Abstract Using specific illustrations from Maryse Conde's novel Segu, this is an essay that discusses how the coming of Islam to Bambar society affected that people's traditional, political, social and economic practices as well as challenging the Bambaras' religious beliefs. Before the arrival of Islam, Segu and its people, the Bambaras, were extremely different world from what they became under Islamic rule. The Bambaras were proud people with a long history in farming, and the …showed first 75 words of 1276 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1276 total…for the creation. The god Pemba whirled around and created earth while the god Faro took care of the sky and the waters (p. 14). Islam, of course, teaches that there is just one God, Allah. Bibliography Marys,Condee. Segu. Barbara Bray, trans. (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987). Kemedijo, Cilas. The Curse of Writing: Genealogical Strata of a Disillusion: Orality, Islam-writing, and Identities in the State of Becoming in Maryse Conde's Segou. Research in African Literatures 27. (1996, December 1): 124.