The Tijaniyah movement was reared out of controversy. From its very inception (c.1782), its members brought challenge to the accepted notions of monastic order. Abu al-`Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Mukhtar al-Tijani (born AH I150/1737 CE) at Ayn Madi, southern Algeria), the founder of the brotherhood, proclaimed himself the “pole of poles” (qutb alaqtab) and
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`UMAR TAL (c.1794-1864), more fully al-Hajj ‘Umar ibn Sa’id, Senegalese Islamic militant leader and thinker. Al-Hajj ‘Umar ibn Said deserves recognition as one of the towering figures of West African history in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It is to his efforts that we can ascribe the success of the Tijaniyah brotherhood which,
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TUNISIA. From almost the introduction of Islam in Tunisia, most Tunisians of the Muslim faith, like most other people of the Maghrib, have been Sunn-is of the Maliki rite dating back to the eighth-century scholar Malik ibn `Abbas. However, many of the various dynasties that have ruled Tunisia, both of foreign and of Tunisian origin,
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TIJANI, AHMAD AL- (1737-1815), founder of the Tijaniyah Sufi order. Abu al-`Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Tijani was born at `Ayn Madi in southern Algeria. At the age of twenty he visited Fez, where he successively experimented with the litanies of several Sufi orders and was disappointed with all of them. Ten years later, in 1767,
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SUFISM AND POLITICS. Traditional Sufism is an interiorization of Sunni quietism, articulating the pre-Islamic Pahlavi vision of monarchic government by religious principles, as echoed by al-Ghazali (d. 1111) in his Nasihat al-muluk. A more systematic order found expression in the thirteenth century in the form of the “inner government” (hukumah batiniyah), which envisaged the temporal
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Sufi orders represent one of the most important forms of personal piety and social organization in the Islamic world. In most areas, an order is called a tariqah (pl., turuq), which is the Arabic word for “path” or “way.” The term tariqah is used for both the social organization and the special devotional exercises that
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SENEGAL. Possessed of a strong regional cohesion and distinct Islamic identity for many centuries, Senegal lies just below the westernmost part of the Sahara, which constitutes today the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. Senegal is circumscribed by the arc of the Senegal River, which begins in the mountains of Futa Jalon in today’s Guinea; it flows
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QADIRIYAH. Among the better-known names in Islamic mysticism is that of `Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani (or Jilani or Jili), who is associated with the beginnings of the Qadri brotherhood or tariqah either as founder or as patron and sponsor. `Abd al-Qadir’s birthdate is usually given as All 470/1077-1078 CE and his date of death as 561/1165-1166.
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Popular Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa During the nineteenth century, and to an even greater extent under colonial domination in the twentieth century, rapid and widespread islamization touched hundreds of African ethnic groups in West Africa, extending well into the forest zone, and in the interior of East Africa as far as Zaire and Malawi and
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Popular Religion in the Middle East and North Africa “Popular” Islam is the term used to describe the variations in belief and practice in Islam as they are understood and observed throughout the Muslim world. Religious leaders and spokespersons talk of the unity of Islamic belief and practice, but, as in other religions, there is
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