History Of Islam In Africa

Chapter 23: Islamic Literature in Africa

CHAPTER 23 ls1amic Literatltfre il1 Africa Kenneth W Harrow W k.\t is "Islamic Iitcratl-lre"? In this literary overview we seek to locate Muslim identities in actors whose awareness of themselves, as purveyors or critics of the faith, is reflected in their words as well as their acts. For the literary critic, this is reflected in the texts' participation in a discourse that identifies itself as Islamic. Of necessity, the meaning of "Islam" here, or of a "Muslim discourse," is best seen in terms that are relative to the text as well as the culture. Islamic literature arose from the intersection between culture, discourse, text, and reader; that is, as relative to particular texts as well as to particular readers, and to the ways in which language has been used to construct related texts and ideas. However the discourse on "Islam" is constructed, what any study of its literature in Africa demonstrates quite simply is the multivalent nature ofwhat is meant when the term Islam is employed. Despite the common understanding of the term, it varies considerably with time, place, and text-sharing all the generic diversity of African culture, as well as particular idiosyncrasies of individual authors. The history of Islamic writing in Africa might be conceived as that thought whose development was directly linked to Arab civilizations-that is, the Middle East and North Africa-as well as that which developed at a greater distance from the Islamic heartland and that therefore was more marked by syncretism or "foreign" incursions . The frequent privileging of the former rests upon a vision that might be termed Atabocentric, in which the "pure" tradition ofIslam is seen to have unfolded within the core ofArab civilizations, in contrast to that of the "impure" ways of almukhlit , the "mixers" whose sub-Saharan traditions marked the processes of naturalization of Islam in Africa. In Africa, as elsewhere, the tension between the path of purity and that of mixing continues to inform the debates over the development of Islamic literature. However, on close inspection, one soon perceives that the processes Kenneth W Ha.rrow deemed syncretic, the mixing deplored by the purists, have characterized the development of Islamic thought in general throughout history. The pejorative characterizations ofAfricanized forms ofIslam might be deemed the result of prejudice. S~tb-S..\h..\r"l1 Chrol1idcs. €pks. "\11~ Or..\) Tr..\Ntiol1S 520 The ties between North African Islam and sub-Saharan Africa were multiple. The traders and religious leaders of the Maghrib carried Islam and Islamic thought across the desert into sub-Saharan Africa, especially from the eleventh century on. With the ascendancy of Musa as ruler of the Mande empire of Mali in the fourteenth century, Islam came to enjoy great prominence. The accounts dealing with the rise ofSonghay in the fifteenth century and its powerful rulers-their reigns and great deeds, and their fall-are to be found in the major literary forms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including both oral epics and written chronicles. Two ofthe principal sources ofour knowledge about this period are the Arabiclanguage chronicles known as the Ta rikh el-Fettach, or "The history of the researchers ,"l and the Ta'rikh eS-SUdLln, or "The history of the blacks,"2 written by Abderrahman es-Sa'di (1596-1655), a religious leader and political figure in the administration of Timbuktu. These two extensive works describe the Sudanic kingdoms from the point ofview of the educated Muslim scribe. The written tradition ofArabic chroniclers and historians like Ibn Battuta is continued in the Ta'rikh esSudan , which is considered by historians to be the best account ofthe Songhay empire and the Moroccan protectorate that followed. However, the narratives of oral historians and praise-singers, known generally in West Africa as griots, also influenced the scribes, as we can see in the focus upon the genealogy ofthe Sonni dynasty and in the recounting of their origins and heroic accomplishments. African epics such as Sundiata, Askia Mohammed,3 and the Ta'rikhs were all marked by their deference to the supremacy ofIslamic traditions. In addition to the written historical account of the rise and fall of the great Sudanic empire of Songhay that is provided in the Ta rikh es-Sudan, there also exists an oral account of the dynasty ofAskia Mohammed, The Epic ofAskia Mohammed, that has survived for almost five hundred years. It celebrates the reign of the second great ruler of Songhay , Askia Mohammed, who supplanted the dynasty ofhis successor, SonniAli Ber...