The Jakhanke , a specialised community of religious professionals or clerics with their roots in the Mali Empire (c. 627-1009/1230-1600), have devoted themselves to the tradition of peaceful propagation of Islam in society. Plying the paths of trade and pilgrimage to promote a tradition of peaceful Islam in remote hinterlands, the Jakhanke guided the course of Islam in the provinces of the Mali Empire and beyond. Established in self-contained religious communities, called by Sylvain Golberry, a twelfth/eighteenth-century French traveller, "une caste particulière" (Golberry, 1:423),