In the eighth century, Arab travelers Idrissi and Al Bakiri mention the existence of more “Jewish” populations between Mali and Senegal today. “These people read Torah and call themselves Jews.” Where do they come from ?
Descendants of the tribes exiled by Sennacherib in 722 BC. Voluntary exiles in Cyrenaica from the 4th century to the Roman period, some of whom would have pushed further south? Syrians and Levantines of the 7th century fleeing forced conversion to the Near East? These are the main assumptions … which do not exclude a later contribution when the Almohads attempt to Islamize the entire Iberian Peninsula.In any case, these Jews are still there in the fifteenth century. Moroccan historian and traveler Mahmoud Al Katti speaks of a Jewish tribe living in a loop in Niger. Their name: The Israeli Banu. In the 16th century, coexistence went wrong. The Jews of Touat were exterminated by Abd El Krim El Meghili. In the aftermath, Mohammed Toure had all the Jews of Gao and the surrounding area arrested, but the Sultan of Timbuktu pardoned them if they dispersed (once more) and were forgotten. This does not prevent massacres. Even today, near Tendirma, there are common graves, shallow, filled with bones piled up and intermingled in burials for the least summary. But these Jews have not all disappeared because, in modern times, the explorer Mungo Park claims to have met Jews in Timbuktu in 1895, discreet but tolerated … And a black tribe of Negroid traits, a bit like the Ethiopians, which is even called “Al Kohen!
While in the second half of the last century, Theodore Monod notes the presence of Margen David (seal of Solomon) over a door in Ouadane, or he raises a Hebrew stele in Ghormali. And then, among some Tuareg of Timbuktu and Gao, Islamized today, one finds names like Eli, mardoché, zaryel, Lewi and in their dialects dozens of words of Hebrew, barely modified.
Sources:
The Jews of the Sahara, Jacob Oliel, CNRS Editions, 1994
Theodore Monod, The Hippopotamus and the Philosopher, Actes Sud, 1993