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
Introduction: Where have we been and where are we going in the Study of Islamic Scholarship in Africa?
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
When I performed my first pilgrimage to Mecca in 1937, sixteen Muslim scholars from different parts of the World and I were invited for dinner by King Sa‘ūd b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz of Saudi Arabia. During our conversation, one Egyptian scholar apparently impressed by my erudition, asked me where I lived in Egypt. I replied that I have never been to Egypt. Surprised, he then asked me where I did study, and I replied with my father in Senegal. He then asked when my father did graduate from Egypt? I replied he never studied in Egypt. He studied only with his own father. Sadly, the Egyptian scholar believed that it is only in Al-Azhar that one can acquire solid Islamic knowledge.
Shaykh Ibrahim NiasseTo introduce this collection of essays, a personal note is much in order! In July 2012, I was appointed to the Alwaleed Professorship of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) to develop the field of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa, and especially its intellectual history. One of the first courses I taught was entitled ‘Readings in the Islamic Archive of Africa’. Its purpose was to explore the intellectual production of Arabophone intellectuals, especially those from West Africa. I contacted the librarian of HDS to order the relevant course material. He informed me that he specialized in Christianity and did not have the expertise to deal with Arabic books, and referred me to the Middle Eastern librarian at the Widener Library of Harvard University. The latter could not order Arabic books from sub-Saharan Africa because he specialized in the Middle East and North Africa, but referred me in turn to his colleague the librarian of sub-Saharan Africa, who could not order Arabic books either. Since Arabic was supposedly not a language of sub-Saharan Africa, it did not fall within her field. This difficulty of acquiring books had of course confronted graduate students working on Islam in Africa before my arrival at Harvard. To solve the problem without stepping on anybody's toes, the Dean of HDS offered some of his discretionary funds to acquire the books that I needed. A kind gesture – but it did not address the root of the problem.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Islamic Scholarship in AfricaNew Directions and Global Contexts, pp. 1 - 16Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021