Godala

The Godala are a Sanhaja Berber tribe of the Atlantic coast of what is now Mauritania, who traded along the lower Senegal. Like other Berber peoples, they inherited an old body of beliefs in which sun and moon were revered, spirits dwelt in caves and springs, and the dead were honoured as ancestors.

By the middle of the eleventh century the Godala were only superficially Muslim and still kept many pagan practices. Their chief brought the preacher Abdallah ibn Yasin to teach them orthodox Sunni Islam, and the Godala joined the Almoravid alliance.

They rebelled against its strict rule more than once, and in 1056 they killed the Lamtuna commander Yahya ibn Umar. By 1337 the old rites survived only as remnants beside Islam.