Browsing by Author "Brigaglia, Andrea"

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    Abu Bakr Effendi: a report on the activities and challenges of an Ottoman Muslim theologian in the Cape of Good Hope
    (2014) Genço?lu, Halim; Brigaglia, Andrea
    This thesis presents the religious activities of an Ottoman Islamic scholar Abu Bakr Effendi and his educational challenges at the Cape of Good Hope. Abu Bakr Effendi was a professor of canon law who was sent to the Cape by the Ottoman Caliph in order to resolve the religious issues as well as educate the Muslims in South Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century. This study takes into consideration diverse archival materials that explain different dimensions of the socio-historical events which happened during Effendi's stay in South Africa. Due to limited reliable sources, Effendi's activities have not been examined by researchers extensively. Several local newspapers, South African and Ottoman archival materials not used before in such studies, private family documents, foundation (Waqf) records and official correspondences have been used in this study and contributed to understanding the social-religious situation amongst Muslims at the Cape of the nineteenth century. Applying a comparative historical method, the study shows how Effendi became a prominent scholar in society despite his reformist understanding with regards to Islamic topics which made him a marginal theologian in the eyes of local Muslims. In this sense, the study illustrates the contribution of his works in the Muslim social sphere and how it enabled the emergence of a Muslim consciousness and identity in Southern Africa. Finally, with his cultural and educational endeavors, Effendi became a historical figure in South African society and this reality has been illuminated by rich archival documents.
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    Allied democratic forces (ADF) in Uganda: A Jihadi- Salafi movement or local political movement in disguise
    (2018) Nsobya, Abdulhakim Abdalla; Brigaglia, Andrea
    Since 1996, Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) has waged a campaign of terror in Uganda and neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has resulted in a number of fatalities and continues to threaten the security of the region. From its inception, the objective of the ADF has been to overthrow the Ugandan government and establish an Islamic state governed by a Salafi interpretation of Islam. This study seeks to document the history of the ADF and to locate its position within contemporary Salafi debates. It does so by answering the following questions: (1) what do we know about the ADF? (2) How did the ADF emerge in Uganda? (3) Is the ADF Jihadi-Salafi movement or local political movement in disguise? This study utilises interviews, as well as archival and ethnographic approaches to research. Findings suggest that the ADF is a Jihadi-Salafi militant movement, which was originally established under the name Salafi Jihad Council (SaJiCo). However, the initial failure to stand alone and the Busitema defeat forced them to join other non-Muslim rebel groups to form the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). In addition, this study confirmed that, persuasive rhetoric of ADF leader, Jamilu Mukulu in addition to a long history of economic, social and political marginalisation of Muslims in Uganda by colonial and post-colonial governments, played a significant role in the creation and recruitment strategies for the Movement.
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    “Let's Smash the Idols!” Kemal Pilavoğlu's Sufi Pan-Islamism in Republican Turkey
    (2022) Dollar, Cathlene; Brigaglia, Andrea
    This dissertation is a case-study of a Tijaniyya organization in Turkey and its Turkish founder, Kemal Pilavoğlu (1906-1977), who established the order in or around 1931. The Tijaniyya is a Sufi order from north Africa, founded by Abu al-ʿAbbâs Ahmad ibn Mahammad al-Tijânî (1737–1815) between 1781- 1785. This case-study is grounded in Itzchak Weismann's theory that Sufism in general has played an important role in the Muslim world's response to modernity. This theory underpins the argument that those “Islamists” who continue to be revered as Sufi heroes in Turkey, such as Said Nursi and Necep Fazıl Kisakürek, have drawn on the Ottoman past and the legacy of Islam in their dialogical responses to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's state-led reform project of modernization during the establishment of Republican Turkey. These Sufi “Islamist” responses to the Kemalist project of forced cultural change, which have been dubbed “Neo-Ottoman” by Hakan Yavuz, successfully resurrected an idealized notion of Ottoman tradition, history, and culture as part of their vision to re-Islamicize Turkish society. Although Pilavoğlu was similarly opposed to Kemalism and the super-imposition of westernization, this dissertation proposes that he did not sufficiently draw upon the Ottoman past in his dialogical response to the rapid modernization of Turkish society vis-à-vis super-imposed European systems of nation-building. Pilavoğlu, in contrast to “Neo-Ottoman” responses, sought to portray a universal notion of Islamic identity which did not vernacularize Islam as an Ottoman-cum-Turkish dimension of cultural identity. Hagiographies written by Pilavoğlu's followers form the data which inform the narrative for this casestudy, and a selection of Pilavoğlu's discursive responses from his extensive body of written work are the focus for analysis. This dissertation also includes summary translations of an assortment of these primary source materials, which have until now not been translated into English.
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    The Nigerian history machine and the production of Middle Belt historiography
    (2015) Suleiman, Samaila; Jeppie, Shamil; Brigaglia, Andrea
    While existing studies on Nigerian historiography cover renowned historians, major historical writings and prominent historiographical traditions, there is hardly any exploration of the institutional processes and concrete circumstances within which historical knowledge is produced. Deploying a range of sources, from in-depth personal interviews - with historians, archivists, museum curators and publishers of history texts - archival research to museum displays, this thesis examines the production of history and the socio-political tensions and conflicts associated with it in postcolonial Nigeria. Specifically, it explores the linkages between Nigerian history as a discursive practice and the institutions where historical knowledge is produced such as history departments, archives, museums and the publishers of history and scholarly texts. I see these processes as a kind of "history machine", defined as the interconnected system of social technologies through which the Nigerian state defines the discursive limits of the nation by appropriating, packaging and relaying discrete ethnic histories as Nigerian history in specific national cultural institutions such as archives and museums. But it is not robotic or a centrally run machine. The Nigerian history machine, originally activated as a nationalist intellectual mechanism against colonialist historiography in the wake of decolonization, broke down into a multitude of regional compartments in the postcolonial period, leading to the proliferation of "extranational" discourses in areas like the Middle Belt region. The practices of collecting, organizing, classifying, naming and appropriating discrete cultural symbols activates, as much it silences, the voices of certain communities. Each site of production strives, ostensibly, to produce Nigerian history, retaining and concealing the distinctive historical repertoires of each constituent ethnic community as they go through the history machine. In the process certain communities were ostracized to which they responded by manufacturing their local histories against the institutional representation of their pasts in History Departments, National Archives and National Museums. Through a textual analysis of the writings of historians and other scholars of Middle Belt extraction, this study posits that the textual tradition of the Middle Belt historiography is animated by a discourse of marginality and resistance to the dominant interpretations of northern Nigerian history and historiography, an epistemic struggle by the minorities to reassert their "historical patrimony" or reclaim their "historical dignity" through the creation of projects that highlight their historical past.
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    The Boko Haram Crisis: Responses by State and non-State Actors to a Security Challenge in the Lake Chad Region
    (2018) Balaban, Yasin; Garuba, Harry; Brigaglia, Andrea
    This study is to demonstrate the response of the international community against Boko Haram insurgency as well as the reaction of the Nigerian government and the regional countries of the Lake Chad Basin (Chad, Benin, Niger, Cameroon) in tackling the violence. Boko Haram has caused severe humanitarian crisis in the region as more than two million people have been displaced. The international community primarily focuses on creating basic secure conditions for refugees to return to their homes in safety and dignity as well as providing technical and military assistance to the Nigerian government in the fight against Boko Haram. The study begins with the Boko Haram`s ideology: Salafism and then next chapter focuses on the phases of the evolution of Boko Haram historically. Their activities were initially localized within Nigeria at the beginning of 2000s. However, the sect started to draw big international attention since 2010. Next chapter, after providing all necessary data, indicates that the responses of the Nigerian government and the regional countries to the Boko Haram violence and the humanitarian, technical and military assistance provided by the international community to the Lake Chad Basin countries are not sufficient enough to tackle the Boko Haram insurgency. This dissertation is based on compilation, organization and interpretation of the related data. The dataset mostly comprises of books, articles, reports, online data sources, news outlets and press statements of governments and international organizations. Biggest challenge encountered during the data collection process is that there is no enough published material on Boko Haram and the fight against it. Hence the online sources were meticulously surveyed. In addition to this, as Boko Haram continues to occupy the headlines of the Nigerian press and new developments on this subject unfold on daily basis, it requires to thoroughly follow the news outlets.
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    The Literary Boom of the Jamā‘at al Fayḍa Tijaniyya in 20th Century Northern Nigeria, and additions to John O. Hunwick's The Arabic Literature of Africa, Vol. 2
    (2021) Khan, Ayesha; Brigaglia, Andrea
    This dissertation has been written in order to analyse the impact of the fayḍa Tijaniyya on the Arabic literature of Africa, and to extract trends in the scholarly Tijaniyya community of the twentieth century. The research has further led to the discovery of works that have not been recorded in John Hunwick's Arabic Literature of Africa, Volume II (ALA II), which is regarded as a standard reference work. The Tijaniyya Sufi order was born in 18th century Algeria and had reached West Africa by the nineteenth century. Some of the beliefs held by the Tijaniyya included an expected spiritual revival, known in Sufi terms as fayḍa. It was in 1929 that Ibrahīm Niasse proclaimed the fayḍa Tijaniyya, and within a few years, this revolution had spread widely. As with previous Sufi revivals in the area, a literary boom occurred with the fayḍa. This boom was not significantly documented, resulting in the Tijaniyya Project (TijProj), which this research is based on. TijProj is an offshoot of a larger project of Northwestern University's Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA), which covers countries beyond Nigeria. Like much of the traditional Arabic literature in Africa, the TijProj collection required cataloguing as it was incomplete. The collection was held by Andrea Brigaglia, then of the Religious Studies Department of the University of Cape Town, as he had personally collected a significant amount of literature and field notes through interactions with scholars and other individuals in the literature trade in Nigeria. The literature was categorised into genres and subjects after being catalogued. The cataloguing and organisation of the materials led to the creation of an enormous database of literature produced by the jamā‘at al fayḍa Tijaniyya (“the community of the fayḍa Tijaniyya”), which was then stored in Microsoft Access. As a result of creating the database, quantitative information could be drawn, as to what impact the fayḍa had on literature production, as well as further qualitative information about the jamā‘at al fayḍa tijaniyya . Finally, the collection was compared to ALA II, which led to the discovery that almost two-thirds of TijProj has not been recorded in ALA II. This project has served to highlight the scholarly importance of the jamā‘at al fayḍa Tijaniyya , which constitutes a majority Sufi movement in Africa with African origins and international influence. It has shown the enormous contribution of the jamā‘at al fayḍa Tijaniyya to the corpus of Arabic literature in Africa. The intellectual trends that existed within the community have been derived, and are based on traditional Arabic literature, yet particular to the 20th century jamā‘at al fayḍa Tijaniyya . Finally, this research has catalogued new source material for researchers in the field.