of Islamised areas of Nigeria facilitated the inevitable cultural interconnectivity. These contacts have, to a large extent, influenced the totality of lives of the people of locales of this study in Nigeria. Focus of this paper is purposively restricted to the Northern and South-western Nigeria because instances of the interplay could significantly be felt there.South-south and South-eastern Nigeria are excluded from this study because of the absence of direct link of the Arabs with the inhabitants of these areas. Islam gained direct access to the areas in the 19th century when some Muslim Hausas came to settle there. The paper traces the probable channels of contact between the Arabs and Yoruba people to consanguinity as postulated by some historians, the trans-Saharan trade route from Egypt to Sudan across the Saharan Desert and Lake Chad, Bornu, Hausa and Nupe lands of Nigeria which facilitated the close contact of Nigerians with the Arabs as well as Islamic proselytization. The possibility of genetic consanguinity or affinity between the Hausa/Fulani people and the Arabs could not be established. Trade links and Islamic proselytization are viewed as channels of contact amongst these people. The paper employs historical method which attempts to reconstruct the significant events of the past through analysis, synthesis and verification, in examining the socio-religious lives of the Nigerian people within the locales of the study, with a view to considering the extent of interconnectivity between the African and Arabo-Islamic cultures. Having discovered the extent of intercourse between the two, it discusses the identified areas of conflicts and accommodation and the harmonization of the two sides for healthy interplay between the cultures. The paper discovers that cultural interconnectivity is inevitable and this should serve a stimulant for peaceful co-existence which is highly desirous in Nigeria.