African religion has usually been defined as fetish worship-the belief that specific inanimate objects are inhabited by spirits endowed with magical powers. While this view of African religion is partly true, it obscures more than it clarifies. The fetish is believed to have some powers of its own, but, in general, it derived them from its close association with a dead ancestor. Behind the fetish was the religion of ancestor worship, and the fetish is better understood as a religious symbol. Ancestor worship was also part of the African's strong family ties and his powerful kinship patterns. Behind the realm of this fetish and ancestor worship lay another world of distant and powerful deities who had control over the elemental natural forces of the universe. While this religion might be described as primitive, it cannot be viewed as simplistic. It involved a series of complex ideas about fetishes, ancestors, and deities which required a high degree of intelligence. The intricacies of theology, law, medicine, and politics made it necessary to develop a complex system of oral education. Europeans, who tended to identify knowledge with writing, had long assumed that, because there was no written language in early Africa, there could be no body of knowledge. After the arrival of Islam, Arabic provided a written form within which West African ideas could be set down. Only recently have scholars become aware of the libraries and the many publications to be found in West Africa. Two of these books were responsible for providing historians with detailed information about the customs and social structure of the area. One was the Tarikh al-Fattiish, the chronicle of the seeker after knowledge, written by Mahmud Kati in the early fifteenth century. The other was the Tarikh al-Sudan, the chronicle of the Western Sudan, written by Abd al-Rahman as-Sadi about the beginning of the seventeenth century. The society of West Africa was stratified in several different ways. It was divided in terms of differing occupations: farmers, merchants, priests, scholars, laborers, and a wide variety of craftsmen. The social ranking assigned to these occupation divisions varied according to the importance of each occupation. Society was also divided in terms of clans, families, and villages. At the same time, there was a hierarchical division based on the varying degrees of political power each group exercised within its society. Some had the power to become chiefs and rulers. Some had the right to choose and depose rulers, and others could limit and define the rights of the rulers. However, almost everywhere there was a clear trend toward increasing centralized authority and decreasing popular participation. The centralization of power in West Africa never reached the extremes of absolute monarchy which occurred in Europe, and there was never the same need for revolutionary social changes to revive democratic participation within African society.