Realizing Islam

The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World

Zachary Valentine Wright

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781469660837
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

The Tijaniyya is the largest Sufi order in West and North Africa. In this unprecedented analysis of the Tijaniyya's origins and development in the late eighteenth century, Zachary Valentine Wright situates the order within the broader intellectual history of Islam in the early modern period. Introducing the group's founder, Ahmad al-Tijani (1737–1815), Wright focuses on the wider network in which al-Tijani traveled, revealing it to be a veritable global Islamic revival whose scholars commanded large followings, shared key ideas, and produced literature read widely throughout the Muslim world. They were linked through chains of knowledge transmission from which emerged vibrant discourses of renewal in the face of perceived social and political corruption.Wright argues that this constellation of remarkable Muslim intellectuals, despite the uncertainly of the age, promoted personal verification in religious learning. With distinctive concern for the notions of human actualization and a universal human condition, the Tijaniyya emphasized the importance of the realization of Muslim identity. Since its beginnings in North Africa in the eighteenth century, the Tijaniyya has quietly expanded its influence beyond Africa, with significant populations in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and North America.We are proud to offer this book in our usual print and ebook formats, plus as an open-access edition available through the Sustainable History Monograph Project.

CHAPTER ONE

Sufism and Islamic Intellectual Developments in the Eighteenth Century

THE IDEAS THAT BECAME CENTRAL to the Tijāniyya had wide currency in the Muslim world by the late eighteenth century. Such ideas were sometimes sourced in texts, but more often they were transmitted through personal investiture, accompanied by texts or without. It is no accident, then, to find al-Tijānī personally connected to those whose ideas were later integrated in the Tijāniyya. This is not to suggest a static continuity between teachers and students across generations and vast geographical space. But it does suggest that personal connections cannot be ignored in the sharing of ideas between scholars.

The eighteenth century represented the culmination of centuries of Islamic scholarly prestige in the Muslim world. Later generations witnessed the rise of the modern state and its confiscation of the endowments (awqāf) that gave financial independence to the scholarly class and the promotion of Western-influenced schooling that created new intellectuals who displaced traditional scholars as teachers, writers, and bureaucrats. But before this state-centric (and often colonially inspired) modernization, scholars confidently asserted their ascendant rank over sultans in best ensuring the Islamic authenticity of their societies. “In Muslim society vox ʿulamāʾ is legally vox dei,” wrote an historian of eighteenth-century Egypt, “and practically vox populi for they had it in their power to rouse or placate public opinion.”¹

Global scholarly exchange gave intellectuals the opportunity to hear new ideas, access new textual sources, and invest themselves with “heightened” (shorter) chains of knowledge transmission. These events usually occurred when individuals accomplished their pilgrimage rites in the Hijaz, often stopping in other scholarly centers, such as Cairo, along the way. It may be true that the culmination of such activities in the eighteenth century eventually caused regional scholarship to assert its sufficiency from continued travels in search of knowledge.² But it is also true that global scholarly exchange after the eighteenth century was limited by European colonial occupation: non-Muslim authorities generally began to restrict and surveil the travels of Muslim scholars even during the pilgrimage season.³ Global networks of Muslim scholars were well established on the eve of colonial conquest, and intellectual exchanges figured prominently in the biographies of scholars written during the period even if such exchanges were less pronounced in later generations.

It was primarily the desire for verification (taḥqīq) that motivated the intellectual vibrancy of the eighteenth century. Verification or religious actualization took on different meanings depending on the field of knowledge involved, whether jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (ʿaqīda, ʿilm al-kalām), or Sufism (taṣawwuf).⁴ In Islamic law, taḥqīq meant ascertaining the relationship between a definitive sacred text (naṣṣ)—usually a saying of the Prophet (ḥadīth)—and a scholarly opinion (ijtihād) from the schools of law (madhhab, pl. madhāhib). Much has been made about transmission of ḥadīth and calls for ijtihād in the period, but these can arguably be categorized as renewed discussions of legal theory (uṣūl).⁵

In theological terms, taḥqīq meant the verification of God’s oneness (tawḥīd) and the eradication of hidden idolatry (shirk al-khafī). Of course, the “Muḥammadan” Sufis of the eighteenth century had different understandings of this process than did the nascent “Wahhabi” movement of central Arabia: namely the purification of the heart from other than God in order to experience tawḥīd, versus a form of Protestant-style confessionalism.⁶ But the shared intention to cleanse the belief of Muslims is undeniable in eighteenth-century scholarly networks, and theology was a primary preoccupation of most of the era’s scholars.

The taḥqīq of Sufism meant the endeavor to connect Sufi practices and understandings with the spiritual path of the Prophet (Ṭarīqa Muḥammadiyya). Even the followers of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb were quick to assert that they never suggested this purified Sufism was blameworthy or that they denied the miracles of the saints,⁷ and Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb insisted in his letters, “I know of nothing that makes a person closer to God than the spiritual path (ṭarīqa) of God’s Messenger.”⁸ Once again, the students of the eighteenth-century scholarly networks shared similar aspirations, even if the understanding of the “Muḥammadan Sufism” or Ṭarīqa Muḥammadiyya diverged sharply between mainstream scholarly Sufism of the time and radical outliers.

Aḥmad al-Tijānī’s own interjections in the verification of legal opinions, theology, and Sufism comprise later chapters of this book. But here it is useful to outline the knowledge circulation within eighteenth-century scholarly networks, particularly as they related to al-Tijānī. Such superficial descriptions are suggestive at best, and no one book, whatever its pretension, can delve into the intellectual content of all eighteenth-century scholars with any meaningful depth. This chapter thus limits itself to discussing the teachings of al-Tijānī’s most significant scholarly contacts within these networks, and the broader spectrum of ideas out of which al-Tijānī’s Tarīqa Muḥammadiyya emerged.

Scholarly Networks

Most, if not all, prominent eighteenth-century scholars were connected with each other through person-to-person chains of knowledge transmission. This highly ritualized form of knowledge investiture and authorization, represented in the personalized ijāza/sanad/silsila model, emphasized the internalization of learning and the formation (or recognition) of exemplary disposition.⁹ However, students, especially those with a variety of learned influences, rarely reproduced the exact practice or doctrine of their teachers. Rather such networks shared a common discourse loosely based on verification through heightened connection to the Prophet. “Some think sharing a discourse means that people are part of a homogenous organization. But a community of discourse is not an organization, and people within that community of discourse can disagree strongly even though they utilize the same discourse.”¹⁰

With such caution in mind, the following summarizes the remarkable constellation of scholars who shared teacher-student relationships during the period. Our particular focus here is the situation of al-Tijānī within these networks, so these summaries are far from definitive. The particular traditions with which al-Tijānī connected include: the “Muḥammadan” Sufism of the North African Shādhilī master Muḥammad b. Nāṣir (d. 1674, Tamagrut, Morocco) and his student Ḥasan al-Yūsī (d. 1691, Marrakesh); the West African Sharīʿa-based, visionary Sufism emerging in scholarly centers such as Timbuktu by the sixteenth century; the Ḥaramayn (Mecca and Medina) hadith and ijtihād transmitters emerging from the “school” of Ibrāhīm al-Kurānī (d. 1693, Medina); the renewal of the Khalwatiyya Sufi order in Egypt under the leadership of the Damascene Muṣṭafa al-Bakrī (d. 1748, Cairo); and the Indian Shaṭṭariyya and Naqshbandiyya networks transmitting the teachings of Muḥammad al-Ghawth (d. 1563, Ahmedabad). The Tijāniyya was an heir to all of these often-overlapping traditions. Its later global spread, especially in West Africa, reflects the resonance of the Tijāniyya with prior traditions as much as it does the unprecedented divine grace it claimed to transmit.

Shādhilī Sufism in North Africa

Of the several branches of the Shādhiliyya in North Africa, the Nāṣiriyya and Wazzāniyya both stand out for their similarity to the later emergence of the Tijāniyya. These branches, as opposed to the initially antinomian Darqawiyya,¹¹ were distinguished by their good reputation in scholarly circles for societal involvement and orthodoxy. Muḥammad b. Nāṣir, who established his following as the Nāṣiriyya in seventeenth-century southern Morocco, cautioned against extreme acts of renunciation as well as music and dance in Sufi practices, balancing an emphasis on “the Islamic sciences, respect for the Sunnah and scrupulous imitation of the Prophet’s example on the one hand, with initiation and mystical knowledge on the other.”¹² He stressed the importance of having a spiritual guide to actualize one’s Muslim identity: “If you do not have a shaykh, Iblīs [Satan] must be near to you, and if Iblīs is near to you, you are not a true Muslim.”¹³ The shaykh offered his own path as a remedy: “My path is easy, and the benefits large.”¹⁴ Later Nāṣirī followers would claim that initiation gave the aspirant salvation in the afterlife.¹⁵ For these reasons—and due to the order’s success in facilitating trade—the Nāṣiriyya seems to have been the most popular Sufi order in North Africa by the late seventeenth century.

Ibn Nāṣir’s close disciple, al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī, was arguably Morocco’s most famous scholar of the seventeenth century. He advocated the scholar’s active verification of Islam’s central theological doctrine of divine oneness (tawḥīd) to obtain certainty (yaqīn), although methodologically he favored rational proofs according to the Ashʿarī theological school as opposed to the mystical experience of the “unity of being” (waḥdat al-wujūd).¹⁶ Al-Yūsī’s treatment of the visionary experiences claimed by Sufis reflects a sober balance between the verification provided by such experiences and the fact that such experiences were themselves subject to verification. Al-Yūsī argued that, because saints were not immune to error, they could misinterpret spiritual unveilings. While waking visions were more reliable than dreams or states of spiritual intoxication, they could also be subject to delusion. A person should test his own visions, as well as what he hears from others, on the basis of their scholarship and character: “He should not be deluded by every prattler, nor think poorly of every Muslim. Such recondite matters can only be grasped by the intelligent and those blessed with guidance, and it all must be explained with the assistance and guidance of Exalted God.” True visions should be concealed to avoid causing discord, unless the vision could bring benefit to others or unless the visionary was ordered by his teacher to reveal the vision.¹⁷

The Nāṣiriyya thus came to be associated with a sober, sharīʿa-compliant Sufism that rearticulated the importance of saintly authority and scholarship in the verification of knowledge and spiritual states. By the late eighteenth century, the Nāṣiriyya remained a predominate religious force in North Africa and beyond. The Moroccan sultan Mawlay Sulaymān (r. 1792–1822) was initiated into the order, and it became established within the circles of scholarly renewal in the Middle East, probably after the pilgrimage east of Ḥasan al-Yūsī in the late seventeenth century. The Indian scholar resident in Cairo, Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1791), had been initiated into the order while studying ḥadīth in Medina, Arabia, and would later pass knowledge authorizations to the head of the Nāṣiriyya who visited him in Cairo.¹⁸

The Wazzāniyya was less known outside of Morocco,¹⁹ but similar to the Nāṣiriyya, enjoyed good relations with the Moroccan political and scholarly establishment. This branch of Shādhiliyya, founded by ʿAbdallāh b. Ibrāhīm al-Idrīsī (d. 1678) in the northwestern Moroccan town of Wazzān, differed little from Shādhiliyya-Jazūliyya into which the Sharīf ʿAbdallāh had been initiated.²⁰ As such, it emphasized the saint’s role in social and soteriological intercession, the notion of the Sufi path as a “universalistic spiritual path in which the authority of the Sufi shaykh was based on an explicit analo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Orthography
• Introduction. The Tijāniyya and the Verification of Islamic Knowledge
• Chapter One. Sufism and Islamic Intellectual Developments in the Eighteenth Century
• Chapter Two. Portrait of a Scholar: An Intellectual Biography of Shaykh al-Tijānī
• Chapter Three. The Actualization of Humanity on the Muḥammadan Path
• Chapter Four. The Seal of Muḥammadan Sainthood and Hidden Pole
• Chapter Five. Abundant Blessing in an Age of Corruption
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index