On Feet, Necks and the “Greatest Saint”: Debating Sufism in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Africa

Year 2020, Volume: 11 Issue: 2, 527 - 544, 31.12.2020

Mohammd Ajmal Hanif

Abstract

While the history of Sufism is teemed with lofty claims regarding the spiritual status of their owners, not many Sufi masters declared themselves as the supreme saints of all times. This paper elaborates on two declarations of such nature, one in thirteenth the other in late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries, made by two highly influential Sufi shaykhs al-Jilānī and al-Tijānī who happened to establish arguably the most dominant brotherhoods in the Muslim world, namely the Qādiriyya and the Tijāniyya. The issue has been the bone of contention between the two for past two centuries in Africa. As the puritanical Salafi movement started to spread in the continent, protagonists of the Tijāniyya found it less easy to promote the controversial and less elegant statement, “my two feet are upon the neck of each and every divinely elected saint from the time of Adam until the blowing of the trumpet”, of their supreme master. Therefore, the picture they provide is less of a united and more of a fringed one.

Keywords

Sufism, Debate, Tijaniyya, Greatest Saint, Africa, Feet and Necks

References

• Abun Nasr, Jamil M. “Tijani Doctrines and Way of Life.” in Sufism: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies, Volume I: Origin and Development, edited by Lloyd Ridgeon, 260-87. London: Routledge, 2008.
• Abun-Nasr, Jamil M. Muslim Communities of Grace: The Sufis Brotherhoods in Islamic Religious Life. London: Hurst & Co, 2007.
• Abun-Nasr, Jamil M. The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern World. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.
• Hunwick, John O, ed. Arabic Literature of Africa: The Writings of Western Sudanic Africa, vol. IV, Leiden: Brill, 2003.
• Al-Anṣārī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin. Ṭabaqāt khirqa al-ṣūfiyya. Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Bahiyya, 1886.
• Al-Fūtī, ʿUmar b. Saʿīd. Rimāḥ ḥizb al-Raḥīm ʿalā nuḥūr ḥizb al-rajīm. 2 vol., Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1383/1963.
• Al-Ḥāfiẓ, Muḥammad. ‘Ulamāʾ tazkiyat al-nafs min aʿlam al-nās bi-l-kitāb wa-l-sunna. n.p. [Cairo], n.d.
• Al-Ḥāfiẓ, Muḥammad. ʿUmar al-Fūtī: sulṭān al-dawla al-Tijāniyya bi-gharb Ifrīqyā shay min jihādihi wa-tārikh ḥayātihi. Cairo: al-Zāwiya al-Tijāniyya, 1383 AH.
• Al-Hilālī, Muḥammad Taqī al-Dīn. al-Hadiyya al-hādiya ilā al-ṭāʾifa al-Tijāniyya. n.p. [Medina]: no publisher [Islamic University of Medina Press], 1393/1973.
• Al-Makhzūmī, Sirāj al-Dīn b. Abdallāh. Siḥāḥ al-akhbār fī nasab sādda al-fāṭimiyya al-akhyār. Edited by ʿĀrif Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Ghanī, Damascus: Dār al-ʿArab, 2014.
• Al-Ṣalābī, ʿAlī Muḥammad. al-ʿĀlim al-Kabīr wa-l-Murrabī al-Shahīr al-Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī. Cairo: Muʾassat Iqraʾ, 2007.
• al-Shaṭnawfī, ʿAlī b. Yūsuf. Bahjat al-Asrār wa-Maʿdan al-Anwār. edited by Jamāl al-Dīn Fāliḥ al-Kaylānī, Fez: al-Munaẓẓama al-Magribiyya, 2013.
• Babou, Cheikh Anta. Fighting the Greater Jihad: Ahmadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853-1913. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007.
• Batran, Abd al-Aziz Abdallah. “Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti and the Recrudescence of Islam in the Western Sahara and the Middle Niger c. 1750-1811.” PhD diss., Univeristy of Birmingham, 1971.
• Ben Amara, Ramzi. “The Izāla Movement in Nigeria: Its Split, Relationship to Sufis and Perception of Sharīʿa Re-implementation.” PhD diss., University of Bayreuth, 2011.
• Ebstein, Michael. “Ḏū l-Nūn al-Miṣrī and Early Islamic Mysticism,” Arabica 61, 2014, 559-612.
• Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. The Sanusi of the Cyrenaica, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954.
• Hanif, Mohammad Ajmal. “Debating Sufism: The Tijāniyya and its Opponents.” PhD diss., Bayreuth University, 2018.
• Ibn al-Hādī, Aḥmad. Shams al-dalīlli-iṭfāʾ al-qandīl wa-muḥiqq mā li-l-Dakhīl wa-l-Hilālī min turrāhāt wa-abāṭīl, Rabat: Maṭbaʿat al-Karāma, 1427/2006.
• Karamustafa, Ahmet T. Sufism: The Formative Period, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
• Larémont, Ricardo René. “Sufism in Salafism in the Maghreb: Political Implicaitons.”, in Social Currents in North Africa, edited by Osama Abi-Mershed, 31-50. New York: Oxford University Press, 2108.
• Lauzière, Henri. “The Evolution of the Salafiyya in the Twentieth Century Through the Life and Thought of Taqi al-Din al-Hilali.” PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2008.
• Masʿūd, ʿUmar Muḥammad. al-Tijāniyya wa-khuṣūmuhum wa-l-qawl al-ḥaqq. n.p. [Khartoum], n.d.
• Meier, Fritz. “The Mystic Path”, in The World of Islam: Faith, People, Culture, edited by Bernard Lewis, 117-40. London: Thames and Huston, 1992.
• Melchert, Christopher. “The Transition from Asceticism to Mysticism in the Middle of the Ninth Century C.E.”, in Sufism: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies, Volume I: Origin and Development, edited by Lloyd Ridgeon, 44-63. London: Routledge, 2008.
• Mustapha, Abdul Raufu & Bunza, Mukhtar U. “Contemporary Islamic sects & groups in northern Nigeria.” in Sects & Social Disorder, edited by Abdul Raufu Mustapha, 54-97. Woodbridge: James Currey, 2014.
• Robinson, David. The Holy War of Umar Tal. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.
• Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,1975.
• Sedgwick, Mark. “Sufis as ‘Good Muslims’: Sufism in the Battle against Jihadi Salafism.”, in Sufis and Salfais in Contemporary Age, edited by Lloyd Ridgeon, 105-18. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
• Seeseman, Rüdiger. The Divine Flood: Ibrāhīm Niasse and the Roots of a Twentieth-Century Sufi Revival. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• Seesemann, Rüdiger. “A New Dawn for Sufism? Spiritual Training in the Mirror of Nineteenth-Century Tijānī Literature.” in Sufism, Literary Production and Printing in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Rachida Chih, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen and Rüdiger Seesemann, 279-98. Würyburg: Ergon Verlag, 2014.
• Seesemann, Rüdiger. “Sufism in West Africa.” Religion Compass 4/10 (2010): 606-614.
• Seesemann, Rüdiger. “The History of the Tijâniyya and the Issue of tarbiya in Darfur (Sudan).” in La Tijâniyya. Une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l’Afrique, edited by David Robinson & Jean Louis Triaud, 393-437. Paris: Karthala, 2000.
• Sukayrij, Aḥmad. al-Imān al-ṣaḥīḥ fī l-radd ʿalā l-jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ. Tunis: Maṭbaʿa al-Nahḍa, 1358 AH.
• Sukayrij, Aḥmad. al-Ṣirāṭ al-musṭaqīm fī l-radd ʿalā muʾallif al-Manhaj al-qawīm. Tunis: Maṭbaʿa al-Nahḍa, 1358 AH.
• Uludağ, Süleyman. Islam Düşüncesinin Yapısı: Selef, Kelam, Tasavvuf, Felsefe. Istanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2010.
• Viktor, Kunt S. “Sufi Brotherhoods in Africa”, in The History of Islam in Africa, edited by Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, 441-76. (Athens: Ohio University Press), 2002.
• Wright, Zachary V. On the Path of the Prophet: Shaykh Ahmad Tijani and the Tariqa Muhammadiyya. Atlanta: African American Islamic Institute, 2005.