BOOK REVIEWS 433

instance, what are the contents of each one, and how far these contents are
supported by corroborative evidence elsewhere. His opting not to do so is the
more surprising given that such detailed architectural analyses of his sources
feature in many of his earlier publications—though understandable perhaps in
that he is focusing here upon a considerably larger number of works than usual:
detailed textual analysis of each hagiographic narrative would have made this
short book instead a long one. But it does mean that we are left with a distinctly
vague impression of the very works that Frank is writing about, and a distinctly
vague impression of which elements within their respective narratives are epis-

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temologically reliable, and which not—or, to put it another way, at what points
we can be confident that events happened in the fashion described, and at what
points we cannot. Gulag Miracles compares poorly in this regard with other,
more careful studies of hagiographic tradition: in Devin DeWeese’s work, for
instance, we find much more attention given to the question of how far individ-
ual discrete hagiographic narratives support or challenge one another, and which
of them attest to more widely circulating beliefs than others. In the absence here
of such considerations, it is difficult to know how secure the basis is for much of
Frank’s account of the Soviet-era fortunes of Kazakh holy lineages. The question
of what happened to these lineages is not the only one, of course—Frank is
following a rich seam of Central Asian scholarship in arguing that what people
say happened is meaningful also—but there is a whiff of defeatism in the impli-
cation simply that we should take these hagiographies seriously without always
taking them literally.
The reader’s occasional unease is compounded, unfortunately, by the book’s
slapdash quality. Frank’s prose style is frequently vague, and, again unlike
DeWeese, he often fails to make clear in which passages of the text he is speaking
with his own authority, and in which he is ventriloquizing the textual content of
a source—there is little distinction between direct and reported speech, as it
were, which leaves one frequently unclear who exactly is saying what. The
text, furthermore, is littered with errors of grammar and syntax, which even a
cursory inspection should have spotted: a little more time and care would have
given the book some polish, and might have made it more alluring to that wider
readership which, notwithstanding my various quibbles, it so amply deserves.
Thomas Welsford
London
E-mail: thomaswelsford@hotmail.com
doi:10.1093/jis/etab023
Published online 18 June 2021

Approaches to the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa

Edited by ZULFIKAR HIRJI (Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with
the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2019. Qur8anic Studies Series, 19), xxv + 543 pp.
Price HB £60.00. EAN 978–0198840770.

The object of this nineteenth volume in the Qur8anic Studies series of the
London-based Institute of Ismaili Studies is to examine particular ways in which
434 BOOK REVIEWS

Sudanic Africans have interacted with the Qur8:n in terms of its textual, scribal,
aural, oral, utilitarian, power-accession, epistemic, and material cultures.
Contributors with different expertise and approaches from anthropology, phil-
ology, historiography, and art history present twelve case studies from Mali,
Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania (nothing on Southern Africa) in this
volume.
The Introduction (pp. 1–23) gives an account of the earliest recorded history
of the recitation of the Qur8:n in Sudanic Africa, as the mise en scène of how the
Muslims got established outside the Arabian Peninsula, precisely in Abyssinia,

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and it distinguishes the contributions to follow under four themes. These are: i.
Interpretation, that is, how Muslims understand and transmit the meaning of the
Qur8:n (chs. 2 and 3); ii. Embodiment, that is, the form of translations or
adaptations in which other epistemic overlays, for example, history, theological
disputations, prayer and talismanic practices, artistic interpolations, among
others, are demonstrable (chs. 4 through 9); iii. Gendered knowledge, that is,
where female interlocutors and protagonists function as custodians of the eso-
teric or exoteric knowledge of the Holy Book (chs. 10 and 11); and iv.
Transmission, that is, how material media, for example, slate and paper (in
the form of (un)ornamented manuscript) became the channel of formal and in-
formal diffusion of knowledge of the Qur8:n and its associated education system
in the Sudanic African cosmos (chs. 12 and 13). Although this classification is
helpful, it is by no means definitive; instances of overlapping are by no means
lacking.
Dmitry Bondarev’s discussion of sources in early Borno tafs;r tradition (pp.
25–64) once again confirms the long-standing relationship between Borno and
the intellectual ‘capitals’ of the Islamic world, particularly in Egypt and North
Africa. Nevertheless, the claim that sources dating back to the fifth/eleventh
centuries or earlier ‘were also part of the intellectual domain of the Borno
scribes’ (p. 51) cannot be truer than the fact that those sources were accessible
only through secondary or indeed tertiary chains of authority. Tal Tamari’s dis-
cussion (pp. 65–162) of oral, translational tafs;r among the Manding (Mali)
speakers, especially during Rama@:n, and how the practice became a teaching
module in the curriculum there and in other Sudanic African Muslim societies is
elaborated. Tamari was not aware that the first published translation of the
Qur8:n into any African language (Yoruba, in Nigeria) was in 1906 and that
oral tafs;r had been in practice there, too (see A. K. H. Solihu, ‘The earliest
Yoruba translation of the Qur’an: missionary engagement with Islam in
Yorubaland’, Journal of Qur8anic Studies, 17/3 [2015]: 10–37). But it is quite
informative to note that the explication of Aad;th materials during Rama@:n,
especially of al-Samarqand;’s (d. ca. 373/983) Tanb;h al-gh:fil;n, preceded the
Rama@:n tafs;r tradition during the same period among the Bamana scholars
(pp. 73–4). The detailed and extensive notes in this contribution offer a rich
resource for further investigation. Farouk Topan’s comparative study (pp.
163–87) of three Swahili translations of the Qur8:n (1953–5) situates their con-
texts and characteristics vis-à-vis Canon G. Dale’s 1923 translation, the first in
Swahili at the instance of the SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian
 BOOK REVIEWS 435
Knowledge). Gerard C. van de Bruinhorst discusses how a Shi6i Swahili Qur8:n
translation exemplifies history from personal, doctrinal, and contemporary per-
spectives (pp. 189–230). Ryan Thomas Skinner illustrates (pp. 231–58) how
urban artistes interpellate Qur8:nic and Islamic idioms into various genres of
popular music and performing arts for their audiences in Mali.
Ruba Kana’an reviews classical and medieval works on Prophetic medicine
(al-3ibb al-nabaw;) and the general manifestation of this tradition in the form of
‘licit’, talismanic, and power-accession mechanisms, as contained in, among
others, al-B<n;’s Shams al-ma6:rif, the principal source to which the West

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African talismanic tradition ‘owes its recipes’ (p. 276). In Kana’an’s view, it is
wrong to stigmatize the African (Islamic) talismanic objects as icons of syncretic
Islamism; they are produced and consumed throughout the Muslim world. The
theological war of attrition between the Salafi revivalist Iz:la movement and the
Tij:niyya Sufi order (in Niger), particularly in respect of fine details of ritual
performance, is contextualized by Adeline Masquelier in her examination (pp.
287–315) of how piety is achievable through a prayer and pleasure economy
undergirded by discipline. She analyses the significance of the performance of
6ishr;niyy:t—the popular praise poem for the Prophet—as part of piety-inspiring
materials for unmarried Tij:niyya acolytes. Kjersti Larsen explores (pp. 317–39)
how Qur8:nic and related materials are used for power-accession purposes, de-
liverance, and healing of emotional and social challenges among the Zanzibaris.
The intersection of ritualistic and social uses of the Qur8:n are shown to be
mutually inclusive in East African Muslim society, especially among the mwali-
mus (Qur8:nic teachers) and mganga (local healers). Among the Tuareg com-
munities, only male scholars practise Qur8:n-based divination techniques.
However, spirit possession, interpretive interaction between the living and the
dead and necromancy within the local, cultural interpretation of Islam is what is
examined by Susan J. Rasmamusen in her contribution (pp. 341–68). She dis-
cusses how medico ritual praxis and Islam have been shown not to be mutually
exclusive in the Tuareg tradition. A key illustration of this is takote, that is,
communal ‘memorial/condolence meal with almsgiving, prayers and Qur8anic
readings’ often demanded by the deceased from a living, close family member in
the latter’s dreams in order to help the soul of the former to find peace (p. 350).
Joseph Hill (pp. 369–400) demonstrates how Sayyida Shaykha Maryam Niasse
(b. 1932), the last daughter of charismatic Ibrahim Niasse, paradoxically com-
bined leadership in Islamic knowledge and esotericism with motherly responsi-
bilities. As a muqaddama long before she started to perform initiation and
tarbiya for Sufi acolytes, Maryam is portrayed as a unique symbol of manly
women who functioned effectively in a tradition that is considered an exclusively
male preserve. Andrea Brigaglia discusses (pp. 401–29) the scope and peculiar-
ities of the traditional Islamic education system and shows how the lawA (slate)
has been a main symbol of Islamic scholarship and decoration icon at homes and
tombs in Muslim Sudanic Africa, particularly in Nigeria. The final chapter by
Zulfikar Hirji (pp. 431–71) shows how three decorated Qur8:n manuscripts
from Siyu which were copied between ca. 1750 and ca. 1820 confirm the exist-
ence of a deep-rooted pre-modern tradition of Islamic scholarship and book
436 BOOK REVIEWS

production in coastal East Africa, particularly in the Lamu archipelago.

Moreover, his analysis of their scribal signatures, waqf (endowment) inscrip-
tions, and sources, establish a common link between the three codices. The
enlightening footnotes and rich bibliography in the entire volume offer a good
platform for further investigation.
There is an important query that needs to be raised regarding use of the term
‘Sub-Saharan Africa’ in the book’s title. The editor’s rationale for this usage (pp.
11–12) is less than convincing. The underlying pejorativeness of this way of
naming the swathe of land south of the Sahara has, for quite some time now,

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been consistently articulated. ‘Sudanic Africa’ has rightly become, in objective
postcolonial and post-Orientalist scholarship, the better usage. That aside, this
work has opened up a new vista in the discursive tradition on the Qur8:n beyond
the textual and interpretive remit in the majority Muslim world and peripheral
Islamic societies. It surely is a significant addition to the scholarship on the
Qur8:n as the main foundational text of Islam and a valuable contribution to
the narrative on Islam and Muslims in Africa south of the Sahara.
Amidu Olalekan Sanni
Fountain University, Nigeria
E-mail: amsanni@yahoo.co.uk
doi:10.1093/jis/etab041
Published online 14 June 2021

Jihad of the Pen: The Sufi Literature of West Africa

Edited by RUDOLPH Ware, ZAKARY WRIGHT and AMIR SYED (Cairo: The
American University in Cairo Press, 2019), viii + 316 pp. Price HB £45.00.
EAN 978–9774168635.

Sufism has a strong religious presence throughout much of West Africa and Sufis
have produced major literature and bodies of work in this region. Jihad of the
Pen explores the new generation of research on the rich Arabic source material of
Islamic Africa, particularly West Africa, and introduces the Sufi scholars of
Africa while examining their spiritual and political influence.
This volume brings together writings by 6Uthman bin Fudi (d. 1817, Nigeria),
6Umar Tal (d. 1864, Mali), Ahmadu Bamba (d. 1927, Senegal), and Ibrahim
Niasse (d. 1975, Senegal), who, between them, founded the largest Muslim
communities in African history and are partly responsible for the flourishing
of Sufism in West Africa (p. 2). Jihad of the Pen offers fresh translations of
Arabic source material in prose and poetry that proved formative of a veritable
Islamic revival across West Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Among recurring themes are etiquette (adab), reflection on education (tarbiya),
importance of the spiritual path, love for the Prophet, Qur8:nic verses, faith
(;m:n), the acquisition of divine knowledge (ma6rifat All:h), and the remem-
brance (dhikr) of God. All of which demonstrate a shared, vibrant scholarly
heritage in West Africa that drew on the classics of global Islamic learning,
and made major contributions to Islamic intellectual history. Their writings