Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World by Zachary Valentine Wright (review)

Studies on eighteenth-century Islamic intellectual history tend to highlight the Wahhabi movement or “fundamentalist” movements. Few studies offer insights into less understood—though by no means less influential—scholarly currents. One such book is Zachary Valentine Wright’s Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World. Focusing on the knowledge production of the modern Tijani Sufi order—one of the largest Sufi orders in Africa today—and the vivacious intellectual life of its founder, Realizing Islam undermines previously held assumptions regarding theories of so-called intellectual “decline” in Islam from roughly the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries.

Wright, a specialist of North and West African Islamic intellectual history, is also a scholar of Sufism and one of the foremost prolific authors on Tijani Sufism today. Realizing Islam weaves a compelling and original narrative of the intellectual vivacity of the eighteenth century and traces its dynamic scholarly network through the lens of the life and ideas of Shaykh Aḥmad Tijānī (d.1815), the founder of the Tijani order.

The book’s central idea is that the Tijaniyya stands as an important vehicle to better understand the intellectual currents and networks of the eighteenth- century Muslim world, with an emphasis on its experiential verification or realization (ṭaḥqīq) of knowledge. Wright defines ṭaḥqīq as the ability “to put knowledge into practice or confirm a religious truth through its performance” (2). Because so many works on the Muslim modern era tend to focus on ijtihād (independent reasoning), it is refreshing to read a work that takes the lesser understood ṭaḥqīq framework seriously.¹

Wright’s introduction presents the Tijaniyya as one of several turuq Muhammadiyya (Muhammadan Paths), one that centers its wayfaring on the Prophet himself as the ultimate shaykh and guide. Despite the order’s claims to being a culminative, “sealing” path, Wright cautions that even the “Tijaniyya’s most visible distinguishing characteristic—the waking encounter with the Prophet and the claim to Seal of Sainthood—do not result from any ideological or practical innovation” from “orthodox” Islamic doctrine or previous Sufi paths (6). At the same time, he highlights the need to study more closely the rich features and contributions of the wide-spanning order and the novel scholarly contributions of its founder.

Realizing Islam’s opening chapter is entitled “Sufism and Islamic Intellectual Developments in the Eighteenth Century.” In it, Wright lays the groundwork for the eighteenth century as a representation and “culmination of centuries of Islamic scholarly prestige in the Muslim world” (18). The chapter offers a vibrant tale highlighting the historical context and its most distinct intellectual discourses. It shows how Tijani, a North African scholar, enjoyed global connections with contemporary Arab, Kurdish, and Indian scholars in Egypt and the Hijaz. From meeting Muḥammad al- Sammān in the Hijaz (d. 1775) to Maḥmūd al- Kurdī in Egypt (d. 1780), the account of Tijani’s physical and intellectual journeying brought to the fore themes such as the development of the Moroccan Shādhiliyya, West African scholasticism, and parallel approaches to the Muhammadan Path from the Indian subcontinent. Wright makes a compelling argument that the preexisting intellectual vibrancy of that time constituted the proper environment for the reception of Ahmad Tijani and his doctrine.

Chapter 2 proves why Tijaniyya is often referred to as ṭarīqat al-‘ulamā’ (“the Path of the scholars”). Entitled “Portrait of a Scholar: An Intellectual Biography of Shaykh al- Tijani,” the chapter goes deeper into Tijani’s diverse scholarly aptitude in so-called classical fields of Islam: namely, jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (ʿaqīda, kalām), gnosis (maʿrifa), and spiritual training (tarbiya). The narrative of the shaykh’s mastery in these fields is undergirded by the broader theme of verification (ṭaḥqīq), a central aspiration throughout Tijani’s intellectual biography. Chapter...