Approaches to the History and Society of the Southwestern Sahara
The Study of Sufi Culture as an Alternate Paradigm
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/rsth.v32i1.31Keywords:
Sub-Saharan Africa, Sufism, Zwâya culture, Islamic political power, Islamic religious authorityAbstract
Western modernist theories conjectured that an inevitable shift in the location of decision-making from religious leaders and institutions claiming divine authority to agencies legitimating their authority by reference to different sources of power would bring about secularization of society and state in the modern world. They anticipated that the intervention of religious leaders in politics would no longer happen in modern societies; they held that this shift would bring about a separation between politics and religion relegating the latter to the private sphere. That this has not occurred, at least in Islamic contexts, undermines the paradigm. This article argues that the study of Sufi history and society in Southwestern Sahara points to alternate paradigms. These allow us to suggest that Islamic cultures may operate according to distinctive models in the relationship between political power and religious authority that may well have wider application.
References
Abdel-Razek, Ali. 2000 [1925]. al-Islâm wa Usul al-Hukm (Islam and the Foundations of Political Power). Cairo: Dar al-Hilal.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1989. “Zones of Theory in the Anthropology of the Arab World.” Annual Review of Anthropology 18: 267–306. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.18.100189.001411
Abun-Nasr, Jamil. 1962. “Some Aspects of the Umari Branch of the Tijaniyya.” Journal of African History 3(2): 329–331. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700003212
———. 1965. The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Muslim World. London: Oxford University Press.
Akbar, Ahmed and David Hart, eds. 1984. Islam in Tribal Societies from the Atlas to the Indus London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
———. 1995 [1991]. “The Maghreb as a Mirror for Man.” In Anthropology and Politics, Revolution in the Sacred Grove by Ernest Gellner, 202–211. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Arkoun, Mohamed. 1988. “The Concept of Authority in Islamic Thought.” In Islam: State and Society edited by Klaus Ferdinand, 58–72. London: Curzon.
Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion. Discipline and Reason of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.
Ayoob, Mohamed. 2008. The Many Faces of Political Islam, Religion and Politics in the Muslim World. Ann Arbor: The Univiverstiy of Michigan Press.
Ayubi, Nazih. 1994. Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World. London: Routledge.
Batran, A. Abdallah. 1971. “Sid al-Mukhtar al-Kunti and the recrudescence of Islam in the Western Sahara and the Middle Niger.” PhD. Diss. Centre of African Studies. Birmingham: University of Birmingham.
———. 1974. “The Qadiriyya-Mukhtariyya Brotherhood in West Africa. The concept of tasawwuf in the writings of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (1729–1811).” Transafrican Journal of History 4(2): 4–70.
———. 2001. The Qadiriyya Brotherhood in West Africa and Western Sahara. The Life and Time of Shaykh al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (1729–1811). Rabat: Institut des Études africaines.
Bonte, Pierre. 1998. L’Émirat de l’Adrar, Histoire et Anthropologie d’une société tribale du Sahara occidental. Doctorat d’État. Paris: École des hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
———. 2000. “ ‘L’Emir de la paix: ’Ahmed uld M»Hammed (1872–1891).” In Les Cahiers de l’IRMAM 13–14, 133–150. Marseille: Université Ex-Marseille.
Boubrik, Rahal. 1997. Islam et société en Mauritanie: La Confrérie Fâdiliyya. Thèse de Doctorat. Aix en Provence: Université de Provence.
———. 1999. Saints et société en Islam, La confrérie ouest-saharienne la Fâdiliyya. Paris: CNRS.
Brenner, Louis. 2000. “Histories of Religion in Africa.” Journal of Religion in Africa 30(2): 143–167. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006600X00627
Caton, Steven C. 1987. “Power, Persuasion, and Language: A Critique of the Segmentary Model in the Middle East.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19(1): 77–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020743800031664
Cleaveland, Timothy. 2001. Becoming Walata, a History of Saharan Social Formation and Transformation. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Connolly, Peter, ed. 1999. Approaches to the Study of Religion. London: Cassel.
Coulon, Christian. 1983. Les Musulmans et le pouvoir en Afrique noire. Paris: Karthala.
Cruise O’Brien, Donald. 1971. The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood. Oxford: Clarendon.
———. 1975. Saints and Politicians: Essays on the Organization of a Senegalese Peasant Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2003. Symbolic Confrontations: Muslims Imagining the State in Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cruise O’Brien, B. and Christian Coulon, eds. 1988. Charisma and Brotherhoods in African Islam. Oxford: Clarendon.
Dresh, Paul. 1988. “Segmentation: Its Roots in Arabia and Its Flowering Elsewhere.” Cultural Anthropology 3(1): 50–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/can.1988.3.1.02a00050
Dumont, Fernand. 1975. La pensée religieuse d’Amadou Bamba. Dakar: Nouvelles Éditions africaines.
Eickelman, Dale F. and James P. Piscatori, 1996. Muslim Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
El-Zein, Abdul Hamid. 1974. “Beyond Ideology and Theology: The search for the anthropology of Islam.” Annual Review of Anthropology 6: 227–254. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.06.100177.001303
Evans-Pritchard, E. 1949. The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. Oxford: Clarendon.
———. 1940. The Nuer: description of the modes of livelihood and political institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Clarendon.
Filali-Ansari, Abdou. 2010. Islam et laïcité. À propos de malentendus tenaces. Casablanca: Fennec.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish, the Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon.
Gellner, Ernest. 1969. Saints of the Atlas. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
———. 1972. “Doctors and Saints.” In Scholars, Saints and Sufis, Muslim Religious Institutions since 1500, edited by N. Kiddie, 307–326. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 1983 [1981]. Muslim Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hamès, Constant. 1983. “Cheikh Hamallah, ou qu’est-ce qu’une confrérie islamique (Tarîqa)? ” Archives des Sciences sociales des Religions 55(1), (Janvier-Mars): 67–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/assr.1983.2273
Harrison, Christopher. 1988. France and Islam in West Africa 1860–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511523854
Hart, David M. 1976. The Aith Waryaghar of the Moroccan Rif: An Ethnography and History Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
———. 1984. “Segmentary Systems and the Role of ‘Five Fifths’ in Tribal Morocco.” In Islam in Tribal Societies: From the Atlas to the Indus edited by A. S. Ahmed and David M. Hart, 66–105. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Hindess, Barry. 1996. Discourses of Power from Hobbes to Foucault. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ibn Mandûr, Muhammad ibn Mukarran. 1999. Lisân al-’Arab. Bierut: Dar ihya athturath al’Arabi.
Jabri, Mohamed Abed, al-. 1990. Al-‘aql al-siyasi al-‘arabi. Casablanca: Centre culturel Arabe.
King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion, Post-Colonial Theory India and the Mystic East. London: Routledge.
Kuntî, Sidi Muhammad al-Khalifa, al. n.d. Al-Tarâif wa al-Talâid min karâmât al-Shaykhayn al-Wâlida wa al-Wâlid. Rabat: Bibliothèque Hassaniya. ms 690.
Lapidus, Ira M. 1975. “The Separation of State and Religion.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6: 363–385. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020743800025344
———. 1996. “State and Religion in Islamic Societies.” Past and Present 151: 3–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/past/151.1.3
Laoust, H. 1982 [1978]. “Les fondements de l’autorité chez les Duodécimans d’après le ‘Minhaj d’al-Hilli’”. In La notion d’autorité au Moyen Âge. Islam, Byzance, Occident. Colloques internationaux de La Napoule. Session du 23-26 oct. 1978, 175–187. Paris: PUF.
Levtzion, Nehemia. 2007. “The role of shari‘a-oriented Sufi Turuq in the Reform movement of the 18th and 19th Centuries.” In Nehemia Levtzion, Islam in Africa and the Middle East edited by M. Abitbol and A. Nadan, 1–31. London: Ashgate.
Martin, B. G. 1969. “Notes sur l’origine de la Tarîqa des Tijaniyya et sur les débuts d’al-Hâgg ‘Umar.” Revue des Études islamiques 37(2): 267–290.
———. 1976. Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth Century Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McCutcheon, Russell. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse of Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York: Oxford University Press.
McDougall, E. Ann. 1986. “The Economics of Islam in Western Sahara: The Rise of the Kunta Clan.” Journal of African and Asian Studies 20(1): 45–60.
———. 1998. “Research in Saharan History.” Journal of African History 39(3): 467–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021853798007233
———. 2007. “Constructing Emptiness: Islam, Violence and Terror in the Making of the Sahara” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 25(1): 17–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02589000601157022
McHoul, Alec. 1997. A Foucault Primer Discourse, Power and the Subject. New York: New York University Press.
McLaughlin, Glen Wade. 1997. “Sufi, Saint, and Sharif: Muhammad Fadil wuld Mamin: His Spiritual Legacy and the Political Economy of the Sacred in Nineteenth Century Mauritania.” PhD. diss. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University.
Mozaffari, Mehdi. 1987. Authority in Islam, From Muhammad to Khomeini. London & New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Munson, Henry. 1993. “Rethinking Gellner’s Segmentary Analysis of Morocco’s Ait ‘Atta.’ ” Man, New Series 28(2): 267–280.
Nahwi, al-Khalil, al. 1987. Bilâd Shinqît, al-Manâra wa al-Ribât. Tunis: Alecso.
Norris, H. T. 1986. The Arab Conquest of the Western Sahara. Harlow, Essex, and Beirut: Longman and Librarire du Liban.
Oliver, Roland. 1991. African Experience. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Ould Abdellah, Deddoud. 2000. “Le ‘passage au sud’ Muhammad al-Hâfiz et son héritage.” In La Tijâniyya. Une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l’Afrique, edited by J. L. Triaud and David Robinson, 69–100. Paris: Karthala.
Ould el-Bara, Yahya. 2000. “Le mileu culturel des fuqha maures.” In Elites du Monde Touareg et Maure, edited by P. Bonte and H. Claudot-Haward, 151–166. Aix-en-Provence: CNRS-Université Aix-Marseille.
———. 1994. Al-Fiqh wa al-Mujtama’ wa as-Sulta. Nouakchott: IMRS.
Ould Cheikh, Abdel Wedoud. 1985. Nomadisme, Islam et pouvoir dans la société maure précoloniale (XIème -XIXème siècle) : Essai sur quelques aspects du tribalisme. Doctorat en sociologie, Paris: Université Paris V René Descartes.
———. 1986. Éléments d’histoire de la Mauritanie. Nouakchott: Institut Français Saint-Exupery.
———. 1987. “Le Fantôme de l’Émir: notes sur la terminologie politique dans la société maure précoloniale” The Maghreb Review 22(1–2): 56–74
———. 1991. “La tribus comme volonté et comme représentation, le facteur religieux dans l’organisation d’une tribu maure, les Awlâd Abayri.” In Al-Ansab, La quête des origines. Anthroplolgie historique de la société tribale arabe, edited by P. Bonte et. al., 201–238. Paris: Èditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme.
Ould el-Hassan, Ahmed. 1991. Al-Shi’r al-Shinqîtî. Tunis: Jam’iyyat al-Da’wa al-Islâmiyya.
Ould Abdallahi, D. 1993. Al-Hayât al-fikriyya fi bilâd Shinqît khilâla al-qarnayn al-hâdî ‘ashar wa al-thânî ‘ashar (17–18 A.D.). Rabat: DES. Université Mohamed V.
Ould Muhammad Lahbib, Muhammad Fadel. n.d. ad-Diyyâ al-mustabîn fi karâmât shaykh Muhammad Fadel bin Mâmîn. Manuscipt Bibilothèque Nationale, Rabat. D 1067.
Quraishi, Zaheer Masood. 1978. Political Thought: The Arab Phase. New Delhi: Eurica.
Roberts, Hugh J. 2002. “Perspectives on Berber Politics: On Gellner and Masqueray, or Durkheim’s Mistake.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8(1): 107–126. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.00101
Said, Edward. 2003 [1978]. Orientalism. New York: Penguin.
Stewart, Charles, C. 1970. “The Role of Shaikh Sidiyya and the Qadiriyya in Southern Mauritania: An Historical Interpretation.” PhD. Diss. Oxford: Oxford University.
———. 1973a. Islam and Social Order in Mauritania. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
———. 1973b. “Political Authority.” In Arabs and Berbers, From Tribe to Nation in North Africa, edited by E. Gellner and C. Micaud, 375–393. London: Duckworth.
———. 1976. “Southern Sahara scholarship and Bilâd al-Sudan.” Journal of African History 17(1): 73–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700014778
Taylor, Raymond.1996. Of Disciples and Sultans: Power, Authority and Society in the Nineteenth Century Mauritanian Gebla. PhD. Diss. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Traore, Alioune. 1983. Islam et colonialisme en Afrique: Cheikh Hamahullah, homme de foi et résistant. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose.
Triaud, Jean-Louis. 1982. “Le thème confrérique en Afrique de l’ouest.” In Les Ordres mystiques dans l’Islam, edited by A. Papovic and G. Veinstein, 471–482. Paris: EHESS. http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/cea.1983.2247
———. 1983. “Hommes de religion et confréries islamiques dans une société en crise, l’Air au XIXème – XXème siècle. Le Cas de la Khalwatiyya.” CEA 23(91): 239–280.
———. 1985. “Les agents religieux islamiques en Afrique tropicale: réflexions autour d’un thème.” Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Etudes Africaines 19(2): 271–282.
Turner, Bryan S. 1984. “Orientalism and the Problem of Civil Society in Islam.” In Orientalism, Islam and Islamicists edited by H. Assaf, R. Olson and J. Qureshi, 23–42. London: Amana.
Vansina, Jan. 1994. Living with Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Watt, E. D. 1982. Authority. London & Canberra: Croon Helm.
