research paper Sufism

University of North Carolina Press

Chapter Title: Conclusion

Book Title: Realizing Islam, Sustainable History Monograph Pilot OA Edition Book Subtitle: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World Book Author(s): Zachary Valentine Wright Published by: University of North Carolina Press. (2020) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469660844_wright.12

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Conclusion

T he central argument of this book has been that late eighteenth- century Islamic scholarship—informed by an emphasis on actual-ization, realization, or verification (taḥqīq) in all fields of religious learning—deepened and sustained individual Muslim religious identities at a time of immense political and social uncertainty. Such taḥqīq did not depend on the support of rulers, nor even was it theoretically constrained by the lack of Muslim political sovereignty or an inability to maintain an “abode of Islam” separately from an “abode of infidelity.” This reli- gious actualization was led by a loose network of remarkable scholars, who saw themselves as the fruition (and masters) of a long tradition of Islamic scholarship rather than its pale reflection. Significantly, these scholar- saints represented mediums of participatory learning and verification, whereby ordinary Muslims were invited to more fully realize their own religious identities.

Reappraisals of eighteenth- century scholarship often have been per- vaded by later frameworks that fail to comprehend the broader intellec- tual trends of the period and the holistic contributions of some of its most notable scholars. Such ahistorical questions include whether a particular scholar was urban or rural, wrote books or gave lectures, fought in jihad or acquiesced to colonial rule, was primarily a jurist or a Sufi, followed the early forefathers of Islam (al- salaf ) or supported the traditional religious institutions that had developed by the medieval period. Aḥmad al- Tijānī, for example, located himself at the center of urban scholarship in North Africa (Fez), but his wealth and influence was assured in rural Algeria. He wrote little, but he supervised the production of a number of useful disciple- authored primary sources and orally commented on the Qurʾān and literary classics like the Ibn Aʿṭā- Allāh’s al-­Ḥikam and al- Buṣayrī’s Hamziyya. He censured corrupt political rulers, but tried to restrain his followers from armed confrontation. He was well versed in both Islamic law and Sufi literature. He believed that no scholar had license to contradict the established example of the Prophet or an authenticated textual proof,

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Conclusion 209

but he upheld the overall sincerity and validity of the traditional schools of jurisprudence, theology, and Sufism. Indeed, such artificial dichotomies imposed on the eighteenth century reflect later preoccupations. As Nile Green observes: “As the nineteenth century progressed, what had begun as an early modern pattern of legally minded Sufi reformism gradually divorced itself from its Sufi origins under the pressures of colonialism to become a movement of vehemently anti- Sufi reform presenting Sufis as the principal obstacle rather than the means to a renewal of the faith.”1 It is indisputable that the most influential scholars of the late eighteenth century—men like Aḥmad al- Dardīr, Murṭaḍā al- Zabīdī, and Muḥammad al- Shawkānī in the Middle East; Shāh Walī- Allāh and Mir Dard in India; ʿUthmān b. Fūdī and Mukhtār al- Kuntī in West Africa; and Muḥammad al- Sanūsī and Aḥmad al- Tijānī in North Africa—were all part of a loose network of Islamic scholars who sought to verify and revive the basic foun- dations of both Islamic law and Sufism. This does not mean these scholars all had the same opinions on the legal schools or belonged to the same “Muḥammadan Path.” It means they were participants in a vibrant Islamic scholarly tradition that, far from being eclipsed, was bearing some of its sweetest fruits in the eighteenth century. These fruits emerged in central fields like legal methodology, ḥadīth criticism, theology, and Sufism as well as in other fields that constituted legitimate objects of inquiry in the eighteenth century, such as the esoteric sciences. Aḥmad al- Tijānī’s mark on later Islamic intellectual history has been primarily as the founder of the Tijāniyya, today one of the world’s most widespread Sufi orders. But his emergence as a prominent Muslim scholar within the vibrant eighteenth century would not have been possible without demonstrated scholarly ca- pacity in a variety of fields of Islamic learning.

Unfortunately, it has been the pale reflections of eighteenth- century Islamic scholarship that have received the most air time. The broad ḥadīth learning and rigorous Sufism of Muḥammad Ḥayāt al- Sindī was appar- ently lost on his one- time student Muḥammad b. Aʿbd al- Wahhāb.2 The emphasis on scholarly reasoning (ijtihād) and personal Sufi purification in the teachings of Shāh Walī- Allāh may have been forgotten in the mille- narian expectations of the followers of the Indian jihadist Sayyid Aḥmad Shahīd Barelwi (d. 1831), who was a student of Walī- Allāh’s son Aʿbd al- Aʿzīz.3 The emphasis on the ego’s purification under a legitimate shaykh as taught by Muḥammad al- Sammān was evidently ignored by a later affili- ate of the Sammāniyya in the Sudan, Muḥammad Aḥmad, the “Sudanese

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210 Conclusion

Mahdi,” who broke with his Sammānī Sufi shaykh before founding his own Mahdist community.4 Ahmad Dallal observes the following of Ibn Aʿbd al- Wahhāb’s marginality to eighteenth- century scholarship, despite the common perception that “Wahhabism was a prototype of eighteenth- century thought and movements”: “Far from the tolerant and sophisticated thought of the vast majority of eighteenth- century thinkers, Ibn Aʿbd al- Wahhāb provides a grim and narrow theory of unbelief, which fails to link the creedal to the political or the social, or to generate a meaningful discourse that could justify its perpetuation as a legitimate theoretical reading of Islam.”5 Indeed, it may be that “the stance against takfīr was the main unifying feature of the reformers of the eighteenth century.”6 Al- Tijānī’s observation of the common humanity of both Muslims and non- Muslims thus speaks to a more mainstream, broad ethical concern for social harmony in the eighteenth- century Muslim world. The larger point here is that a more recent generation of researchers have already done much to look beyond the Ibn Aʿbd al- Wahhāb’s and unpack the more profound thinkers of the eighteenth century. It is hoped this exploration of Aḥmad al- Tijānī’s intellectual contributions add something to that on- going effort.

In understanding the emergence of the Tijāniyya, I have laid some em- phasis on broader scholarly currents throughout the Islamic world in the eighteenth century. Aḥmad al- Tijānī’s thought resonated with intellectual discourses surrounding ḥadīth, Qurʾān exegesis, legal methodology, the- ology, and the notion of “Muḥammadan Sufism.” In suggesting that the notion of taḥqīq, verification and actualization, is a useful framework for understanding this broader intellectual inquiry, I am arguing that al- Tijānī shared similar preoccupations with the scholars of his age, not that he al- ways arrived at the same conclusions. For the founder of the Tijāniyya, the fullest realization of Islamic identity in a time of perceived instability and corruption depended on the actualization of individual human potentiality in the mirror of prophetic light and guidance. This included an interroga- tion of the textual sources of Islam; it also meant an internal purification to permit direct connection with the living spiritual presence of the Prophet Muḥammad. Both processes depended on the continued availability of scholarly exemplars: the jurists who was “the door to the law,” and the Sufi guide who had obtained complete effacement in the light of the Prophet, “not veiled from him for a moment.”7 Such ideas were certainly legible within eighteenth- century scholarly discourses, but al- Tijānī no doubt saw

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his own actualization of them as their fullest realization, beyond that of his contemporaries.

North Africa in the late eighteenth century provided the historical context that gave immediate meaning to al- Tijānī’s teachings. But Algeria and Mo- rocco were also fluid discursive spaces. The names of scholars and texts from the Middle East, India, and Sudanic Africa circulated among intellectuals in North Africa; just as the respective scholarly accomplishments of North Af- ricans circulated elsewhere. Aside from the intellectual tradition of North Af- rica, al- Tijānī’s own scholarly influences included intellectuals from India (al- Ghawth’s al-­Jawāhir­al-­khams through al- Hindī in Mecca), Yemen (Bā- ʿAlawī in al- Shinnāwī’s commentary on al-­Jawāhir­al-­khams), Oman (al- Mundhirī’s Ighāthat­al-­Lahfān), Arabia (through al- Sammān), Egypt (through al- Kurdī), the Sahara (through scholars from Tuwāt), and sub- Saharan Africa (largely through al- Dabbāgh’s teacher from Bornu in al-­Ibrīz).

This fluidity of North Africa as an intellectual space helps to explain the rapid spread of the Tijāniyya in other parts of the Muslim world, par- ticularly in sub- Saharan Africa, following the death of al- Tijānī in Fez in 1815. As I argued in chapter 1, the Tijāniyya was largely welcomed in West Africa because the region’s scholarship, from Timbuktu and beyond, had already anticipated many of the central ideas at the heart of the Tijāniyya, and indeed had long been part of the intellectual exchange that gave rise to eighteenth- century scholarly vibrancy. From the vision of the Prophet, paradigmatic sainthood, ijtihād outside and within the Mālikī legal school, the notion of a Muḥammadan Path as the essence of Sufism, to the explo- ration and verification of the esoteric sciences: all were ideas that readily circulated among West African scholars by the eighteenth century. The Tijāniyya may have been a new Sufi order for West African Muslims, but it was one that mostly resonated with their own preexisting scholarly dis- courses. Such resonance, rather than an allegedly shared heterodoxy of the Tijāniyya and African Islam, accounts for the observed popularity of the order in sub- Saharan Africa. As one writer concludes, “Ahmad al- Tijānī is without doubt the greatest saintly figure in African Islam.”8

But the spread of the Tijāniyya has not been limited to North and West Africa. Significant communities developed around Tijānī scholars, pos- sessed of their own saintly reputations, in Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia, from the early twentieth century.9 The famous Egyptian Tijānī scholar Muḥammad al- Ḥāfiẓ b. ʿ Abd al- Laṭīf (d. 1978) was a prominent figure in the transmission of ḥadīth in the mid- twentieth- century, and his journal Ṭarīq

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212 Conclusion

al-­Ḥaqq (“The Path of Truth”) was widely read by Arabic- speaking “tradi- tionalists.”10 Among al- Ḥāfiẓ’s admirers was the popular Egyptian preacher Muḥammad al- Shaʿ rāwī (d. 1998), who may have also taken the Tijāniyya.11 Tijānī activists in Turkey gained notoriety for resisting the Turkish state’s ban on the Islamic call to prayer in the mid- twentieth century.12 In Eastern European countries such as Albania, the Tijāniyya similarly became popu- lar among Muslims resisting state appropriation of religious identities; and the former chief mufti of Albania—Ḥāfiẓ Ṣabrī Koçi (d. 2004)—openly identified with the Tijāniyya.13 The order has maintained a presence in Pal- estine, claiming among its ranks the famous anti- zionist leader ʿIzz al- Dīn al- Qassām (d. 1935).14 The Tijāniyya has been established in Arabia since the migration of Alfa Hāshim (d. 1931), the nephew of ʿUmar Tāl, to Me- dina in the early twentieth century.15 Students of Hāshim popularized the Tijāniyya in East Asia, particularly Indonesia; and the former Indonesian president Susilo Yudhoyono was allegedly an initiate of the order.16 The Tijāniyya today also commands a following in English- speaking Muslim minority communities, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa.17 While the majority of Tijānīs in the world are no doubt from sub- Saharan Africa, the Tijāniyya has no less of a global reach than older orders such as the Qādiriyya or Naqshbandiyya, or any other global Muslim network for that matter.

If the Tijāniyya’s most visible constituency today is from West Africa, this is certainly due to the charisma and intellectual accomplishments of later Tijānī scholars like ʿUmar Tāl, Mālik Sy, and Ibrāhīm Niasse. It is difficult to verify Ḥasan Cisse’s claim in a 2007 “World Tijānī Conference” (Fez, Morocco) that 80 percent of all Tijānīs in the world now trace their affiliation to the Tijāniyya through Niasse. But clearly a majority, certainly in West Africa, seem to have accepted that Aḥmad al- Tijānī’s prediction of a great “flood” within the Tijāniyya applies to Niasse’s mission: “A flood (fayḍa) will come upon my companions, and people will enter our Sufi path in large numbers.”18 Tijānīs outside of West Africa have had to con- tend with the fact that their Sufi order is largely represented by a black African leadership on the world stage.19 The Royal Jordanian Institute’s annual ranking of the “500 Most Influential Muslims” recognizes Niasse’s grandson and imam in Medina- Baye (Senegal), Shaykh al- Tijānī Cisse, as the leading Tijānī scholar alive today (and sometimes as the world’s most influential Sufi leader), consistently ranked within the top 20 “most influ- ential Muslims” in the world.20 Such notoriety, together with the devotion

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Conclusion 213

of many West African Tijānīs to their more immediate initiators, has oc- casioned some misunderstandings, particularly among Tijānīs who do not recognize Niasse’s claim to the fayḍa. These latter accuse disciples of Ni- asse of substituting love for al- Tijānī with love for Niasse.21 But the Tijāni- yya—despite occasional public disagreements of Tijānī scholars22—has so far remained free from the branching normal to other Sufi orders, where followers of later authorities come to practice alternative sets of litanies. Later Tijānīs mostly seem to have recalled the Prophet’s alleged words to al- Tijānī, “Whenever you authorize someone, and he gives it to others, it is as if they have received from you personally (mushāfahatan), and I am a guarantor for them.”23 Niasse’s own claim to authority within the Tijāni- yya was thus quite straightforward: “Our affiliation and link today are with Shaykh al- Tijānī, the Seal of Saints, without intermediary, since he is always present with us.”24

While the success of West African scholars within the Tijāniyya was certainly due to their accomplishments, the circumstances of late colo- nialization and decolonization in North Africa increasingly marginalized Tijānī scholars there from having the mainstream appeal that was afforded their West African counterparts. The Tijāniyya in Algeria became asso- ciated with French colonial collaboration in the nationalist rhetoric from the 1930s. This may have been unfair. An exchange of letters, only discov- ered in 1997, between al- Tijānī’s son Muḥammad al- Ḥabīb (d. 1853) and the Qādirī saint and anti- French jihadist Aʿbd al- Qādir al- Jazāʾirī references their reconciliation based on the discovery of French spies who had hoped to ensure the disunity of Algeria’s Sufi orders.25 In any case, other branches of the Tijāniyya in Algeria remained at odds with French occupation.26 But the French exile of al- Ḥabīb’s eldest son Aʿmmār al- Tijānī to Bordeaux, and subsequent close surveillance of Aʿyn Māḍī after his return (in the company of his French wife Aurélie Picard), gave the Tijāniyya in Algeria little option other than accommodation.27

In Morocco, the Tijāniyya went from being the most popular Sufi order in the 1940s—with prolific scholars like Aḥmad Sukayrij (d. 1944), al- Aḥsan al- Baʿ qīlī (d. 1948), Muḥammad al- Naẓīf ī (d. 1951), and Muḥam- mad al- Ḥajūjī (d. 1952)—to being largely eclipsed; with a large segment of the Moroccan population having little knowledge of the Tijāniyya, many believing al- Tijānī was actually from Senegal.28 This was apparently due to French insistence on supporting the descendants of al- Tijānī in Alge- ria, rather than Moroccan scholars, to claim leadership of the Tijāniyya

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214 Conclusion

in Morocco. Several of al- Tijānī’s descendants from Aʿyn Māḍī arrived in Fez after the establishment of the French protectorate of Morocco in 1912. Their later designation by the French and Moroccan monarchy as the sole representatives of the Tijāniyya in Morocco resulted in the gradual eclipse of public Tijānī scholars from the 1940s.29

Indeed, the scholarly activity in the main Tijānī center in Fez, as at- tested by an Egyptian visitor in 1937, stands in stark contrast to the zāwiya of later days. The Egyptian Tijānī scholar Muḥammad al- Ḥāfiẓ wrote to his peers in the Middle East that the Fez zāwiya maintained the following teaching schedule. After the dawn prayer and the subsequent congrega- tional Sufi remembrance (waẓīfa), “one of the most famous scholars of Fez, distinguished in both rational and transmitted knowledge” Muḥam- mad b. Aʿbdallāh taught from al-­Shifāʾ of Qāḍī Iyāḍ (d. 1149, Marrakesh), concerning the life and miracles of the Prophet. After that, those present in the zāwiya read one- thirtieth of the entire Qurʾān “in one voice.” Be- fore the midday prayer, the “distinguished jurist” al- Ḥasan Mazzūr taught from al-­Shamāʾil­al-­Muḥammadiyya of Muḥammad al- Tirmidhī (d. 892, Uzbekistan), a collection of ḥadīth describing the habits and appearance of the Prophet. After the midday prayer, those in the zāwiya read another thirtieth section of the Qurʾān. Following the afternoon prayer, the Tijānīs read this same section once more, stayed gathered for the congregational remembrance (waẓīfa), and then made their individual litanies.30 At this time, Qurʾān recitation and the classics of Islamic scholarship were seminal activities in the zāwiya. Today, individual worship in the Fez zāwiya is only punctuated by a number of al- Tijānī’s descendants on individual cushions, available to make supplications on behalf of visitors, and to receive their gifts (hadiya) when offered.31 On asked to explain the Tijāniyya’s current lack of scholarly reputation in Morocco, the late Shaykh Ḥasan Cissé con- firmed this contrast between earlier scholarly efforts and the contempo- rary routinization of saintly charisma: “That is because the scholars of the ṭarīqa are no longer visible.”32

West African scholars have been able to emerge as global representatives of the Tijāniyya because al- Tijānī’s own descendants, unlike in many other Sufi orders, have been unable or unwilling to advance a convincing claim for inherited leadership (khilāfa). Al- Tijānī entrusted Aʿlī Ḥarāzim, rather than his own sons, as his deputy (khalīfa) during his own lifetime. When Ḥarāzim died, al- Tijānī did not appoint another such deputy, but did surren- der his sons into the care of a close disciple Aʿlī Tamāsīnī, instructing him

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Conclusion 215

to take al- Tijānī’s sons out of Fez and back to the desert: “My sons are not suited except for the desert, there they will live and be happy.”33 While the Prophet had evidently guaranteed that both of al- Tijānī’s sons would obtain the experiential knowledge of God (maʿ rifa),34 these sons avoided claims of further investiture in the Tijāniyya. Of al- Tijānī’s thirteen disciples granted unlimited authorization (ijāza­muṭlaqa) in the Tijāniyya as listed by Idrīs al- ʿIrāqī (d. 2009, Rabat), neither of al- Tijānī’s sons are listed.35 Once, the son of ʿ Alī Ḥarāzim, Abū Yaʿ zā (who had the ijāza­muṭlaqa from al- Tijānī’s disciples Muḥammad al- Ghālī and Maḥammad Bannānī al- Miṣrī), wrote to al- Tijānī’s son Muḥammad al- Ḥabīb to request an additional ijāza for the blessing of taking from al- Ḥabīb. Al- Ḥabīb wrote back from Aʿyn Māḍī, “As for us, we do not have permission to grant full authorization, or to give the litanies.”36 The designation of al- Tijānī’s eldest living descendant in Aʿyn Māḍī, currently Aʿlī Bilʿarābī al- Tijānī, to be the “comprehensive leader” (al-­khalīfa­al-­ʿām) of the Tijāniyya37 seems to be received more as a claim to seniority among al- Tijānī’s descendants than a claim to overall leadership of the order. Once a disciple came to the Senegalese imam al- Tijānī b. Aʿlī Cisse in Dakar to relate a dream, “I saw you telling me that Shaykh Aḥmad al- Tijānī, following his death, did not entrust anyone with leadership (mā­kallafa­aḥadan) except Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse, Saydi Aʿlī Cisse, and Sayyidī ʿ Alī’s sons [Ḥasan, al- Tijānī, and Muḥammad al- Māḥī].” The imam responded simply, “That is the truth.”38 Clearly, this was not a public claim to overall leadership of the Tijāniyya, and perhaps similar understandings exist among the followings of Tijānī shaykhs elsewhere. The point is simply that claims to overall leadership in the Tijāniyya are not limited to the descendants of al- Tijānī or to North African scholars, but are sometimes voiced, especially in the community of Ibrāhīm Niasse, by West African shaykhs as well.

The continued spread of the Tijāniyya points to the enduring resonance of the intellectual vibrancy of the eighteenth- century Islamic world. De- spite the success of the Tijāniyya in West Africa, the order cannot be con- sidered only an “African ṭarīqa.” It is today found all over the Muslim world, including among minority Muslim populations in the West. There has perhaps even been a revival of interest in the order in North Africa.39 Earlier academic explanations of the Tijāniyya’s popularity—that it fought colonial rule or took advantage of it, that it provided mystical assurances to those denied the benefits of modernization, or that it somehow corresponded to the alleged messianic tendencies of African Islam—are increasingly

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216 Conclusion

unsatisfying. As a particular crystallization of eighteenth- century thought, the Tijāniyya continues to advance several apparently appealing notions that circulated widely at the “dawn of modernity.” These ideas, as outlined in this book, include the notion that each human being is endowed with an extraordinary spiritual potentiality, that Islamic scholarship and Muslim identity require learned verification and personal realization, that the pro- phetic presence is an enduringly accessible reality, and that the perceived corruption of rulers and Muslim societies is not an obstacle to accessing divine grace. From the perspective of followers of the Tijāniyya, then, the eighteenth century may appear as a sort of bridge between the Islamic tradition and the modern age. Scholars such as Aḥmad al- Tijānī saw them- selves as verifying the essential truths of the inherited Muslim intellectual legacy and bequeathing it again to subsequent generations. Such scholars no doubt hoped that later Muslims, despite living in an age of insecurity and corruption, would find in their efforts a revived appreciation and con- nection to the beauty of Islam.

Full taḥqīq—verifying the foundations of legal judgments through lengthy study or actualizing the full potential of the human condition through Sufi practice—was certainly an ideal that only a few elite real- ized. Moreover, the potential for religious actualization was not the only cause for the Tijāniyya’s spread. Moroccan social and political elites in the early nineteenth century were no doubt encouraged to join the Tijāniyya by the presence of notable Tijānīs among the bureaucratic and business elite. Muslim scholars in Tunisia perceived the Tijāniyya favorably as a result of the reputation of Ibrāhīm al- Riyāḥī, who became Zaytuna University’s leading scholar. Political, social, and intellectual critics of established, per- ceived corrupt hierarchies of nineteenth- century Mali probably welcomed the confrontation of the new Muslim- Tijānī community of ʿUmar Tāl with the elite of Masina and Timbuktu. The sense of belonging, cohesion, and stability offered by Tijānī communities in the context of French colonial oc- cupation, associated with Mālik Sy and Aʿbdallāh Niasse (d. 1922) in early twentieth- century Senegambia, certainly furthered the reputation of the Tijāniyya. The idea of more “democratic” access to elite knowledge within the spiritual “flood” of Ibrāhīm Niasse no doubt attracted new groups of youth, women, and new Muslim converts to the Tijāniyya. These various historically contingent explanations for the Tijāniyya’s later spread are not unimportant, but neither are they exclusive of affiliates’ underlying desire for the deepening of their religious identities.

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Conclusion 217

The Tijāniyya continues to spread, then, because followers find in it a means of actualizing their religious identities. Taḥqīq was not an ideal restricted to the scholarly elite. Not only did al- Tijānī emphasize the incum- bency of human realization to order to be truly alive, he invited all Muslims to realize sainthood. The alleged promise of the Prophet to al- Tijānī is no doubt as appealing today as it was in the late eighteenth century: “Whoever loves you is my beloved. Your disciples are my disciples. Your followers are my followers. Your companions are my companions.”40 While certainly controversial among some, many Muslims appear to find in the teachings of al- Tijānī the promise of illumination at the hands of the Prophet, ac- cording to the Prophet’s alleged words to al- Tijānī at the foundation of the Tijāniyya: “I am your means and support in al-­taḥqīq,” in religious actu- alization and spiritual realization. The Tijāniyya was thus perceived as a means for becoming a true Muslim and a true human being.

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