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
13 - What does Traditional Islamic Education Mean? Examples from Nouakchott’s Contemporary Female Learning Circles
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
Umm al Quraa is like a time capsule – it's easy to forget which century you’re in sometimes, as very little resembles modern life. For those that want a glimpse of the conditions the Prophet Muḥammad and his companions lived in, you won't come closer than this. In Mauritania, I met people whose hearts were alive, vigorously beating with faith, which invigorated their limbs, allowing them to wake up early in the mornings to worship and study late into the night with torches to illuminate their books.
Umm al-Qura is a village around 60km east of Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. This village has achieved international fame due to its maḥḍara, an institution for transmitting Islamic knowledge that ties in the tradition of an Islamic learning circle (ḥalqa). Its fame was based on the work and appeal of Shaykh Muḥammad Sālim b. ʿAddūd (ʿAbd al-Wadūd; 1929–2009), who was considered among the most learned scholars (ʿulamāʾ) of twentieth-century Mauritania, especially in the field of Mālikī jurisprudence (fiqh), Arabic language (lugha), grammar (naḥw), poetry (shiʿr), and the biography of the Prophet Muḥammad (sīra). Looking at one of the short biographical notes published after his death in April 2009, we see that maḥḍara education in post-independent Mauritania allowed him to enter influential posts within state institutions.
Shaykh Muḥammad Sālim b. ʿAddūd was born in 1929 during French colonial rule and trained in the maḥḍara of his father, al-Jalīl Muḥammad ʿᾹlī b. ʿAddūd (ʿAbd al-Wadūd). Coming from a well-known prestigious scholarly family, he developed himself into a famous scholar, jurist, and teacher. The first teaching position he held was during the 1950s at the Maʿhad Būtilimīt al-Islāmī, the first and only successful French medersa in the colony of Mauritania, which had been founded in 1918 and introduced new teaching methods and a modified curriculum into the maḥḍara institution. However, during his later life, he was a director of an internationally frequented maḥḍara in Umm al-Qura. But scholarly activities were not his only occupations: he was also very much involved in contemporary politics and designing post-independence Mauritania, especially the relationship between religious institutions and the state.
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- Islamic Scholarship in AfricaNew Directions and Global Contexts, pp. 300 - 320Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021