On Writing and Weaving. Muslim Scholarship in 17-Century Central Sudanic Africa. (original) (raw)
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Journal of Islamic Studies , 2021
Applying network analysis on five Ibadi siyar, from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, with each one representing roughly one century, Love has written a unique history of the Ibadi community in North Africa in the Middle Period. Its uniqueness stems from the relationships Love was able to map out among Ibadi scholars throughout centuries and across regions, between scholars (human network) and manuscripts (written network), between the Ibadi communities and the non-Ibadi Muslim ones, between Ibadi history and the broader North African and Islamic histories, and between the construction of the Ibadi tradition in the past and the invention of Ibadi tradition in the present.
Introduction: African History and Islamic Manuscript Cultures
The Arts and Crafts of Literacy, 2017
The study of Africa has suffered, and still suffers, from many stereotypes. One such stereotype was the assumption that there was no history in Africa before the arrival of the Europeans. After World War II, with the march towards independence of most African countries, a new generation of scholars, both from the continent and abroad, initiated a historiographical revolution that would eventually restore their past to the peoples of Africa. During this phase, scholars considered oral traditions as the authentic means of discovering the past and understanding the present in Africa. Although exceptionally useful, the problem with the drive to study orality as a source of history was that it overlooked a centuries-old tradition of Islamic literacy found in many areas of the continent after the conversion of Africans to the Muslim faith. However, this tradition of Islamic literacy has left a priceless heritage in manuscripts, both in Arabic and in various forms of 'ajamī (i.e. African languages written in the Arabic alphabet), which have only recently attracted the attention of scholars. The Arts and Crafts of Literacy: Islamic Manuscript Cultures in sub-Saharan Africa, focuses on this African Islamic literary heritage and offers a holistic approach to the study of manuscripts in Muslim Africa. Andrea Brigaglia and I have gathered twelve contributions presented at the international conference we organized and hosted at the University of Cape Town, 5-6 September, 2013, titled The Arts and Crafts of Literacy: Manuscript Cultures in Muslim sub-Saharan Africa. 1 These articles look at the different dimensions of the manuscripts, i.e. at the materials, the technologies and the practices, the communities involved in the production, commercialization, circulation, preservation and consumption, as well as at the texts themselves. As the Congolese philosopher Valentin-Yves Mudimbe underlines, '[t]he reality of an African history, particularly for the sub-Saharan part of the continent, does not seem to exist, at least academically, before the 1940s.' 2 That Africa has no history was the argument of the famous eighteenth/nineteenth-century philosopher Georg W.F. Hegel. In his often-quoted lectures, published under the title Philosophy of History, he uttered the following, powerful statement: || 1 Michaelle Biddle and Alessandro Gori could not attend the conference; nevertheless, their articles are presented here. Halirou Mohamadou's paper was solicited by the editors. 2 Mudimbe 1994, 21.
Islamic Africa, 2018
This study analyses five Bamana-language texts composed in the earlier twentieth century by Amadou Jomworo Bary, a Fulbe scholar from the Masina (Mali), that were hand copied in 1972 by the Fulbe scholar and researcher Almamy Maliki Yattara. The writing system, which uses modified Arabic characters to note phonemes specific to Bamana, is compared to other West African adaptations of Arabic script. The article also examines the doctrinal positions developed and world view implicit in the texts, which concern water rites in San (Mali), Islamic belief and practice, and healing. Attention is drawn as to how knowledge of local cultural contexts can contribute to a better understanding of these manuscripts.
Sacred Word : Changing Meanings in Textual Cultures of Islamic Africa
2015
This meeting is the first in a series of collaborative programs on Islam in Africa organized under the auspices of the newly established Illinois-Northwestern Consortium for African Studies (funded by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center grant). It is being planned in anticipation of the ISITA-led workshops, projected for summer 2017 in Evanston and Africa, on aspects of the codicology of West African Arabic manuscripts, and also in preparation for PAS and CAS’s collaboration with the University of Birmingham on its 2016 Thirteenth Cadbury Workshop on “Bodies of Text: Learning to be Muslim in West Africa.” A special evening reception Thursday April 21st is planned to honor Professor John O. Hunwick, in whose memory the conference is dedicated. This will involve members of his family, his students, and additional community friends and associates in a time for remembering his many contributions.
Based on the study of the encounter between the Portuguese and the Swahili in the sixteenth century, and on the analysis of the Kilwa Chronicle that resulted from it, this chapter questions the notion of 'textual contact'. Rediscovering the way in which a text presenting the five hundred years genealogy of the kings of Kilwa could have been printed in Portuguese in João de Barros's Decades in Lisbon, in 1552, is not a simple matter. While the why of the chronicle, for which there are several political reasons arising from Kilwa's occupation in 1505, is obvious, the how of the chronicle is much less so. Through a systematic study of the two written versions of the text at our disposal, the Crónica and the Kitāb, we will show that the existence of an original manuscript which, as is generally presumed, would have been found by the Portuguese on their arrival and would have travelled up to the mouth of the Tagus, raises strong doubts. These doubts could be answered more convincingly through an alternative hypothesis, according to which the chronicle was 'co-written' in the sixteenth century, as a result of the encounter. In addition to the study of the conditions under which the Kilwa Chronicle was circulated in the sixteenth century, this article would like to illustrate the fact that it is impossible to express a view on the circulation of genres – and in this case of historiographic genres transiting between the Muslim world and Europe on the eve of its maritime expansion – independently of the circulation of texts embodying these genres.
Welt Des Islams, 2009
In terms of the number of followers, the Tijāniyya is the largest Sufi order in sub-Saharan Africa. Geographically, it is strongest in West Africa, but also plays a significant role in the Maghreb and Eastern Sudanic Africa. This article highlights the development of the Tijāniyya in three locations during the twentieth century by focusing on three of its leading figures, who all happen to be called Ibrāhīm: Ibrāhīm Niasse (1900-1975 from Kaolack (Senegal), sharīf Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ (born 1939) from Maiduguri (Nigeria), and sharīf Ibrāhīm Sīdī from El Fasher (Sudan). Through a comparative analysis of their biographies and some of their writings, the paper shows how these three personalities were instrumental in adapting Tijānī doctrines and practices to changing contexts and circumstances that reflect both local conditions and global influences. The study is based on extensive fieldwork conducted by the author over an extended period of time and proposes to view Sufi communities as dynamic entities, rather than static expressions of "traditional Islam", in order to explain the continuing relevance of Sufism . The present version has greatly benefited from the comments Ahmet Karamustafa (Washington University, St. Louis) made as a respondent during the Evanston conference, but also from the discussions in Evanston, Halle, and Madison. I also received invaluable feedback from Charles Stewart (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Knut Vikør (Universitetet i Bergen, Norway), and Roman Loimeier (Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin) while revising the paper for publication. Last but not least, I would also like to express my gratitude to the Ford Foundation and the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungs gemeinschaft, DFG) for funding my research on Tijānī literature through various channels. 300 R. Seesemann / Die Welt des Islams 49 (2009) in African Muslim societies. As the paper demonstrates, the process of remaking the Tijāniyya can lead to rather contradictory results.
Approaching the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa
Approaches to the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2019
This work aims to open up new discourses about Islam in sub-Saharan Africa through the examination of how Muslims in this geographical and socio-cultural context have engaged with the Qur’an. Covering a period from the twelfth/eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century, this multidisciplinary volume examines a variety of geographical locations in sub-Saharan Africa including Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania. The book’s twelve case studies use different frameworks and methodological approaches from the academic disciplines of anthropology, art history, historiography and philology. They explore a variety of media and modalities that Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa, as elsewhere, use in their engagements with the Qur’an. This volume moves well beyond the materiality of the Qur’an as a physical book to explore the ways in which it is understood, felt and imagined, and to examine the contestations and debates that arise from these diverse engagements. The volume covers textual culture (manuscripts, commentaries and translations); aural and oral culture (recitations and invocations, music and poetry); the lived experience (magic squares and symbolic repertoire, medicinal and curative acts, healing and prayer, dreams and spirit worlds); material culture (textiles, ink, paper, and wooden boards); and education. In seeking to understand the plurality of engagements that Muslims from diverse communities of interpretation and from different parts of sub-Saharan Africa have had with Qur’an, this volume adds to the scholarship on the Qur’an as well as the scholarship on Islam and Muslims in Africa.