Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts

The study of Islamic erudition in Africa is growing rapidly, transforming not just Islamic studies, but also African Studies. This interdisciplinary volume from leading international scholars fills a lacuna in presenting not only the history and spread of Islamic scholarship in Africa, but its current state and future concerns. Challenging the notion that Muslim societies in black Africa were essentially oral prior to the European colonial conquest at the turn of the 20th century, and countering the largely Western division of sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, the authors take an inclusive approach to advance our knowledge of the contribution of people of African descent to the life of Mecca.
This book explores in depth the intellectual and spiritual exchanges between populations in the Maghreb, the Sahara and West Africa. A key theme is Islamic learning. The authors examine the as asite of knowledge and learning, the relationship between "diasporas" and Islamic education systems, female learning circles, and the use of ICT. Diversifying the study of Islamic erudition, the contributors look at the interactions between textuality and orality, female learning circles, the vernacular study of poetry and cosmological texts, and the role of Ajami - the use of Arabic script to transcribe 80 African languages.

Africa: Cerdis



Introduction: Where have we been and where are we going in the Study of Islamic Scholarship in Africa? - Ousmane Oumar Kane
PART I: HISTORY, MOVEMENT, & ISLAMIC SCHOLARSHIP
Introduction - Zachary V. Wright
The African Roots of a Global Eighteenth-Century Islamic Scholarly Renewal - Zachary V. Wright
Muhammad al-Kashnawi and the Everyday Life of the Occult - Dahlia E.M. Gubara
African Community and African 'ulama in Mecca: Al-Jami and Muhammad Surar al-Sabban (Twentieth Century) - Chanfi Ahmed
The Transfomation of the Pilgrimage Tradition in West Africa - Ousmane Oumar Kane
PART II TEXTUALITY, ORALITY, AND ISLAMIC SCHOLARSHIP
Introduction - Oludamini Ogunnaike
'Those Who Represent the Sovereign in his Absence': Muslim Scholarship and the Question of Legal Authority in the pPre-Modern Sahara (Southern Algeria, Mauritania, Mali), 1750-1850 - Ismail Warscheid
Philosophical Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: The Case of Shaykh Dan Tafa - Oludamini Ogunnaike
"If all the Legal Schools were to Disappear": Umar Tal's Approach to Jurisprudence in - Farah el-Sharif
A New African Orality? Tijani Sufism, Sacred Knowledge and the ICTs in Post-Truth Times - Antonio de Diego González
The Sacred Text in Egypt's Popular Culture: Qur'anic Sounds, Meanings and Formation of Sakina-Sacred Space in Traditions of Poverty and Fear - Yunus Kumek
PART III ISLAMIC EDUCATION
Introduction - Britta Frede
Modernizing the Madrasa: Islamic Education, Development and Tradition in Zanzibar - Caitlyn Bolton
A New Daara: Integrating Qur'anic, Agricultural and Trade Education in a Community Setting - Laura L. Cochrane
Islamic Education and the 'Diaspora': Religious Schooling for Senegalese Migrants' Children - Hannah Hoechner
What does Traditional Islamic Education Mean? Examples from Nouakchott's Contemporary Female Learning Circles - Britta Frede
PART IV AJAMI, KNOWLEDGE TRANSMISSION, & SPIRITUALITY
Introduction - Jeremy Dell
Bringing to the Common People: Sufi Vernacular Poetry and Islamic Education in Brava, c.1890-1959 - Alessandra Vianello
Bringing to the Common People: Sufi Vernacular Poetry and Islamic Education in Brava, c.1890-1959 - Lidwien Kapteijns
A Senegalese Sufi Saint and Ajami Poet: Sëriñ Moor Kayre (1874-1951) - Khadim Ndiaye
Praise and Prestige: The Significance of Elegiac Poetry among Muslim Intellectuals on the Late Twentieth-Century Kenya Coast - Abdulkadir Hashim
CONCLUSION: The Study of Islamic Scholarship and the Social Sciences in Africa: Bridging Knowledge Divides, Reframing Narratives - Ebrima Sall
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