This servant’s elixir is the love of Muhammad
And my treasure is my praise for him.36
These scholars were, of course, heirs to a rich poetical tradition in West Africa, and there is evidence that they recognized that collectively they were part of something special. ‘Umar Tal’s complex versified incorporation and explanation of earlier poetry within his magisterial Safinat al-sa‘ada were clearly a statement on the “mastery of West African scholars, and how they contributed to this wider [poetical] tradition.”37 For Niasse, poetry and love for the Prophet were something special by which black African Muslims had demonstrated their scholarly authority in Islam: “Black folk (sudan) have gained authority by [their] love of our Prophet. And most white people have been humiliated in [their] offense [of him].”38 Whatever the competing claims of saintly authority, such claims were based on a profound sense of connection to the Prophet. Sufi communities in West Africa were thus mutually recognizable, even if their followers sometimes disputed with each other.
A further enduring theme in West African Sufism was the notion that Sufism was part of a larger process of (Islamic) religious development. The scholars in this volume consistently reference the notion that the worshipper must progress through stations (maqamat) of understanding. The relevant scriptural source for this idea is the oft-cited Prophetic narration (hadith) concerning the stations of al-islam (submission), al-iman (faith), and al-ihsan (excellence). Since the primarily Muslim audience that the shaykhs were addressing would have been familiar with this hadith, it deserves partial citation in case the reference is lost on an English-speaking audience. Here, ‘Umar bin al-Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam, gives the narration:
One day while we were sitting with the Messenger of God, there appeared before us a man dressed in extremely white clothes and with very black hair. No traces of journeying were visible on him, and none of us knew him. He sat down close by the Prophet, rested his knee against his knees, and said, “O Muhammad! Inform me about Islam.”
The Messenger of God said, “Islam is that you should testify that there is no deity except God and that Muhammad is His Messenger, that you should perform the ritual prayer, pay the alms-tax, fast during Ramadan, and perform Hajj to Mecca if you are able to do so.”
The man said, “You have spoken truly.” We were astonished at this questioning him and telling him that he was right, but he went on to say, “Inform me about faith (iman).”
He answered, “It is that you have faith in God and His angels, His books, His messengers, and in the last day, and in predestination, both its good and evil.”
He said, “You have spoken truly.” Then he said, “Inform me about excellence (ihsan).”
He answered, “It is that you should worship God as though you see Him, and if you cannot see Him, know that He sees you.”39
Scholars, in West Africa as well as elsewhere, had long used this hadith to speak to the three main disciplines of Islamic religious learning.40 The five pillars of Islam were the domain of jurists, those specializing in the understanding of Islamic law (fiqh). Faith (iman) was the domain of theologians, those specializing in articulating the doctrine (‘aqida) of God’s oneness (tawhid). Spiritual excellence (ihsan) was the domain of those teaching the awareness of God through the purification of the self, the Sufis. The Sufi scholars in this volume saw their science as part of a process of religious development, one that was based on Islamic law and theological orthodoxy and which culminated with worshipping God “as if you see Him.”
The four communities considered here held common values and aspirations. They spoke a common language and were clearly in dialogue with each other. Community leaders contemporary with each other also respected each other, visited each other, and exchanged letters. Despite their different Sufi affiliations, ‘Umar Tal accompanied ‘Uthman bin Fudi’s son and successor, Muhammad Bello, on jihad. Tal married Bello’s daughter, Maryam, and Bello used his influence to secure introductions for Tal as he traveled. In one letter, Bello implored his fellow Fulani people residing in Futa:
Our brother, ‘Umar bin Sa‘id, the famous and genuine scholar has reached us. He is a distinguished person, and among the great men. We are truly gratified upon seeing his honorable face, and blessed by virtue of our contact with him . . . in him we found our lost treasure. He has completely won our hearts and minds. . . . Though we consider his departure from us as equal to death, yet we do not ignore that he has a duty towards you, and that you are in need of him.41
For his part, ‘Umar Tal relates several visionary experiences of his friend Muhammad Bello in his Rimah.42 He clearly held the Sokoto Jihad in high esteem, and was no doubt inspired toward a greater activist stance by the legacy of Shehu ‘Uthman.
There was, likewise, mutual respect between Bamba’s Mouride community and Niasse’s Tijani following in Senegal. Momar Mbacké and Muhammad Niasse, the father and grandfather of Bamba and Niasse, respectively, were both scholars in the court of Ma Ba Diakhou during his jihad in the Senegambia in the mid-nineteenth century.43 Biram Cissé, the grandfather of Niasse’s closest disciple, ‘Ali Cissé, was exiled to Gabon with Bamba, and was the only other political prisoner to return to Senegal alive.44 Shaykh Ibrahim corresponded regularly with Mbacké Buso, a prominent Mouride scholar related to Bamba’s mother. In one letter, Buso referenced a centuries-old teacher–student relationship between the Niasse and Bamba families in order to say,
Concerning the love between us for the sake of God that you mentioned in your letter, know my son that this love is something you have inherited from your ancestors, for that is how it was between our ancestors. I pray that God the most high preserve it for all of our descendants without exception.45
Shaykh Ibrahim maintained cordial relations with Bamba’s son and khalifa, Fallou Mbacké, and Mbacké even named his son after Niasse, nicknamed “Khalil” (an epithet for Ibrahim).46 Such examples are not meant to obscure instances of conflict between Sufi communities in West Africa. But they are nonetheless of value in understanding the enduring intellectual exchange between such communities, and their ability to quickly reconcile differences for common goals.
The Context of Islamic Intellectual Production in West Africa
This volume focuses on texts that have played seminal roles in the constitution of West Africa’s largest Muslim communities, but with some apology. These texts are admittedly almost exclusively situated within the discipline of Sufism. They mostly speak to a form of Sufism that emphasizes the practical inculcation of an ethical disposition. Moreover, they were written by men. Ironically, these same communities can be used to argue against three related misconceptions about Muslim identity in Africa: that African Muslims practice Sufism at the expense of Shari‘a law, that the metaphysical language of theoretical Sufism is absent from African Muslim articulations, and that African Muslim women are silent in the Islamic intellectual history of the region. This section considers the broader literary production of West African Islam in order to argue against these stereotypes, and then to situate such observations within the communities under discussion. We hope that successive efforts can build on the outlines provided here to fill the void that this volume is unfortunately, owing to reasons of space, unable to adequately address.
Islamic Law in West Africa
The percentage of West African Arabic literature concerned with jurisprudence and legal studies, based on a representative sampling from Mauritania and the Western Sahara, far exceeds that centered on any other discipline. Roughly 35 percent of all such writings concern Islamic law.47 By way of comparison, only 8 percent concerns Sufism. Much of this literature is “derivative” or explanative of earlier texts, serving to “document the creation of a self-sustaining body of scholarship.”48 Successive generations of Timbuktu scholars, for example, composed numerous commentaries on Khalil al-Jundi’s (d. 1365, Egypt) versified summary (al-Mukhtasar)