In other words, the perfected saint, as the reflection of the Prophet Muhammad as “perfect man” (al-insan al-kamil), contains in himself the entirety of the cosmological presences. Not only that, but as barzakh his being becomes the means or bridge to traverse between worlds. Hasan Dem, like Ibn al-‘Arabi who wrote of similar ideas many centuries earlier, may not have considered himself a philosopher or his writings to be philosophy. Certainly, Dem based his understandings on experiential witnessing, not (only) on rational reflection. But there is no doubt that such statements represent complex metaphysical understandings, certainly legible to philosophers and classifiable as higher cognition. Here again, then, a rich tradition of metaphysical inquiry was on display in the Arabic writings of African Muslim scholars.
Women Scholars of West Africa
A study of Muslim women in Burkina Faso made an unsettling observation that is perhaps true throughout West Africa: “Islamic brotherhoods, associations, and movements have largely been studied without reference to gender. As a result, Muslim women in Burkina Faso hold a marginal place at best in the academic literature on Islam in West Africa.”82 Several studies have in fact addressed this lack of attention to women in Muslim Africa, and researchers have highlighted the significant contributions of Muslim women scholars and activists mostly since the 1970s.83 But few accounts, with the exception of Jean Boyd and Beverley Mack’s work on the nineteenth-century Sokoto princess Nana Asma’u, have given serious consideration to the place of women in earlier centuries of African Islamic intellectual history. Despite the fact that Timbuktu (“Buckto’s well”) may have been founded by a woman, there is as yet no African corollary to the new research on women in pre-modern Muslim societies in the Middle East or India.84
Like their counterparts elsewhere in the Muslim world, women have played integral roles in the transmission of Islamic scholarship in West Africa for centuries. It is unlikely, in other words, that women have only “begun to affirm their authority in the public sphere” since the 1990s, as a study of Muslim women in the Ivory Coast concludes.85 But more research is required to give voice to women’s earlier scholarly engagements. This brief overview sketches the contours of women’s participation in African Islamic scholarship before reflecting on the voices of women in the intellectual production of the four Sufi communities with which this volume concerns itself.
It is true that female scholarly production is largely absent from the Arabic Literature of Africa series, especially in its earlier volumes. But such bibliographical references, along with a few Arabic sources concerned with Muslim women in specific geographical or community contexts, provide important clues to the shape of female Muslim scholarship in Africa. It should of course be observed that most Muslim scholars in Africa did not write, and that much of what they did write was not preserved. Furthermore, women were perhaps less likely to write or preserve their writings than were their male counterparts. With these considerations in mind, the available traces of female Muslim writing in West Africa can be justifiably used to characterize a much larger phenomenon. The following are some notable examples of Muslim women scholars in West Africa.
Khadija bint Muhammad al-‘Aqil al-Daymaniya (d. 1835/6) attracted students outside of her Mauritanian Daymani clan, including notable scholars such as Mukhtar bin Buna al-Jakani and Imam ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Futi (“the Fulani”).86 This latter student, also known as ‘Abd al-Qadir Kane, established an Islamic state, Futa Toro, in 1776 before dying in jihad defending his new polity in 1807.87 Shaykha Khadija specialized in the science of logic (mantiq), and was generally considered “more knowledgeable of whatever discipline than the master of that discipline.”88 She authored at least two separate tracts on logic and one on theology, commenting in turn on seminal texts of the West African “core curriculum” such as al-Sanusi’s ‘Aqida al-sughra and al-Akhdari’s al-Sullam al-marunuq fi ‘ilm al-mantiq.
Fatima bint Muhammad, known as Tut bint al-Tah (d. 1882), was a student of the famous Qadiriya shaykh, Sidiya al-Kabir (d. 1868), the representative of the Kunti-Qadiriya community in Boutelimit, Mauritania. She wrote a number of works, including a versified explanation of monotheist theology (tawhid), a prose text on the history of the Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslim community, a book explaining the merits of the Qur’an, and various collections of poetry. She also wrote letters to address specific questions on Sufism, authored a treatise defending the idea of intercession (tawassul) in Islam, and edited a collection of supplications.89
Khadija bint Muhammad al-Shinqitiya (d. 1948), known as al-Qari‘a (“the strike force”), was one of the more notable scholars of the Tijaniyya Sufi order in the twentieth century. The renowned Nigerian Tijani scholar, Abu Bakr ‘Atiq, met her when she toured Nigeria in 1934 and later attested, “She is the righteous Shaykha, the gnostic saint, the ladle (of knowledge), the one absorbed in the love of the Prophet and the Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani.” ‘Atiq added that Khadija possessed some of the most treasured secret prayers of the Tijaniyya, such as God’s secret “greatest name” (al-ism al-a‘zam), the “mysterious treasure” (al-kanz al-mutalsim), and the “guarded circle” (da’irat al-ihata). Only the most elite of Tijani scholars had permission to use such prayers, and probably for this reason ‘Atiq joined the ranks of Kano scholars in seeking authorization (taqdim) in the Tijaniyya from her. She used to meet with the Prophet Muhammad in a waking state. Shaykha Khadija authored several poems in defense of the Tijaniyya, as well as a book defending al-Tijani from detractors, entitled al-Sayf al-yamani fi l-dhabb Sidi Ahmad al-Tijani (The Yemeni Sword in Defense of Sidi Ahmad al-Tijani). Originally from Mauritania, she traveled widely throughout Africa and beyond, and died while visiting the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, Saudi Arabia.90
Such women left a substantial corpus of writing that remains to be analyzed and translated. But as mentioned above, the singular focus on manuscript production is certainly a misleading marker of Islamic scholarship—especially for women. There were many other notable women scholars who left few writings. Aysh bint Lazuruq, the wife of Mukhtar al-Kunti (d. 1811), taught the most complicated of texts in Maliki jurisprudence, the Mukhṭaṣar al-Khalīl, to women in the nascent Qadiriya community. Her son remembered her as “no less knowledgeable than my father.”91 Fatima bint ‘Abdullah al-‘Alawi, the wife of Muhammad al-Hafiz al-Tijani (d. 1830), who first brought the Tijaniyya into Mauritania from Morocco, used to speak to her husband in a waking state after his death, and his students would come to Fatima to pose certain questions to their late teacher through her.92 Maryam bint Hayna al-Jakaniya (born 1918) was known as a “mufti and scholar.” Aside from maintaining her own circle of students, she used to serve as a guest lecturer in her sons’ learning circles when they were traveling.93 A survey of female scholarship in Mauritania lists 44 female Muslim scholars,94 and a similar overview of women scholars of the Tijaniyya lists 103 scholars—mostly from North and West Africa.95 While Mauritania, and Sufi orders such as the Tijaniyya, may have provided contexts particularly conducive to the articulation of female scholarship, similar surveys of scholarly communities elsewhere in West Africa would likely find more similarities than differences. Muslim women have long participated in the transmission of Islamic scholarship in West Africa, but their voices too often remain ignored by external audiences.
Women have played important roles in the formation of the Muslim communities represented by the texts in this volume. The observation that Ahmadu Bamba was particularly “attentive to the education” of his wives and daughters96 was certainly also true of ‘Uthman bin Fudi, ‘Umar Tal, and Ibrahim Niasse. The female relatives of these shaykhs, who both formed them and were formed by them, were powerful examples to women students more generally. The mother of ‘Umar Tal, Ruqaya bint Mahmud, was