Approaching the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa

Islamic Africa, 2015

Rudolph Ware has written a most insightful and stimulating book about the preservation of Islamic values and knowledge-transmission in West Africa. The principal purpose of his study, as articulated in his Introduction, is "to highlight and historicize an embodied approach to knowledge that was once paradigmatic but now thrives in few Muslim societies. It is ironic-considering the racial and spatial logics at work-that many of these societies are far from Arabia in the African West" (29). In this quest he highlights the distinction between 'Islam in Africa' and 'African Islam' and argues persuasively that many scholars have fostered an inaccurate description of the qualities of Islam in West African communities. His analysis is based on a wide variety of sources, including-most importantly-"autobiographical narratives, and archival accounts of dozens of students who grew up in Senegambian Qurʾān schools during the twentieth century" (p. 41), and supplemented by Arabic texts about education, his three years as a participant observer, fifty-two interviews, seven archival collections, newspapers published in Senegal, and more than four hundred scholarly studies. Furthermore, because of his extensive linguistic skills, he translated all of the documents used to support his scholarship. The book is well illustrated by four maps and thirteen fine photographs by the author. In the first chapter Ware illustrates the intimate relationship between the 'embodiment' of the Qurʾān and the reception of its knowledge, that is to say, a person does not fully 'know' the Qurʾān without experiencing it physically: "Knowledge had a powerful allure for many students, often sparked by the sensory experience of hearing the Qurʾān recited" (52). He provides many examples of physical techniques (joyful, uncomfortable, even painful) used by teachers to experience the texts. Through physical discipline, rewards and the model provided by teachers, students came to embody knowledge and to understand the importance of behaving in a righteous manner: "ʿIlm was inseparable from ʿamal" (55). He traces the origin of embodiment and modelling in West Africa to the introduction of the Mālikī madhhab: "Māliki teaching came to stress practical, personified, human, embodied example in the transmission of knowledge" (56). Such embodiment is the key to the incorporation and transmission of both spiritual awareness and practical knowledge. After developing this thesis Professor Ware criticizes the development of disembodied education found in modern Islamic schools in which deep knowledge of the texts and ability to use reason to understand them unfortunately

The Qur'anic board is a central object in the material culture of the Qur'an in the local Islamic centres of Africa. The board features ornaments and calligraphy, a symbolic language which one needs to learn and interpret. This article provides a transcription of the symbolic code of the Qur'anic board based on the study of 124 samples from the Brooklyn Museum, the Gallery of Sam Fogg, the Musée du quai Branly, and other collections. The boards are dated to the end of the 13th and 14th centuries Hijri/19th and 20th centuries CE and represent several regional groups: Mali,

This article explores how religion possesses and is possessed by Africans. It does this by recognising both the power of religion to configure and of Africans as agents who reconfigure what they encounter in their African contexts. The central question of this article is how placing African agency and context in the forefront reconfigures talk of Islam and Christianity in Africa. The question is taken up through an analysis of two African religious leaders, Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba from West Africa and Isaiah Shembe from South Africa.

Islamic Africa, 2024

Qurʾān exegesis (tafsīr) in African Muslim societies represented the pinnacle of scholarly achievement, and public explanation of the Qurʾān was the event that marked the emergence of one of Africa's most successful Sufi revivals, the "Community of the Flood" of the Senegalese Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse (d. 1975). Niasse's network of knowledge transmission, foregrounding the direct experiential knowledge of God (maʿrifa bi-Llāh), continued to emphasize Qurʾān learning, but Niasse's own recorded Arabic tafsīr demonstrated a shift away from traditional West African sources in this field. Prior understandings of the West African tafsīr discipline locate the fifteenthcentury Egyptian Tafsīr al-Jalālayn as the primary influence on West African understandings. But Niasse's tafsīr exhibits a clear preference for an early eighteenthcentury Ottoman multivolume work, Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī's "Spirit of Explanation" (Rūh al-bayān), one of the most comprehensive summaries of Sufi understandings of the Qurʾān. This paper not only demonstrates the globally-connected nature of Islamic knowledge production in West Africa but also argues that Niasse's emphasis on gnosis built on the Rūḥ al-bayān to ultimately occasion a noteworthy addition to the existing literary corpus of Qurʾān exegesis.

Manuscript and Print in the Islamic Tradition

This article examines the social and intellectual ramifications of print as both an innovative new medium and an extension of the manuscript tradition, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the 1950s. Taking a broad transregional framework that highlights the emerging connectivity between the Islamic centers of learning and print production in Egypt, on the one hand, and Muslims in East and Northeast Africa, on the other hand, it examines how print created new sets of discursive webs and relationships that entangled Muslims across various physical and conceptual spaces. Furthermore, this piece surveys the elements of the manuscript tradition that find their way onto the printed page exploring how such elements persist from one media to the next and the transformations they undergo in the process.

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.

2014

Religion has always impacted on the production and content of literature. In West Africa, most discussions on literature revolve around writing that emerged from the colonial experience, and therefore, takes into account the presence and effect of Christianity on society. However, this privileging of a specific period has inhibited the study of the significant impact Islam has had on literary production in this region. By focusing on the dynamics between Islam and literature, the following examines the marginalization of ‘other’ cultural influences and experiences. It analyses factors that drive canon formation in West African literature and also critical reactions that determine the survival of literary texts. Introduction The general impression conveyed by literary criticism of West African literature is one of a cultural activity that is largely a synthesis of Western literary ideals and indigenous African oral traditions. In fact, for a long time ‘literary texts’ referred to wri...

Islamic Africa

African ʿAjamī literatures hold a wealth of knowledge on the history and intellectual traditions of the region but are largely unknown to the larger public. Our special issue seeks to enhance a broader understanding of this important part of the Islamic world, exploring the ʿAjamī literatures and literacies of four main language groups of Muslim West Africa: Hausa, Mandinka, Fula, and Wolof. Through increasing access to primary sources in ʿAjamī and utilizing an innovative multimedia approach, our research contributes to an interpretive and comparative analysis of African ʿAjamī literacy, with its multiple purposes, forms, and custodians. Our Editorial Introduction to the special issue discusses the building blocks and historical development of ʿAjamī cultures in West Africa, outlines the longitudinal collaborative research initiatives that our special issue draws upon, and explores the challenges and opportunities for participatory knowledge-making that accompany the rise of digita...

The Oxford Handbook of Qur'anic Studies , 2020

Assessing the multiple ways the temporal and spatial boundaries of the Qur’an have been expanded through the interaction with culture, this essay sets out to probe the recipro­cal but also ambiguous relationship between the Qur’an and popular culture. It attempts to address the central question of how does a bound book in period-specific Arabic be­ come a universal source of mercy in multiple dialects of Arabic but also in multiple non- Arabic languages, as also for oral cultures, semi-literate populations, and non-elite groups, all of whom draw upon and relate to its divine aura? Issues of language access/ privilege, literacy in multiple registers, and the post-Enlightenment, colonial triad of rea­son/belief/magic—all have to be examined with attention to the central role of the Qur’an as both vehicle and transformer of popular culture, for Muslims and non-Muslims, from West Africa to South-East Asia.

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.

Journal of Islamic Studies, 2021

Sufism has a strong religious presence throughout much of West Africa and Sufis have produced major literature and bodies of work in this region. Jihad of the Pen explores the new generation of research on the rich Arabic source material of Islamic Africa, particularly West Africa, and introduces the Sufi scholars of Africa while examining their spiritual and political influence.

2006

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.

Manuscript and Print in the Islamic Tradition

This chapter provides a chronology of the printed editions of the Qur'an published in Nigeria, in the form of offset lithography, from the 1950s onwards. Reconstructing the history of these publications alongside an anthropological description of Qur'anic reading practices in Nigeria, the chapter raises questions related both to the aesthetics and to the economy of Qur'anic calligraphy. In answering these questions, the chapter stresses how a set of cultural and historical factors shaped the Nigerian Islamic book market to enable an old calligraphic art to thrive in the age of print. The flamboyant aesthetics of the Qur'anic 'printed manuscripts' of twentieth-century Nigeria is, rather than a simple residual legacy of an 'ancient art', the fruit of the encounter of the latter with a modern economy.