Beyond north africa: transmission and synthesis -- Beyond the veil: Almoravids and Ghana -- Beyond desert trails: mobility and settlement -- Beyond routes and kingdoms: new frontiers, old heartlands -- Beyond trade and markets: community and vocation -- Beyond homeland: religious formation and expansion -- Beyond tribe and tongue in futa jallon: religion and ethnicity -- Beyond consolidation: rejuvenating the heritage -- Beyond confrontation: crisis and denouement -- Beyond confinement: mobile cells and the clerical web -- Beyond consensus: a house divided -- Wider horizons -- Beyond jihad: champions and opponents -- Beyond politics: comparative perspectives -- End of jihad?: tradition and continuity

Over the course of the last 1400 years, Islam has grown from a small band of followers on the Arabian peninsula into a global religion of over a billion believers. How did this happen? The usual answer is that Islam spread by the sword-that believers waged jihad against rival tribes and kingdoms and forced them to convert. Lamin Sanneh argues that this is far from the case. Beyond Jihad examines the origin and evolution of the Muslim African pacifist tradition