West African ʿulamāʾ and Salafism in Mecca and Medina

Chanfi Ahmed shows how West African ʿulamāʾ, who fled the European colonization of their region to settle in Mecca and Medina, helped the regime of King Ibn Sa’ud at its beginnings in the field of teaching and spreading the Salafῑ-Wahhabῑ’s Islam both inside and outside Saudi Arabia. This is against the widespread idea of considering the spread of the Salafῑ-Wahhābῑ doctrine as being the work of ʿulamāʾ from Najd (Central Arabia) only. We learn here that the diffusion of this doctrine after 1926 was much more the work of ʿulamāʾ from other parts of the Muslim World who had already acquired this doctrine and spread it in their countries by teaching and publishing books related to it. In addition Chanfi Ahmed demonstrates that concerning Islamic reform and mission (daʿwa), Africans are not just consumers, but also thinkers and designers.

Chanfi Ahmed has been trained in Islamic studies and received his PhD in Social History at the EHESS in Paris. Until 2013 he was a Research Fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. His books include Islam et politique aux Comores, Paris, 2000, Ngoma et mission islamique (Daʿwa) aux Comores et en Afrique orientale. Une approche anthropologique, Paris, 2002; Les conversions à l’Islam fondamentaliste en Afrique au sud du Sahara. Le cas de la Tanzanie et du Kenya, Paris, 2008.

'Chanfi Ahmed’s West African Ulama and Salafism in Mecca and Medina. Jawāb al-Ifrῑqῑ - The Response of the African presents a critical approach into the study of what could be termed as the encroachment of Wahabbism in present West Africa in general and Nigeria, Mali, and Mauritania in particular. [...] Chanfi therefore, gives detailed information on the first set of migrants to Mecca and Medina, their interpretation of Hijra, and Jihad, and a description of the routes they followed in the cause of the migration and the factors that led to it.' - Yusuf Abdullahi Yusuf, University of Jos, in: African Studies Quarterly Volume 16, Issue 2 (March, 2016)
'It is more likely than not, that students of Islam in Africa, Arabists as well as Africanists will find Chanfi's work rich, engaging and, at the same time, stimulating. His scholarly horizons as well as his wit reading of Arabic texts bring excitement to observers of the African condition who are interested in finding today's questions in yesterday's answers. West African ʿulamāʾ and Salafism in Mecca and Medina evokes what is achievable in the task of retrieving Africa's reservoir of history when multidimensional linguistic skills are summoned to exhume the corpus of the African past.' - Mbaye Lo, Duke University, in: Research Africa Review Vol. 1 No. 1 pp.18-21, June 2017 [https://sites.duke.edu/researchafrica/ra-reviews/vol-1-no-1/]