While this religion might
be described as primitive, it cannot be viewed as simplistic. It
involved a series of complex ideas about fetishes, ancestors, and
deities which required a high degree of intelligence.
The intricacies of theology, law, medicine, and politics made it
necessary to develop a complex system of oral education. Europeans,
who tended to identify knowledge with writing, had long assumed
that, because there was no written language in early Africa, there
could be no body of knowledge. After the arrival of Islam, Arabic
provided a written form within which West African ideas could be
set down.
Only recently have scholars become aware of the libraries and the
many publications to be found in West Africa. Two of these books
were responsible for providing historians with detailed
information about the customs and social structure of the area. One
was the Tarikh al-Fattiish, the chronicle of the seeker after
knowledge, written by Mahmud Kati in the early fifteenth century.
The other was the Tarikh al-Sudan, the chronicle of the Western
Sudan, written by Abd al-Rahman as-Sadi about the beginning of
the seventeenth century.
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