THE TRADITION OF TAJDEED IN WEST AFRICA: AN OVER VIEW - 2
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[INTRODUCTION ]
[ AL-MURABIT FACTOR] THE AL-MURABIT FACTOR The history of Tajdeed in West Africa is nearly as old as the history of Islam itself. By the ninth century Islam had already reached the Sene-gambian region and Kanem on the he eastern edge of West Africa. By early 11th century the Islamic State of Tukrur had emerged. To the north of Tukrur were the Sanhaja Berbers who must have been Islamized much earlier than Tukrur. But by 1030's their level of ignorance and lack of compliance with Islam was such as to warrant their leader Yahya b. Ibrahim al-Guladi on his way back from Hajj, to request Shaykh Abu Imran al-Fasi at Qayrawan to assign for him a teacher from the latter's students to return with him and instruct his people. The responsibility of undertaking this task of instructing the Sanhaja fell on Abdullahi B. Yasin. (7) Ibn Abi Zar's account may be worth recounting: "When he (Abd Allah b. Yasin) arrived with Yahya b. Ibrahim in the land Sanhaja ... he began to teach them religion and to explain the Law and the Sunnah to them, to command them to do good and to forbid them to do evil. When they saw that he was intent on making them abandon their wicked ways they shook him off turned away from him, and shunned him, for they found his actions burdensome ... When Abd Allah b. Yasin saw their opposition and the way in which they followed their fancies he wished to leave them and go to the land of the Sudan who had adopted Islam ... but Yahya b. Ibrahim would not let him, saying: "I shall not let you go away for I brought you here only that your learning might profit my person, my religion, and those of my people for whom I am responsible ..." (8) Yahya b. Ibrahim was able to convince Abd Allah b. Yasin to leave for an island in the sea, a kind of Hijra, where he made a ribat teaching his students Qur'an among others. The number of his students grew until he was in a position to return to the Sanhaja fighting those who remain adamant and refuse to mend their corrupt way of life. From here Abd Allah Yasin appointed Yahya b. Umar as a Military commander and with their expanding team of students (murabitun) they conquered the Magrib as far as Spain. It is significant that Abd Allah b. Yasin had to make a kind of Hijra during which he devoted time for the study of the Qur'an. This is not only a reflection of selflessness but much more. It is also significant that he was rigorous to a point where his very mission became threatened. This thoroughness of Abd Allah b. Yasin which became hallmark of the al-murabit appear to have been the influence of their grand Shaykh, al-Fasi. For it was the latter's strictness which apparently led him to fall out with the rulers of Fez of his time warranting his leaving Fez for Qayrawan where he settled and taught until his death. The extent of al-Murabit's effect on the development of Islam in western Sudan is still to be assessed. But it was clear that some of the Berber tribes which participated in the al-Murabit movement moved south and settled around the bank of the Niger River which al-Bakri the historian mistook for the Nile. (9) It appears that it was these elements that formed the nucleus of the school of the region. Diakha and Jenne the earliest educational centers which later fed Timbuktu appear to have developed under scholars with al-Murabit links. Timbuktu itself started as a camp for a Sanhaja tribe which made up the al-murabit movement. (10) The Nasiba of the leading scholarly family of Ahmad aba of Timbuktu the Aqits, has been traced back to Abubakar b. Umar the brother of Yahya b. Umar the Military Commander of al-Murabit. (11) This point is further reinforced by the fact that the leading texts studied at the educational institutions of the region, like al-shifa, of Qadi Iyad, Mudawana of Sahnun, Risala of Abu Zaid al-Qayrawani, etc. are mainly the writings of the North African and Andalusian (Spanish) scholars. The point that is being made here is that the al-murabit made the first attempt at Tajdeed in the region. This attempt had generated a spate of scholarship which formed the nucleus of the educational centers in the region of West Africa. This scholarship appear to have set the tempo of and continued to influence the intellectual climate for along time leaving a permanent stamp on the he intellectual tradition in the region. This intellectual tradition produced chain of scholars for the region, through whose activity knowledge and scholarship spread far and wide in the vast region. THE AL-MAGHILI FACTOR The next significant input into the tradition of Tajdeed in West Africa seems to be that of Muhammad Abd al-Karim al-Maghili the visiting scholar who came to the region late in the 15th century, when Muslims were yet to recover from their expulsion from Andalusia, al-Maghili spent a good part of his life defending the integrity of the Muslim Ummah and the supremacy of the Sharia. He had to fight fierce intellectual and later physical battle again unjust and corrupt Muslim leaders, their venal scholars and the Jews who had monopolized the economy and had begun to flout the Sharia with impunity. It was in the midst of this struggle and in the spirit of revitalizing the Muslim Ummah al-Maghili left Tuwat in North Africa for West Africa. His zeal for the total and correct application of the Sharia and his impatience with unjust and venal scholars is thus understandable. Al-Maghili's presence in West Africa seemed to have come at an opportuned time when sufficient awareness of Islam has been generated in the region to make rulers ready and willing to apply Islam. Coming from North Africa, whence most of the basic Islamic literature in West Africa came, operating within the same Maliki Mazhab al-Maghili found himself intellectually at home in the region. Thus almost where ever he went, Air, Katsina, Kano, Gao, he was highly welcomed and immediately involved int he process of the application of Islam. A great teacher in Takedda, in Air; Qadi in Katsina for many years; a legal and political adviser in Kano where he wrote for Sarki Muhammad Rumfa, Taj al-Din fi ma yajib ala'l muluk; in Gao, Songhay, the ideologue and architect of the State of Songhay under Askia Muhammad; al-Maghili succeeded in injecting a new drive into intellectual tradition and invigorated the social and political clime of the whole region. Al-Maghili's celebrated success in the region in as much a product of his zeal and vigor as the tradition of scholarship in the region which had always an inclination for thoroughness and precision. Indeed the presence of al-Maghili only gave a further push and reinforcement to a feature which scholarship in the region had been known to posses from the time of al-Murabit. Al-Maghili's experience in North Africa had, however something new and precious to add to this tradition. Al-Maghili's encounter with corrupt Muslim rulers and Ulama al-Su', venal scholars who he sometimes calls ru'asa-ul-zalimin, the chief oppressor, (12) helped sharpened the regions taste for leadership and scholarship and developed for it a standard with which to gauge the scholars and rulers of the region. Thus the intellectual tradition was given new challenges to meet and the society taste to be satisfied. Al-Maghili was of course not the only scholar of repute who had access to the region in the late 15th century. His contemporary Jalaluddeen al-Suyuti of Egypt was well known in the region. Many of Suyuti's books were circulating in the region, many of the pilgrims from the region who go through Egypt met Suyuti (13) and many have sought for his legal opinion (fatwa) on maters. (14) But speaking from the the comfort of his late Mamluk Egypt, free from the kind of conflict al-Maghili lived with in North Africa, Suyutis' writings though generally useful may have sounded a little milder than their situation demanded. In any case Suyuti did not have the benefit or being in the region to appreciate the region’s real needs and circumstances. For Askia Muhammad who had met both Suyuti in Egypt and al-Maghili at home in Songhay found in the latter the vigor and thoroughness he needed. This impetus which the intellectual tradition as well as the social and political climate received from al-Maghili was what generated a spate of scholarship which produced such scholars of high learning and virtue like Muhammad Baghaygho, whose student Ahmad Baba of Timbuktu considered a Mujaddid. Though this delicate process was jeopardized by the Moroccan invasion of Songhay at the end of the 16th century, the vital ideas it had generated were kept alive by such scholars as al-Barnawi (15) of Katsina. It were these scholars who bore with courage the risks of preserving these ideas and conveying it to the leaders of the Tajdeed movements of the 19th century. One needs to see Ida'al-Nusukh of Abdullah Dan Fodio, Infaq - al-maysur of Muhammad Bello and such works of Shehu Usman Dan Fodio as Kitab al-Farq to see the role these scholars played in providing this link. (16) Indeed many of the writings of Shehu Usman Dan Fodio, like Hisn al-Afham, Bayan Wujub al-Hijra, Siraj al-Ikhwan, reveal the extent of al-Maghili's influence on the Shehu. Even the temperaments of of Shehu Usman and his team, Ahmad Labbo and Umar al-Futi clearly bore the thoroughness and conscientiousness of the al-Murabit and al-Maghili. |
