Introduction

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. List of Illustrations x
3. Notes on Contributors xi
4. Note on Transliteration and Calendar xvii
5. List of Abbreviations xviii
6. Acknowledgements xix
7. Introduction: Where have we been and where are we going in the Study of Islamic Scholarship in Africa? 1
8. Part I: History, Movement, and Islamic Scholarship
9. Introduction 17
10. 1 The African Roots of a Global Eighteenth-Century Islamic Scholarly Renewal 22
11. 2 Muḥammad al-Kashnāwī and the Everyday Life of the Occult 41
12. 3 The African Community and African ‘Ulamā’ in Mecca: Al-Jāmī and Muḥammad Surūr al-Ṣabbān (Twentieth Century) 61
13. 4 The Transformation of the Pilgrimage Tradition in West Africa 90
14. Part II: Textuality, Orality, and Islamic Scholarship
15. Introduction 111
16. 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 121
17. 6 Philosophical Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: The Case of Shaykh Dan Tafa 136
18. ‘If all the Legal Schools were to Disappear’: ʿUmar Tāl’s Approach to Jurisprudence in Kitāb al-Rimāḥ 169
19. 8 A New African Orality? Tijānī Sufism, Sacred Knowledge and the ICTs in Post-Truth Times 184
20. 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 204
21. PART III ISLAMIC EDUCATION
22. Introduction 231
23. 10 Modernizing the Madrasa: Islamic Education, Development, and Tradition in Zanzibar 239
24. 11 A New Daara: Integrating Qur’ānic, Agricultural and Trade Education in a Community Setting 261
25. 12 Islamic Education and the ‘Diaspora’: Religious Schooling for Senegalese Migrants’ Children 281
26. 13 What does Traditional Islamic Education Mean? Examples from Nouakchott’s Contemporary Female Learning Circles 300
27. PART IV ‘AJAMĪ, KNOWLEDGE TRANSMISSION, AND SPIRITUALITY
28. Introduction 321
29. 14 Bringing ʿIlm to the Common People: Sufi Vernacular Poetry and Islamic Education in Brava, c. 1890–1959 326
30. 15 A Senegalese Sufi Saint and ‘Ajamī Poet: Sëriñ Moor Kayre (1874–1951) 360
31. 16 Praise and Prestige: The Significance of Elegiac Poetry among Muslim Intellectuals on the Late Twentieth-Century Kenya Coast 384
32. Conclusion: The Study of Islamic Scholarship and the Social Sciences in Africa: Bridging Knowledge Divides, Reframing Narratives 407
33. Glossary 426
34. Bibliography 440
35. Index 475