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

Khan, Ayesha

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

Master Thesis

2021

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Religious Studies

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