Islam entered the African continent from North African countries such as Morocco and Egypt, and was one of the first regions to be conquered by the early Arab-Islamic expansion (7th and 8th centuries). From the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, Muslim traders contributed to the emergence of important kingdoms in West Africa, which flourished thanks to the caravan trade that traversed the Sahara across the Mediterranean world alongside the mountains and savannas of Western Sudan and Central West Africa.
However, a spread of Islam on the African continent gave much more trade and allowed military impositions.
