This was a social rather than a political indication, and it was their way to prestige and status. The Tamim traders from the north were all Semites, and they often spoke to the rulers about the strength and vastness of Islamic states. These rulers, by embracing Islam, could belong to the community of the "strong" Muslims. Another reason is that African religions were tribal religions, and when one tribe achieved political dominance, the defeated tribes could not but accept the religion of the victorious tribe. Islam contributed to the unification of the ruling classes in the midst of tribal conflicts, but once these classes embraced Islam, they did not abandon their tribal religion, and their members continued to consider the tribal priests as their spiritual leaders for their tribal rituals. Thus, Islam was fundamentally a religion of an elite class, as it was a civilized religion in the first place. The result was that it did not spread widely, and even by the nineteenth century, when the call of the Mujahideen to Islam was intensified, supported by the force of arms, the number of Muslims in the nomadic tribes did not exceed half of their population. The strange thing is that the Mujahideen of the nineteenth century claimed that the peoples of Mali and Bornu had converted to Islam, but why did these peoples fail to convert to Islam since the eleventh century? They were pagan peoples who clung to their ancient beliefs. Islam did not lead to the abandonment of pagan beliefs by these peoples. The way they performed Islamic rituals was merely a thin veneer over their old customs and traditions. Indeed, large sections of the Songhai, the strongest groups in the region, still adhered to the Umayyad system. Nevertheless, this was not without a strong concern for the rituals of religion. Ibn Battuta mentions that Muslims were very eager to attend the congregational mosque on Fridays to perform the obligatory prayer, and they were also keen to have their children memorize the Quran. The ruling classes exercised influence far greater than their numbers.