Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Note on Transliteration and Calendar
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Where have we been and where are we going in the Study of Islamic Scholarship in Africa?
- Part I History, Movement, and Islamic Scholarship
- Introduction
- 1 The African Roots of a Global Eighteenth-Century Islamic Scholarly Renewal
- 2 Muḥammad al-Kashnāwī and the Everyday Life of the Occult
- 3 The African Community and African ‘Ulamā’ in Mecca: Al-Jāmī and Muḥammad Surūr al-Ṣabbān (Twentieth Century)
- 4 The Transformation of the Pilgrimage Tradition in West Africa
- Part II Textuality, Orality, and Islamic Scholarship
- Introduction
- 5 ‘Those Who Represent the Sovereign in his Absence’: Muslim Scholarship and the Question of Legal Authority in the Pre-Modern Sahara (Southern Algeria, Mauritania, Mali), 1750–1850
- 6 Philosophical Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: The Case of Shaykh Dan Tafa
- 7 ‘If all the Legal Schools were to Disappear’: ʿUmar Tāl’s Approach to Jurisprudence in Kitāb al-Rimāḥ
- 8 A New African Orality? Tijānī Sufism, Sacred Knowledge and the ICTs in Post-Truth Times
- 9 The Sacred Text in Egypt’s Popular Culture: The Qur’ānic Sounds, the Meanings and Formation of Sakīna Sacred Space in Traditions of Poverty and Fear
- Part III Islamic Education
- Introduction
- 10 Modernizing the Madrasa: Islamic Education, Development, and Tradition in Zanzibar
- 11 A New Daara: Integrating Qur’ānic, Agricultural and Trade Education in a Community Setting
- 12 Islamic Education and the ‘Diaspora’: Religious Schooling for Senegalese Migrants’ Children
- 13 What does Traditional Islamic Education Mean? Examples from Nouakchott’s Contemporary Female Learning Circles
- Part IV ‘Ajamī, Knowledge Transmission, and Spirituality
- Introduction
- 14 Bringing ʿIlm to the Common People: Sufi Vernacular Poetry and Islamic Education in Brava, c. 1890–1959
- 15 A Senegalese Sufi Saint and ‘Ajamī Poet: Sëriñ Moor Kayre (1874–1951)
- 16 Praise and Prestige: The Significance of Elegiac Poetry among Muslim Intellectuals on the Late Twentieth-Century Kenya Coast
- Conclusion: The Study of Islamic Scholarship and the Social Sciences in Africa: Bridging Knowledge Divides, Reframing Narratives
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
11 - A New Daara: Integrating Qur’ānic, Agricultural and Trade Education in a Community Setting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Note on Transliteration and Calendar
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Where have we been and where are we going in the Study of Islamic Scholarship in Africa?
- Part I History, Movement, and Islamic Scholarship
- Introduction
- 1 The African Roots of a Global Eighteenth-Century Islamic Scholarly Renewal
- 2 Muḥammad al-Kashnāwī and the Everyday Life of the Occult
- 3 The African Community and African ‘Ulamā’ in Mecca: Al-Jāmī and Muḥammad Surūr al-Ṣabbān (Twentieth Century)
- 4 The Transformation of the Pilgrimage Tradition in West Africa
- Part II Textuality, Orality, and Islamic Scholarship
- Introduction
- 5 ‘Those Who Represent the Sovereign in his Absence’: Muslim Scholarship and the Question of Legal Authority in the Pre-Modern Sahara (Southern Algeria, Mauritania, Mali), 1750–1850
- 6 Philosophical Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: The Case of Shaykh Dan Tafa
- 7 ‘If all the Legal Schools were to Disappear’: ʿUmar Tāl’s Approach to Jurisprudence in Kitāb al-Rimāḥ
- 8 A New African Orality? Tijānī Sufism, Sacred Knowledge and the ICTs in Post-Truth Times
- 9 The Sacred Text in Egypt’s Popular Culture: The Qur’ānic Sounds, the Meanings and Formation of Sakīna Sacred Space in Traditions of Poverty and Fear
- Part III Islamic Education
- Introduction
- 10 Modernizing the Madrasa: Islamic Education, Development, and Tradition in Zanzibar
- 11 A New Daara: Integrating Qur’ānic, Agricultural and Trade Education in a Community Setting
- 12 Islamic Education and the ‘Diaspora’: Religious Schooling for Senegalese Migrants’ Children
- 13 What does Traditional Islamic Education Mean? Examples from Nouakchott’s Contemporary Female Learning Circles
- Part IV ‘Ajamī, Knowledge Transmission, and Spirituality
- Introduction
- 14 Bringing ʿIlm to the Common People: Sufi Vernacular Poetry and Islamic Education in Brava, c. 1890–1959
- 15 A Senegalese Sufi Saint and ‘Ajamī Poet: Sëriñ Moor Kayre (1874–1951)
- 16 Praise and Prestige: The Significance of Elegiac Poetry among Muslim Intellectuals on the Late Twentieth-Century Kenya Coast
- Conclusion: The Study of Islamic Scholarship and the Social Sciences in Africa: Bridging Knowledge Divides, Reframing Narratives
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
Mbakke Kajoor, in central Senegal's arid regions, is a historical site for the Murīdiyya, one of Senegal's most populous and influential Sufi orders. It was the home of the order's founder, Shaykh Amadu Bamba Mbakke, and the start of his educational and spiritual life's journey in the late nineteenth century. It is today the site of a new educational centre and daara, a spiritual community that echoes the Murīdiyya's origins. A focus on education and economic development motivates the leaders of this project. They designed their educational model using Bamba's teachings and religious traditions dating to earlier West African Islamic scholars, with the intent of addressing the local population's need for agricultural, professional, and spiritual training. The shaykh entrusted by the Murid khalife général to develop this space sees this combination of knowledges – Qur’ānic, agricultural, and trade – as a way to bring economic development to the area.
This essay argues that the new daara and educational centre has been successful thus far because it draws on a religious and cultural history that the region's population values. Using those religious and cultural teachings, it is creating an educational model that meets the current needs of that population. The new daara's educational model promises to promote religious education, and also to bring professional and agricultural training to a region in need of it. By using cultural and religious traditions to address local needs, the project has the potential to attract regional participation as well as involvement from the larger national and global Murid network.
The challenges the new daara face are steep: while local, they are tied to global issues. The 2007–11 global economic recession deepened the region's unemployment problems, increased food prices and reduced funding from international financial partners. Environmental shifts linked to global climate changes add to the effects of over a century of repeated droughts. Similar economic and environmental conditions have been historical backdrops for previous daaras, including Bamba's daaras. Difficult circumstances, specifically economic recessions and environmental catastrophes in the late 1800s and the 1970s, were motivations for developing new models of religious education. The Mbakke Kajoor project draws on these histories to address present-day educational, employment, and spiritual needs. It is creating a community-based educational centre to bring secular and religious education together, with the hope that it will serve the population's needs and revitalize the region.
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- Islamic Scholarship in AfricaNew Directions and Global Contexts, pp. 261 - 280Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021