Академия Корана:Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān/African Literature

John O. Hunwick, "African Literature" in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: J. D. McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

As is the case elsewhere in the world, the memorization of the Qurʾān, or at least a portion of it, is the starting point for a Muslim child’s education in sub-Saharan Africa. For those whose education continues beyond this point, the Qurʾān plays a relatively small role in their studies. Nevertheless, the language of the Qurʾān remains the stylistic point of reference for everything they subsequently write in the Arabic language, especially among the majority for whom Arabic itself is not the mother tongue. Thus, in the seventeenth-century chronicle of Timbuktu, Taʾrīkh al-sūdān (ed. O. Houdas, Paris 1898) of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Saʿdī , we find a large number of phrases which were either taken from the Qurʾān or inspired by it, e.g. fī ḍalālin mubīn (q 3:164 et passim), fataḥa lahu fatḥan mubīnan (cf. q 48:1), al-fasād fī l-arḍ (q 11:116; cf. 2:205; 5:32), al-taʿāwun ʿalā l- birr (cf. q 5:2), yaqūlūna mā lā yafʿalūna (q 26:226), lā tasmaʿū illā qīlan salāman (cf. q 56:25-6), ẓulman wa-ʿudwānan (cf. q 4:30). Qurʾānic echoes are a marked feature of the prose writing of West African religious scholars (ʿulamāʾ) in particular, regardless of the topic they are treating.

Despite its mention in the study curricula of some scholars, qurʾānic exegesis (tafsīr) does not seem to have occupied a major place in African teaching traditions and few scholars wrote works in this field. An examination of the catalogs of public manuscript collections shows that Tafsīr al-Jalālayn of Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī (d. 864/1459) and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) was, as in many parts of the Muslim world, the most popular commen- tary in West Africa. In fact, it is found in almost every collection. Al-Suyūṭī communicated with a number of West African scholars and his writings are still greatly admired in the region. Together with the prominent Malikite legal work, the Muwaṭṭaʾ by Mālik (d. 179/795), and a book on the miraculous nature of the Prophet, Kitāb al-Shifāʾ by al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149), this commentary forms the triad of fundamental texts for aspiring scholars of the clans of the Dyula. Other commentaries one finds in West African libraries are Lubāb al-taʾwīl of al-Khāzin (d. 741/1340), Anwār al-tanzīl of al-Bayḍāwī (d. ca. 700/1301) and Maʿālim al-tanzīl of al-Baghawī (d. 516/1122). Less commonly found are al-Tashīl li-ʿulūm al-tanzīl of Ibn Juzayy al-Kalbī (d. 741/1340), Madārik al-tanzīl of al-Nasafī (d. 710/1310), al-Jawāhir al-ḥisān of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Thaʿālibī (d. 875/1471) and al-Sirāj al-munīr of al-Shirbīnī (d. 977/1576).

Local writing of qurʾānic commentaries is less common, except for brief treatises on specific verses or short sūras. The earliest complete commentary by an author from sub-Saharan Africa is that of the Mauritanian Muḥammad b. al-Mukhtār al-Daymānī, known as a-Walī al-Yadālī (d. 1168/1753), whose al-Dhahab al-ibrīz is a Ṣūfī exegesis (see ṣūfism and the qurʾān) which seems to be little known outside its land of origin. Much better known is Ḍiyāʾ al-taʾwīl fī maʿānī al-tanzīl (Cairo 1961) of ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad Fodiye (d. 1245/1829; see J. Hunwick (ed.), Arabic literature, ii, ch. 2, and esp. p. 93), brother of the celebrated Fulani warrior for the faith(mujāhid) and state founder ʿUthmān b. Muḥammad Fodiye. Copies of this commentary have been found in libraries in the Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco. The original work is in two volumes and its author later produced a one-volume abridgement, appropriately enti- tled That which suffices for the weaklings of the Sudan (Kifāyat ḍuʿafāʾ al-Sūdān). The same author also wrote a versified introduction to the traditional disciplines of qurʾānic study (see exegesis of the qurʾān), entitled al-Miftāḥ lil-tafsīr, based on two works by al-Suyūṭī , al-Nuqāya and al-Itqān fī ʿulūm l-Qurʾān. More recently from the same region, the former chief judge (qāḍī) of Northern Nigeria, Abū Bakr Gumi (d. 1992) wrote a simple commentary partially based on that of al-Bayḍāwī, entitled Radd al-adhhān ilā maʿānī l-Qurʾān (Beirut 1399/1979). Abū Bakr Gumi also published a Hausa translation of the Qurʾān (Beirut 1399/1979; see translation of the qurʾān). A voluminous commentary entitled Aḍwāʾ al-bayān fī īḍāḥ al-Qurʾān bi-l-Qurʾān by the Mauritanian scholar Muḥammad al-Amīn b. Muḥammad al-Mukhtār al-Jakanī al-Shinqīṭī has also been published in ten volumes (Beirut n.d.).

If formal written exegesis in Arabic has not been such a widely practiced art, oral and hence unrecorded commentary in both Arabic and African languages has been more common. Nevertheless, to date little study of this form of exegesis has been done. However, a project of the Research Centre on Islamic History, Art and Culture in Istanbul — an organ of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference — aims to establish a library of recordings of the oral exegesis in the various African languages. At a more modest level, the practice of writing glosses in African languages seems to have some historical depth. An example of glossing in Kanembu, a language of Bornu, dating from ca. 1700, has been published by A.D.H. Bivar. At least one large written commentary exists in an African language. The manuscript collection of the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire Cheikh Anta Diop has a work in Wolof by Mouhammadou Dème which runs 2,161 pages (see Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara, vii [1994], 178, item 203). In the 1960s the Sudanese scholar, critic and poet ʿAbdallāh al-Ṭayyib undertook a bold experiment, offering on the radio a nightly commentary in colloquial Sudanese Arabic during the month of Ramaḍān (q.v.), which was an immediate success.

West African and Mauritanian scholars have also written works which deal with the Qurʾān in other ways. There is a literature on the «virtues of the Qurʾān» (faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān) and the virtues of particular sūras (see popular and talismanic uses of the qurʾān). Asmāʾ bt. ʿUthmān b. Fodiye (d. 1280/1864), for example, wrote an Arabic treatise on the healing properties of certain sūras (see J. Hunwick [ed.], Arabic literature, ii, 164) and there is a poem in Fulfulde (also translated into Hausa) which consists in large part of the names of the various sūras to be recited to bring blessing (J. Hunwick [ed.], Arabic literature, ii, 168). The acrostic was a form of verse writing which found favor in West Africa. Although acrostics have been composed, for example, on the names of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Tijānī or Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse (and even on the names of the astronauts who landed on the moon in 1969), one of the more frequent choices is the first letters of one or more verses of the Qurʾān (see, for example, J. Hunwick (ed.), Arabic literature, ii, 348, 398). Additionally, there are a small number of works on the readings of the Qurʾān (q.v.) and on the orthography of the Qurʾān (q.v.). One example of the latter is Aḥmad Mālik Ḥammād al-Fūtīʿs Miftāḥ al-amān fī rasm al-Qurʾān (Dakar 1395/1975).

Africa has produced one true philosopher of the Qurʾān, who takes an approach to the text which has been considered by most Muslims to be errant if not heretical. Maḥmūd Muḥammad Ṭāhā was, in fact, hanged in the Sudan for apostasy in 1985. Born in 1909 (or 1911) in Rufa, he was graduated from Gordon Memorial College in Khartoum with a degree in Engineering in 1936. In 1948, after two years in jail for leading an anti-government demonstration, he spent a further three years in religious retreat (khalwa) in his home town, praying, fasting and meditating. This retreat was the breeding ground for the ideas expressed in his bookThe second message of Islam (al-Risāla al-thāniya min al-Islām, Khartoum 1967). While denying he had received a revelation as such, he did claim that human beings can receive an «enlightened understanding» of God’s word directly from God. The Republicans, a political party which he had founded in 1945, was now transformed into a religious grouping known as the Republican Brothers.

According to Ṭāhā, society has gone through three stages: an initial stage in which people were Muslims in the simple sense of professing Islam; a second stage in which people have been believers (muʾminūn) practicing the Holy Law (sharīʿa, see law and the qurʾān); and a more advanced stage in which people are Muslims in the higher sense, submitters to God who practice a prophetic lifestyle. The guidance for this more advanced stage was revealed to Muḥammad in Mecca as a spiritual message for the moral uplift of humanity. But it was «abrogated» (see abrogation) in the sense of being «postponed» by the message of the Medinan period which was necessitated by the exigencies of the time (see chronology and the qurʾān). This interpretation of abrogation is premised on the adoption of an alternative reading of q 2:106. The standard text reads: «Whatever message we abrogate or cause to be forgotten (aw nunsihā), We produce one better than it or equal to it.» Ṭāhā adopted the reading aw nansaʾhā (see Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, i, 477), i.e. «or postpone», arguing that the «one better than it» is the Medinan message that was closer to the understanding of the people at the time of the Prophet. The original message that was «postponed» would only be reinstated when people were sufficiently advanced materially and intellectually to appreciate it.

During the second half of the Prophet’s mission and thereafter up till the present-day, Muslims have continued to live in the «believer» stage, enacting the social teachings of the Medinan revelation which was revealed in accordance with the understanding of the people of the Prophet’s day. But now after 1400 years, Ṭāhā claimed, Muslims have reached a stage of material and intellectual advancement that makes it possible for the third more advanced stage, that of the true Muslim, to come into being. We are now far from Muḥammad’s epoch — which in Ṭāhā's view was not a perfect epoch because its manners and conceptions were very close to those of the Age of Ignorance (q.v.), the period prior to the qurʾānic revelation — hence we need to reinterpret the Holy Law. This law is perfect in its ability to assimilate and develop the capabilities of individuals and society and guide human life up the ladder of continuous development.

This daring interpretation of a single verse was the basis for a complete revaluation of the nature of the qurʾānic message. The legislative verses of the Medinan portions of the Qurʾān could now be regarded as being secondary to the original message of Mecca and no more than concessions to the social realities of the Prophet’s day. In Ṭāhā's view, these verses have now outlived their usefulness and Muslims in the fifteenth/twentieth century should look to the Meccan verses of the Qurʾān and formulate new laws in accordance with the moral and ethical precepts found in them. Hence he could proclaim that jihād (q.v.), slavery (see slaves and slavery), poly- gamy, divorce (see marriage and divorce) and the seclusion of women (see veil; women and the qurʾān) are not the original precepts of Islam, but have been sanctioned simply because the early Muslims did not have the tools to build a social order based on the Meccan revelations. In a similar vein, he held that complete equality between men and women was an original precept of Islam, as were democracy, socialism, the eradication of social classes and even the social equality of non-Muslims in a Muslim state.

Ṭāhā's theory of a first and second message was a bold way of trying to establish a qurʾānic basis for genuine social and political reform. It must be viewed, however, within the context of present-day Sudanese society, where women are largely secluded and discriminated against, a long-drawn-out civil war rages over the status of the non-Muslim southerners, and there is constant pressure to «islamize» the law, i.e. to establish the traditional Holy Law. Ultimately, it was Ṭāhā's political and social views (especially as expressed in a 1984 pamphlet), rather than his theology, that turned the government of General Numeiri against him and his small band of Republican Brothers. His engagement with the Qurʾān, however, is symptomatic of the need felt by many modernist Muslims to find a way around the impasse formed by the doctrine of the undifferentiated eternal validity of the entire text.

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