Description
Book SynopsisThe seventeenth century was a period of major social change in central sudanic Africa. Islam spread from royal courts to rural communities, leading to new identities, new boundaries and new tasks for experts of the religion. Addressing these issues, the Bornu scholar Muḥammad al-Wālī acquired an exceptional reputation. Dorrit van Dalen’s study places him within his intellectual environment, and portrays him as responding to the concerns of ordinary Muslims. It shows that scholars on the geographical margins of the Muslim world participated in the debates in the centres of Muslim learning of the time, but on their own terms. Al-Wālī’s work also sheds light on a century in the Islamic history of West Africa that has until now received little attention.
Trade Review'To conclude, van Dalen’s book is an important contribution, successfully navigating between global and local contexts. Doubt, Scholarship and Society encompasses text edition and translation with a trans-disciplinary analysis combining micro and global history, anthropology, religious studies, and palaeography, which is the best way, in this reviewers opinion, to renovate African history'. Rémi Dewière, European University Institute in Reading Religion http://readingreligion.org/books/doubt-scholarship-and-society-17th-century-central-sudanic-africa
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements A note on transliteration Map of western and northern Africa 1. Preface 1. One man in his environment 2. Coordinates 3. Intellectual history and philology 4. Peripheries 5. Sources and structure 2. Dramatis loci 1. A history of Bornu and Baghirmi as Islamic states 2. The spread of Islam 3. Ethnicity, religion, slavery 4. Islam and traditional religions 5. Conclusion 3. Muḥammad al-Wālī 1. Biography 2. Works 3. Reputation 4. Education 5. Conclusion 4. The scholar’s habitat 1. Scholarship 2. Religious leadership 3. Intellectual environment: genres 4. Intellectual environment: themes 5. Conclusion 5. Method and message 1. Al-Sanūsi’s Ṣughra 2. The Kabbe 3. Between oral and scholarly text 4. Tradition with a twist 5. Conclusion 6. Demonising smokers 1. How tobacco conquered the Islamic lands 2. Al-Wālī’s point of view 3. A folktale about the devil’s piss 4. From Abgar to al-Azhar 5. Conclusion 7. On writing 1. Author and authority 2. Why did al-Wālī translate the Fulani commentary? 3. From orality to literacy 4. Knowing and the knower 5. Conclusion 8. Certainties in times of choice Annex I. Al-adilla al-ḥisān fī bayān taḥrīm shurb al-dukhān. An edition of the Arabic text. Annex II. Valid proofs to proclaim smoking forbidden. A translation. Annex III. ʿAwsikum yā maʿshar al-ikhwān. An edition of al-Wālī’s poem. Bibliography
