Islam in Burkina Faso and order and by stimulating trade. They also tended to regard Muslims as culturally and educationally more advanced than non-Muslim Africans, and appointed Muslim chiefs and clerks as administrators in non-Muslim areas. In Upper Volta at the end of the 19th century there were only some 30,000 Muslims, but by 1959 there were 800,000, approximately 20 percent of the population. In 1984, Upper Volta was renamed Burkina Faso. After a succession of military coups, a constitutional republic was established in 1991. In Burkina Faso the Arabist and Islamist movement is viewed a counter-culture to the European style of modernity, and
Merry company with two men and two women Merry company with two men and two women Merry company with two men and two women (1657) is an oil on panel painting by the Dutch painter Pieter de Hooch; it is an example of a Merry Company, a popular form of genre painting in Dutch Golden Age painting, showing a group of figures who are not meant to be identified as portraits enjoying each other's company. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This painting by Hooch was documented by Hofstede de Groot in 1910, who wrote; "192. TWO LADIES AND TWO GENTLEMEN IN AN