In the contemporary Republic of Mali in West Africa, Arabic is not a native language of the largely Muslim population (80–90% Muslims), except for a minority of approximately 1 percent of Ḥassāniyya speakers (www.ethnologue.com). However, Standard Arabic plays an important role in Islamic education and scholarship in Mali, and in this role the language has a long history in the region. Arabic did not spread to the Sahel region of West Africa primarily as the language of Islam, however, but as a language of commercial communicat…