"Urdu as an African Language: A Survey of a Source Literature", Islamic Africa 3, 2 (2012). (original) (raw)
Related papers
Approaches to Quran in Africa 2019
Journal of Islamic Studies, Volume 32, Issue 3, September 2021, Pages 433–436, 2021
Approaches to the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa Edited by Zulfikar Hirji (Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies 2019 Qurʾanic Studies Series, 19), xxv + 543 pp. Price HB £60.00. EAN 978–0198840770. ,
The paper is presenting a brief history of Islam in Africa. It includes the contribution of Islam in Africa in terms of it impact on languages, cultures, civilization and education.
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.
Islam in Africa/Africans and Islam, Journal of African History v. 55 no.1
This essay discusses some of the recent trends in the scholarship on Islam and Africa that contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the historical relationship between African Muslims and the global ecumene of believers. Rather than looking at the faith as an insular African phenomenon, this piece examines the links between Africans and the wider community of believers across space and time. Such an approach has important ramifications for our understanding of the dynamics of Islam. However, it also challenges many of the assumptions underpinning the geographic area studies paradigm that has dominated the academy since the Second World War. This essay suggests the adoption of a more fluid approach to scholarly inquiry that reimagines our largely continental attachment to regions in favor of a more intellectually agile methodology where the scope of inquiry is determined less by geographic boundaries and more by the questions we seek to answer.
Abstract Islamic Civilization Africa KLISC Conference Rev May 2016
Anyone acquainted with Africa's rich social history cannot deny the fact that Islam – as a dynamic religious tradition-has indeed been an integral part of its identity. In fact, it was Ali Mazrui, the Africanist, who powerfully described this dimension when he highlighted the continent's triple heritage (of which Christianity and African Religious Tradition also form a part). Though Khalid Diab, the Egyptian-Belgian journalist, significantly remarked that, " Islamic Civilization is so hard-wired into Europe's cultural, social and intellectual DNA that it would be impossible to expunge its influence " (Al-Jazeera 8 Jan 2015), one is of the view that Africa neatly fitted that profile since it – more than any other continent-tangibly reflect that. Indeed when one scans the length and breath of the continent, one comes across various types of evidence that points to the fact that Muslims left behind their footprints in almost every sector of the continent. These have since become part of Africa's continental heritage and most of them have fortunately been preserved by its numerous nation-states. For example, when traveling through central Africa one finds many scholarly manuscripts that have yet to be edited and that cover different themes. And when moving to East Africa's coastal regions one comes across numerous historical sites/towns such as Kilwa that are clearly reminiscent of Muslim influence. And as one travels further south of the continent, one finds ample proof that point to the Muslims' presence. All of these perceptibly demonstrate that one cannot sidestep the Muslim contribution to this continent's identity. So the purpose of this presentation is fivefold: the first is to conceptualize the term 'Islamic Civilization' that intends to act the essay's theoretical frame; the second is to briefly reflect upon the continent's social history south of the Sahara; the third is to comment on the rich Islamic manuscript collections and other heritage items that contributed towards the making of this civilization continentally; the fourth is to narrate in summarized form the status of Timbuktu as an educational centre; and the fifth is to tabulate the challenges that the continent currently faces in its attempt to preserve and protect its heritage items such as manuscripts from those who wish to destroy them.
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.
Qur'anic Exegesis in African Languages: Special Issue of the Journal of Qur'anic Studies
Qur'anic Exegesis in African Languages: Special Issue of the Journal of Qur'anic Studies, 2013
The interpretation of the Qur’an, and more generally Arabic books, in the languages of sub-Saharan Africa is currently a widespread practice, and for some languages and in some regions, also an ancient one; yet it has gone largely unstudied and unnoticed. Most of these commentaries have been oral, but in some areas they took the form of marginal or interlinear annotations of the sacred Book; the earliest known example, in Old Kanembu, dates back to the seventeenth century. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a considerable number of commentaries and translations of the meanings of the Qur’an have been written out for publication in printed form; voice and video recordings of Qur’an exegetical sessions have circulated as well. The research presented here leads to a reevaluation of the nature and potentialities of African languages, as well as of the achievements of Islamic scholarship in sub-Saharan Africa, while revealing little-known configurations of bilingualism, multilingualism, and interplay of the oral and the written. There is increasing evidence that Muslim scholars, expressing themselves in several African languages, developed lexical and grammatical structures fully adequate for communicating the concepts and contents of Islamic curricula.