Download West_African_Muslim_Education_Series_I

West African Islamic Education: From the Almoravid to the European
This is the first installment in a short series on Islamic Education in West Africa.
The article will provide a basis for understanding the correlation with the broader
but outside Muslim world, the ancient African Muslim prior to European
adventurers and specifically before imperialism.. While students of world history
are entitled to knowledge of the social context and religious narrative conceived of
and employed by and for Africans, western academia consistently overlooks and
underscores life in Islamic West Africa prior to the European arrival.
In West African Muslim societies, where the relationship between Islam and the
indigene extended from the later stages of the ninth century, the place of the
individual within the broad breath of communalism, along with the tradition of
Islamic learning has been an educational imperative. Although Islamic education in
eleventh century West Africa eluded forming a dynamic “foreign” identity, static
African cultural cul-de-sacs posed meager resistance to the transmission of the
pioneering Islamic brand. In Africa, Islam advanced as a human phenomenon based
upon African sensibilities and inherent feelings rather than how religion survived
secularization and scientific reasoning as in Europe.
Classical African traditions dictated cultural stability and opposition to change,
while the European world valued progress, rationale and logic measured through
time rather than across space. In European historiography, cultures were evaluated
as they passed through the European prism of time and merit; with this as the
standard- bearer, Africanity consistently occupied an immutable individual essence
in an ambiguous world consisting of Europe, the Middle East and the Hijaz.
European purists later justified their infatuation for incursions into the perplexing
Dark Continent, determined to conclude white historical superiority originating in
Greek traditions, even found affinity with Indian Sanskrit, as late as the 1700s
found no such commonality with African races, structures, cultures, religions or
intellect.
Beginning with eighteenth century evaluations of Egyptian kingdoms, Orientalists
classified Africanity as spurious and useless. While Egyptian repositories were
replete with astronomical, mathematical, and scientific discoveries, so too were
places like Kanem-Bornu, Jenne, Kano and Timbuktu depositories of knowledge
from the Muslim world. Of scholars defending ancient Egypt and West Africa,
Martin Bernal from Black Athena notes, they (Orientalists) were “classified as
cranks for this triple offence against professionalism, racism and the concept of
progress---the three cardinal beliefs of the 19th century. Among sound scholars, the
reputation of the Egyptians remains low. At the end of the 19th century, a new contrary
but equally disparaging image began to emerge. The Egyptians were now seen to
conform to the contemporary vision of Africans: gay, pleasure-loving, childish,
boastful and essentially materialistic”.
Even though the evolution of Islam in Africa differed based upon geography, there
were significant patterns and features, which even linked Muslims throughout the
continent. The ancient West African Islamic schooling system suggested a familiar
acquaintance with the east coast Swahili Chuo and the eastern Sudanese Khalwa
systems of education. In the early eleventh century, the broad scope of learning,
inspired by the holy word of God, immediately found an audience with the powerful
ruling elite that traded with and embraced traveling Arab merchants searching for
new markets. The zeal Arab merchants demonstrated for Islam incited a curiosity
for the religion, which grew into and connected with an appetite for learning.
Despite the attraction for Islam, African royalty never abandoned indigenous
customs and identity, which bestowed authority and power.
As with many ethnicities absorbed by Islam, African sensibilities underscored the
authenticity and identity of African Islam. Despite overseeing a pagan polity and an
emerging Muslim faction, Muslim kings, in an attempt to live in both worlds, may
have privately believed in the fetish but publicly built an Islamic facade. In a History
of Islamic Societies, Ira Lapidus writes, “The relationship between Muslim beliefs,
rituals and holy-men and chiefs was variable. In some cases the chiefs remained pagan
but employed Muslims as officials, traders and advisors. In other cases the chiefs
converted to Islam but maintained a cultural style which synthesized Muslim rituals
and festivals with pagan customs and ceremonies”.
With a history of more than a thousand years in East and West Africa alone,
Islamic education met its expectations by providing a basis of affinity between the
indigene non-Muslim community and Muslims. The center of that relationship was
not just spiritual; it also opened new commercial relationships from the east coast to
the Bilad As-Sudan, and serendipitously brought new initiatives to Islamic Africa.
As the religious practices of traders and travelers led to Muslim designated quarters
of cities, native rulers balanced one world by maintaining the indigenous on the one
hand; on the other Africans discovered new political and religious orientations.
Although Islamic education was inclusive of Arab grammar, astronomy, arithmetic,
astrology, poetry, jurisprudence and Sufism, underlying was instruction in the
Quran and the establishment of Muslim etiquette derived from the life of the
Prophet Muhammad. At the elementary level, where males initially dominated the
domain, females gradually occupied a place. Regardless of gender, as seen in
modern American universities like Notre Dame, St. Johns, Yeshiva, Temple,
Providence and Yale, students not affiliated with Christianity or Judaism attend
these institutions solely because of their educational renown, discipline, and
achievements. In West Africa, for millennia the school-in-the-mosque commanded a
elite status with daily repetitions of text, Ajami writing style using Arabic letters in
local languages, celebrated even by non-Muslims. In most villages, the sounds of
children repeating Quranic verses and Hadith quotations is taken for granted,
however understanding the text often took a secondary role to rote memory. Even
non-Muslims, sending their children to Islamic schools was a testament to the
practicality, discipline and longevity of Islamic education. While graduating from
Islamic schools was indicative of group honor, and prestige, the overall education
also revealed the intelligence, durability and certainty of African students.
In 930, Ibn Hawqal first reported copies of the Quran sent from the Abbasid caliph
to the king of Kawkaw in Sub-Saharan Africa. Considered more precious than gold,
salt or camels, manuscripts were collected as acts of piety, servitude as well as
accomplishment. Though the first African to accept Islam was War Dyabe from
Hausaland, the first learned African rulers of the region were the Banu Tanamak of
Tadmekka, a large group of mixed Berber and indigenous who claimed descent
from Meccans. Near ancient Tadmekka in 1014, site discoveries of original Arabic
writings on tombstones, graffiti and manuscripts, were found. They revealed the
serious attitude of Muslims who, with no hesitation for documentation, reduced to
writing their interpretation of the new religious persuasion.
In 1353, Ibn Battuta wrote of the inhabitants of Old Mali, “Another good feature is
their assiduity in prayer and their persistence in performing it in congregation and
beating their children to make them perform it. Another is their eagerness to memorize
the great Koran. They place fetters on their children if there appears on their part a
failure to memorize it and they are not undone until they memorize it”.
The founder of the great Saifawa dynasty, who maintained a sterling repute for
knowledge, Hummay Ibn Abd al-Jalil, a renowned soldier and dedicated student,
died in 1086. al-Jalil promoted the new religion and through the generosity of a few
well endowed families opened rural schools and mosques for those unconnected to
urban centers. He held a reputation for accurate memorization and close adherence
to Abbasid traditions. Of Al-Jalil songs praise his legacy, “The friend of youth,
whose writing slate is of kabwi wood---at night a warrior on a coal-black horse; but
when day dawns he is to be seen with Quran in hand”.
The establishment of Islamic schools came gradually from Sus al-Aqsa (Southern
Morocco) to Futa Jallon and Futa Toro, West Africa. As the Arab merchant
consistently reported of African ruling kings and royal governing bodies expressing
a craving for Islam, Ummayad, Andalusian and Abbasid scholars and Imams
awakened to virgin territories within the Bilad As-Sudan (Land of the Blacks). As a
result, small groups of scholars migrated to, and wrote books requested by West
African reformist. Treatise on government, slavery, etiquette, war, education and
trade were written. Even though Arab merchants focused primarily on trade and
profit while on trading excursions, when they returned to the Hijaz and Middle
East, were optimistic and inspired by the genuine attraction to the word of God and
initial willingness of African royalty to learn about Tawhid, the definitive point of
conversion.
The cornstalk Sangaya, or the rural schoolhouse became part of African
topography. Bornu, and then Kanem- Bornu, with its capital at Birin Ngazargamo,
where Islamic instruction took place, was known as a place with many Sangaya
schools. They took pride in producing students able to read and recite the Quran
word for word, “with all the peculiarities of the Quranic orthography”. In the early
1500s Ali Dunama founded the new capital of Ngazargamo in Bornu where he
struggled to persuade the pagan population to form a government, state army,
courts with qadis, agricultural plantations, and what has stood the test of time,
schools. During this era, Ngazargamo became the preeminent center of Islamic
education in the western Sudan. It had four large mosques and four imams with
established Salat-ul-Jumuahs. Along with Ibrahim Sori of Futa Jallon, Uthman
Don Fodio, Askiyah Muhammad Toure, Ibrahim Muhammad and others, they
transformed a pagan society that was singularly indigenous into a duality, with
mosques and schools built throughout the African panorama.
African kings found in Islam not only a religious expression but in urban scholarly
communities a motif to mediate business between Arab merchants on the one hand
and a method to expose the autonomous rural indigene to the agricultural urban
and outside worlds on the other hand. Informal and loose mergers between traders
and the indigene governing bodies created traveling schools, to some degree they still
function to this day.
From an article entitled, Islamic Education In Sub-Saharan Africa, Stefan
Reichmuth remarks, “Another important differential provided by Islamic education is
communal and regional. This can be studied in the growth and development of
important political and commercial centers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Islamic scholars
and traders contributed in no small way to the emergence and stability of such centers.
Quite often they would have their own distinct quarters or settlements centered around
their own local mosques. The religious and educational reputation of such places
sometimes far outlived their political and commercial bloom”.
To comprehend and appreciate the diverse span of education in Africa, it is
necessary to become intimate with a variety of sources, cultures, empires and
figures. The birth and decline of specific eras and empires, based upon shifts in the
socio-political landscape and economic motives gave birth to an African universe
unlike that of the Middle East or the Hijaz. In the 1860s, the French historian and
Arabic scholar Octave Houdas published the classic Arabic text of Abd al-Rahman
Ibn Abd-Allah Ibn Imran al-Sadi, the Tarikh al-Sudan, one of the greatest surviving
works on the spread of Islam in West Africa. Almost eighteen months later Houdas
raised enough money and interest to publish his translation of the work that would
become the definitive edition of al-Sadi’s version of life in Islamic West Africa. He
captured the early Bilad as Sudan: the Takrur, Ghana, Mali, and Kanem- Bornu,
with emphasis on the Songhay Empire. These empires, yet appreciated by the west,
preceded European academia and scholarship by five centuries. The charting of the
stars and the solar system for example was completed in Timbuktu in the twelfth
century, three hundred years before Copernicus’ astrological research in Europe.
Had it not been for the Moroccan conquests of the 1590s and then the European
invasions by the late nineteenth century, Timbuktu might have been recognized
along side the academic repute of Cambridge, Oxford, the Sorbonne, Brown,
Vanderbilt, Loyola, and Dartmouth.
The history of Africa and in particular the diffusion of Islam was entirely dependant
upon several geographical impediments. Of those was the forceful presence of
rugged unforgiving but nurturing geography. African settlements, movements,
empires, reformists and businesses remained eternally compliant to the layout of the
land, rivers, mountains, plains, deserts, and forests. Al-Sadi’s writing in the Tarikh
al-Sudan peers into Islamic life and civilization springing from the ominous middle
Niger River region, around the impeding Senegal River basin, east to majestic Lake
Chad and further east to old Bornu. The first thirty chapters of the Tarikh al-Sudan
is a noteworthy glimpse into the Songhay past. It describes a dual society; one group
accepted what they knew of Islam through the Ahl al- din al malik, or the “family of
the religion of the king”, and the other a powerful majority native-pagan population.
The last eight chapters of the Tarikh describe the invading Moroccans, local
internecine struggles, and the shift in power brought about by the unique
juxtaposition between the new religion and indigenous cultures. He was intrigued by
the indigene perspective and how it surgically synthesized Islamic and African
inimitability.
From writings of explorers and adventurers like Mungo Park, Ibn Battuta and Leo
Africanus, modernity has the luxury of insight into the unheralded African Muslim
world of education. By the time Al-Mansur sent General Djudah Pasha Ibn
Mahmud into Mali in 1591, Timbuktu had already received the fiercest military
onslaught since the earlier Mossi, Massufa and Taureg incursions. Burned were
millions of private manuscripts of exegesis on the Quran, Hadith, mathematics,
jurisprudence, astronomy, along with school and family libraries containing African
intellectual products. Through these documents, we would have understood their
preoccupations and grasp of what was important to them at that time.
To understand the impact and relevance of educated and erudite Muslims, Stefan
Reichmuth, from his article Islamic Education in Sub-Saharan Africa, opines about
the influence of the learned African Muslim reformer, “Not infrequently, they stood
at the center of opposition and political change. This can be observed with particular
clarity from the large Islamic movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth century in
West Africa. Such movements started out as religious reform and preaching
movements before they became directly involved in political and military struggles…
Islamic learning, gradually becoming a mass phenomenon, was used for this, but it
also served to stabilize the resulting social and political arrangements once a new order
was established”.
Readers of Tarikh come away with a depiction of the religious duality between West
Africa distinctiveness and Islam, and a desire for a greater appreciation of the
relationship Muslim kings had with traveling Arab merchants. Contrary to popular
opinion, Arab merchants were not necessarily preoccupied with the conversion of
Africans, but did open doors and encourage the more scholarly from Syria,
Baghdad and Andalusia to connect with the African Mansas, Askiyas and Shehus
beckoning Islamic theology.
Extensive, expensive but precedent-setting journeys to Mecca for the annual Hajj
ended with collaborations between African Muslims and Arab scholars like alMaghili, Abu Ishaq the Granadan poet buried in Timbuktu, Jamal al-Din al-Suyuti,
and al-Bakri; most writing specifically to resolve the Islamic apprehensions of West
Africans reformists. The Meccan Abubakr Ibn Qasim al-Khazraji migrated to the
Bilad at-Takrur. Shams al-din Muhammad Ibn Yusuf al-Andalusi, the Qadi l-qudut
of Damascus banned to Cairo later moved to Takrur where he died in 1514. After
1500, the Mukhtasar of Khalil Ibn Ishaq, with the help of Mahmud Ibn Umar Aqit
(1463- 1548) was issued. His companion Muhammad at-Tazakhti (d.1529), a prolific
teacher and writer opened a major educational center in Katsina. At that time, the
overwhelming influence scholars living in Cairo had on West African studies and
scholarship should not be underscored.
When Askiyah Muhammad Toure(1493-1528), returned from Mecca, he believed
his self-appointed mission was to reform the weak and mend impure practices by
deviant Muslims. Troubled by slavery, Toure asked al-Maghili, a founder of a
tradition of Islamic scholarship, to render a ruling on Muslims enslaving Muslims.
Al-Maghili replied Muslim slaves were a Hubus or inheritance, treated like personal
endowments. Supported by the help of the Mande clan, he made Islam the religion
of the Songhay Empire, one he inherited from Sunni Ali whose Islamic rule was
questionable. Before leaving Mecca, he carried with him the authority to act as the
“deputy” Khalifa of the Abbasid caliph of Cairo; his rule limited to Songhay.
Al-Sadi, along with African born Ibn Battuta, broke new ground when writing of
societies built around Islamic education. By the close of the seventeenth century,
scholars living in Timbuktu firmly grasped and universally employed the admired
Maliki school of thought.
Along with spreading the famous Umm al-Barahin, one of three lengthy manuscripts
written by the theologian and Sufi Tilimsan, Muhammad Ibn Yusuf al-Sanusi (d.
1490), the city of Timbuktu took the initiative to settle the arduous battle Muslims
had in interpreting the place of tobacco and even kola nuts, perhaps the only
stimulant permissible in Islam. The treatise immediately became legendary amongst
Fulbe scholars, who took great pains to translate it into Peul or Fulfulde. The Umm
al-Barahin was a theological treatise claiming the orthodoxy of believers would be
the pivotal point of departure between them and non-believers. His insistence on
faithfulness to the creed was imperative and his understanding of the human
rationale a critical ingredient in preventing false imitation (taqlid), closely
resembling that of the dominant Almoravids. Umar Aqit’s famous son Ahmed Baba
personally took ownership over this document, and became the most memorable
commentator of the Umm al-Barahin. Both it and the Mukhtasar are illustrations of
connections with the larger Islamic world as well as the importance of literary
productions in Islamic West Africa.
Kano, Nigeria:
By the twelfth century, the Alomoravid influence was widely diffused throughout the
declining Takrur and emerging Ghana empires. Perceived as an ambitious and curious
religious persuasion, while providing outlets to outside commercial markets, Islam
encouraged the indigene susceptibility to worship God. Instead of deconstructing and
overthrowing existing indigenous structures, Islam in West Africa provided an additional
outlet extended the political powers of the ruling elite.
In the fifteenth century, the majority inhabitants of Kano were Muslim. Instead of
mirroring Ummayad or Abbasid structures, Africans essentially did not create
learning centers around outside models, but employed an indigenous manner of
worship and education by synthesizing the old guard with new ideas imported from
North Africa, the Levant and the Hijaz. Linguistically Kano, the capital of
Hausaland, increased the impact of education and the presence of Islam in West
Africa through synthesizing Hausa with Arabic, only later to have Swahili follow
this model. By merging Arabic and Hausa, Muslims altered the course and urgency
of how religion assimilated with the traditional; linguistically produced a fresh
perspective and religious means of communication.
Imam Umaru of Salga (1858-1934) demonstrated the extent to which Islamic
education penetrated the inner circles of Hausaland. By this time, Hausaland had its
identity as a kingdom, no longer a part of the Songhay Empire. The prestige of
writing boosted the image of Muslim schools, and to do so using Arabic letters in
local languages firmly predetermined local ethnic consciousness. As an isolated but
great learning center with many schools in mosques, Kano was where the majority
of the people sent their sons to learn Quran and Hadith. As early as the eighteenth
century the city was replete with African, Arab imams and scholars. There was a
sense of upward mobility and status for those sending their boys to Quranic schools.
Initially boys learned the Al-Fatiha, and then the short verses of the Quran.
Students were required to learn Arabic letters and vowels while memorizing the last
sixteenth (hizb) of the Quran, and then moving to the longer chapters. On
graduation, students were awarded white turbans, with lavish and abundantly
colored African clothes. On queue, students recited the first part of the Quran while
the community, including close relatives looked on intensely. Celebrations included
eating bull meat and fresh fruit, as students praised their teachers while satisfied
parents draped fine clothes on the backs of exhausted but proud teachers. This
graduation ceremony marked the end of formal training, however like the rites of
passage students were expected to identify a profession, take a bride and begin a
family, which, according to well- known traditions, completed half the religion.
Female attendance at schools was common. The Yoruba of Ilorin, for example, have
for the most part not experienced the gender tensions stereotypically associated with
matriarchal communalism in Africa. This comes as a backdrop to African history,
which often demonstrates female contributions in a clearly matriarchal society. The
Shinqit of Western Sahara took pride in the manner by which female education,
while using poetry and praise singing, conducted primarily by and for women,
debunked fictitious universals about male dominated Quranic education.
Timbuktu, Mali:
Abu l’Hasan Ali Ibn Said al-Gharnati, born in Granada, Spain in 1211, credited as the first
European to travel south of the Sahara produced a didactic geographic treatise to prove so.
Overlooked in Arab history, he relied heavily on the colossal historian al-Idrisi. AlGharnati believed Islam instilled a sense of individual morality, giving order and
sophistication to the Muslim, which remained absent in the African Christian and to an
appreciable extent was noted by the African American historian and minister Edward
Blyden in Islam, Christianity and the Negro Race.
The city of Timbuktu, with its tradition of Islamic scholarship, was an urban post
and seasonal encampment for pasturing flocks on the banks of the Niger River. In
two hundred years, Timbuktu would attract enough scholars with extensive
libraries that literacy connected the city to smaller communities across the southern
fringes of the Sahel. Literacy in the Arab world quickly extended to Africa, unlike in
Christianity, represented by the Church of Constantine who reserved the luxury of
literacy for a small cadre of religious scholars.
Known as the City of Scholars when Ibn Battuta visited Timbuktu in 1353, the city
was governed by Sanhaja nomads of the Massufa tribe. Al-Sadi writes the regional
federation theologically influenced by the Maliki Almoravid was originally a place
frequented by traveling herdsmen not scholars. A testament to the Almoravid
influence is the Kitab al-Shifa, written by al-Qadi Iyad in the early twelfth century,
widely circulated and still a part of some West African school curricula.
By 1324, Mansa Musa effectively walked onto African history with his ceremonial
return from Mecca. What is widely known about Musa is on the way to pilgrimage
his generosity with gold changed the economy of Egypt. Overlooked, is Musa and
many other African Muslim reformers on return from Mecca and Cairo brought a
number of Arab scholars south of the Sahara to Timbultu and other centers of
learning. Musa returned with Abu Ishaq Ibrahim al-Sahili, who like many Muslim
intellects made West Africa a final home. Al-Sahili migrated to Timbuktu and
supervised the building of the Great Mosque financed by gold from the Senegal
River. Later the Almohads of North Africa, originally led by Ibn Tumart sent
teachers to Kanem-Bornu. Ibrahim Ibn Yaqub al-Kanimi (d.1212) who made a
career as an Arab grammarian, scholar and poet held a seat at the royal court of
Marrakech, later to advised amirs in Mali.
By 1374, the Jewish cartographer Abraham Cresques of Majorca, for the first time
placed Timbuktu on a European map prepared for Charles V of France. As a result,
Muslim scholars from North Africa, and even Jews from Andalusia, migrated to
Timbuktu and worked in schools as translators and business people respectively. In
the Almohad Ibn Tumart’s Al-Murshida, translated into Hausa by the scholarly
reformist Uthman Don Fodio, is widely used in Nigeria as a pretext to Tawhid.
The Sufi shaykh Yahya al-Tadlisi Ibn Abd-Rahman al- Thalibi arrived in Timbuktu
somewhere between 1438 and 1468, along with his teacher Modibbo Muhammad alKabari. Al-Kabari taught the Sanhaja Umar Ibn Muhammad Aqit, whose lineage
extends from one of the leading Almoravid figures Abubakr Ibn Umar. Muhammad
Baghoyogho, (d. 1593), perhaps the most celebrated qadis and lecturer of his era was
responsible for the early training of the intellectual Ahmad Baba (1556-1627).
Lapidus tells us his “biographical dictionary indicates a high level of Arabic
learning”, and his writing describes not only his teaching process but also contains
actual curricula.
Of towns such as Walata, Tuwat and Awjila, densely populated with students,
Professor John Humwick, the last translator of the Tarikh writes, “What is
interesting here is the fact that these southerly towns were early centers of learning
that produced scholars deeply versed in the literature of the Maliki madh’hab, from
whom Timbuktu profited. Although there is no direct evidence, we may hypothesize
that this tradition ultimately stems from Almoravid scholarship, which was imbibed by
Soninke Muslims who came in contact with Sanhaja scholars in the Sahalian
regions…”
At one time, the mosque nestled in the northeast corner of Timbuktu had a
reputation as the premiere revered Islamic learning center. African American
historian and social scientist W.E.B. Dubois was the first to use the term University
at Sankore at Timbuktu. Built partly by the financial generosity of a woman from
the local community, Sankore means “white nobles” and alludes to the lighter
skinned Taureg. Although the majority of learning took place on a one on one basis
and in the homes of scholars utilizing private libraries, the Great Mosque and the
Sidi Yahya Mosque were hubs of scholarly activities.
Nevertheless, there is no basis for comparing African universities to European, nor
is there any evidence of a centralized institutional system in West African history.
The pattern of teaching did resemble that of the greater Islamic world. Students
received Quranic studies and disciplined to memorize chapters and verses.
Reichmuth adds, “The student made his own copy from his teacher’s dictation, and
then read it back to him, or listened whilst another student read his. When he had a
correct copy---and some shorter works might at the same time be memorized---he could
then study the meaning of the text and its technical intricacies from lectures delivered
by his teacher and at a higher level by question and answer. Many texts would be
studied along with commentaries written in other times in other parts of the Muslim
world”.
The most well known collections of manuscripts from the golden era of Timbuktu
belong to the Mamma Haidara Library, the al-Wangara Library, the Fondo Kati,
and the Mohammad Tahar Library. The es-Sayouti family claims more than two
thousand texts, including topics about the optics and astronomy dating back to the
1300s.