The Tijaniyya is the largest Sufi order in West and North Africa. In this unprecedented analysis of the Tijaniyya's origins and development in the late eighteenth century, Zachary Valentine Wright ...situates the order within the broader intellectual history of Islam in the early modern period. Introducing the group's founder, Ahmad al-Tijani (1737–1815), Wright focuses on the wider network in which al-Tijani traveled, revealing it as a veritable global Islamic revival whose scholars commanded large followings, shared key ideas, and produced literature read widely throughout the Muslim world. They were linked through chains of knowledge transmission from which emerged vibrant discourses of renewal in the face of perceived social and political corruption.
The Tijaniyya is the largest Sufi order in West and North Africa. In this unprecedented analysis of the Tijaniyya's origins and development in the late eighteenth century, Zachary Valentine Wright ...situates the order within the broader intellectual history of Islam in the early modern period. Introducing the group's founder, Ahmad al-Tijani (1737 - 1815), Wright focuses on the wider network in which al-Tijani traveled, revealing it as a veritable global Islamic revival whose scholars commanded large followings, shared key ideas, and produced literature read widely throughout the Muslim world. They were linked through chains of knowledge transmission from which emerged vibrant discourses of renewal in the face of perceived social and political corruption. Wright argues that this constellation of remarkable Muslim intellectuals, despite the uncertainly of the age, promoted personal verification in religious learning. With distinctive concern for the notions of human actualization and a universal human condition, the Tijaniyya emphasized the importance of the realization of Muslim identity. Since its beginnings in North Africa in the eighteenth century, the Tijaniyya has quietly expanded its influence beyond Africa, with significant populations in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and North America.
Living Knowledge in West African Islam examines the actualization of religious identity in the Muslim community of Ibrāhīm Niasse (d. 1975, Senegal). The realization of Islam was achieved through the ...enduring West African practice of learning in the physical presence of exemplary masters.
This paper concerns a large community of Muslims in West Africa, the followers of the Senegalese Sufi Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, who articulated an Islamic vision of African liberation and political ...engagement at the time of decolonization. They were not isolated from the discourse of the Western-educated elite, nor did they owe their inspiration to them. They drew heavily on inherited Islamic traditions in West Africa, and then attempted to transcend the confines of the colonial and postcolonial state rather than being reduced to clients. As nationalism can be defined as a project of liberation and anticolonial resistance separately from the project of the postcolonial state, the community fashioned itself as an important player in the story of African nationalism. But the community was largely excluded from the crafting of the Senegalese state, and its involvement in post-independence politics was mostly restricted to the re-articulation of Islamic religious identity and communal autonomy.
