Embodied and Disembodied Authority

45 For instance, in his refutation of Ibn Māyābā, the Mauritanian Tijānī dedicates a long preamble to stressing the lofty status of his master as one bestowed with spiritual authority as well as the textual kind. See: Aḥmad b. al-Hādī, Muntahā sayl al-jārif min tanāquḍāt mushtahā al-khārif, Rabat: Maṭbaʿa al-Karāma, 2001, pp. 5-26.

46 On the dual nature of authority in this sense, see: Benedikt Pontzen, “‘Speaking for Islam’ and Religious Authority in Zongos in Asante, Ghana”, Journal of Religion in Africa, 47, (1), 2017, pp. 42-71.

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Tijānīs and their detractors each refer to different types of authority in justifying their own appropriation and reappropriation of religious themes. Protagonists of the Tijāniyya defend the doctrines of the order with an appeal to the perception of saints and sainthood, as these figure in their shared imagination. According to the descriptions offered by the most authoritative Tijānī sources, including Jawāhir al-maʿānī and Rimāḥ ḥizb al-Raḥīm, as well as Sufi manuals more generally, sainthood (walāya) can not be discovered by the human intellect. Human striving to attain sainthood is doomed to absolute failure. Its conferral or assignment is an act of grace on the part of almighty Allah, and He confers it on those who are destined for it, regardless of their moral status and intellectual distinction.⁴⁷ Furthermore, Tijānīs hold that a divinely elected saint is bestowed with constant communion with the Prophet, from whom the saint derives his knowledge of the sharīʿa. Only the saint himself is entitled to decide whether his teachings have departed from divine law or not.⁴⁸ The ratification of such a saint constitutes a religious duty for Tijānīs, while rejecting his sainthood or bearing any sort of animosity toward him has its consequences, which can reach as far as one’s expulsion from the religion itself. To emphasize embodied authority of the saint, Sufis in general, refer to a statement of the prophet which reads: “Allah said, whoever shows hostility to a Wali of Mine, I will declare war against him. And the most beloved things with which My slave comes nearer to Me, is what I have made obligatory upon him; and My slave keeps on coming closer to Me through performing supererogatories till I love him, and when I love him, I become the hearing through which he hears, and the seeing through which he sees, and his hand with which he grips, and his leg with which he walks; and if he asks Me, I will give him, and if he asks for my refuge, I will give him My refuge”.⁴⁹ The sources of the Tijānī brotherhood are full of stories in which prominent saints strike their enemies with divine

47 Jawāhir al-maʿānī relates a statement by the founder of the Tijāniyya in which he speaks of three hundred divine traits of behaviour, each of which entitles its bearer to enter paradise. Those among the Muslims who are endowed with these traits are not necessarily superior to a saint who is not characterized by any of them. On the contrary, the saint may be of higher status when compared with the bearers of those traits. See: ʿAlī Ḥarāzim b. Barāda, Jawāhir al-maʿānī wa-bulūgh al-amānī fī fayḍ Sayyidī Abī l-ʿAbbās al-Tijānī, vol. II, Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1383/1963, p. 84.

48 Rimāḥ ḥizb al-Raḥīm, one of the most authoritative sources of the brotherhood, argues that, for the same reason, the four orthodox schools of law in Sunni Islam could not serve as yardsticks for the contestation of the knowledge of a divinely elected saint, for such a one is constantly guarded by the Prophet himself and bestowed with access to the divine truths. ʿUmar al-Fūtī, Rimāḥ ḥizb al-Raḥīm, vol. p. 88. For a detailed account of the spiritual knowledge of great saints which encompasses the sharīʿa in its entirety, see: Muḥammad Muḥammad al-ʿArabī b. al-Saʾiḥ, Bughyat al-mustafīd li-sharḥ Munyat al-murīd, Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1393/1973, pp. 10-21, particularly p.16.

49 It should be mentioned that such a interpretation of this Prophetic statement, reported by Bukhari on the authority of Abu Hurayra, is a uniquely Sufi concept. For a non Sufi perception of the statement see:

https://binbaz.org.sa/audios/2177/39-%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AC%D8%A7%D9%87%D8%AF%D8%A9

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vengeance. To distinguish a true saint from a fraud, Tijānī sources lay down two fundamental stipulations as requirements: the saint himself must be convinced of his divine mission, and this mission must be recognized by the public.⁵⁰ In the case of Aḥmad al-Tijānī, both stipulations are fulfilled; not only was he sure of his own capacity as the bearer of a special divine mission, but millions of followers also reassured him of this fact, through their sincere affiliation to his path.

It is on the basis of this trust that Tijānīs unconditionally surrender to the teachings of their supreme master. He is, for them, a perfect personification of truth and embodiment⁵¹ or actualization of knowledge.⁵² And, because he is perceived as embodied and actualized authority, by the same token, he is seen as exempt from having committed mistakes. His spiritual teachings are seen as so pure, and thus so necessarily compliant with the religion of Islam, that, in his lifetime, “his very being communicated an Islamic religious subjectivity”.⁵³ As such, his teachings are perceived to be closed to any sort of rational discussion or contestation. Furthermore, as he is understood to have been most often accompanied by the Prophet, this is seen to provide a sort of protection against his having committed any possiable errors⁵⁴—one source of the importance of his purported daylight communications with the Prophet. He is thus understood to have embarked on a mission which the Prophet assigned to him, and saints, in their capacities as bearers of the divine mission, are immune to error.

As for Salafīs, they rely on textual and disembodied knowledge, and subsequently disembodied authority, in the sense that the text serves as the source of authority, in contrast to the spiritual

50 For a complete account of the Tijānī perception of saints and sainthood, see: Jamil Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: a Sufi Order in the Modern World, pp. 163-165.

51 For details on embodied religious knowledge in this context, see: Rudolph T. Ware, The Walking Qur’an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014 particularly pages 253-254. This paradigm is interpreted by another scholar of Islam in Africa, Louis Brenner, as an esoteric episteme. See: Louis Brenner, Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power and Schooling in West African Muslim Society, London: Hurst, 2000. For the use of embodiment in Islamic studies, see: Shahzad Bashir, Sufi Bodies: Religion and Society in Medieval Islam, New York: Columbia University Press, 2011 and Scott Kugle, Sufis and Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporality, and Sacred Power in Islam, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

52 Zachary Wright prefers to use the term “actualization” instead of “embodiment”. For details, see: Zachary V.

Wright, Living Knowledge in West African Islam: The Sufi Community of Ibrahim Niasse, Leiden: Brill, 2015.

53 Though this statement was made with specific reference to the community of Ibrāhīm Niyās, it also holds true for all Tijānīs and their perception of the founding figure of their Bbotherhood. See: Zachary V. Wright, Living Knowledge in West African Islam, p. 31.

54 Not to forget that supreme master of the Tijāniyya had claimed impeccability (ʿiṣma) for himself, often regarded a prerogative of the divine messengers who are believed to have been protected from committing errors. On Ahmad al-Tiājnī’s claim to ʿiṣma, see: Jamil Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: a Sufi Order in the Modern World, pp. 34-36.

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person or body of the master, as in Sufi thought. The following observation by Rudolph T. Ware captures the rationale of disembodied knowledge and authority; as Ware writes, this “way of knowing sought to make knowledge abstract, to divorce it from its particular embodied bearers, and to see it as a universally accessible and uniform good. Knowledge unbound from its embodied human bearers thus became quantifiable, alienable, and observable”.⁵⁵ Reliance on embodied authority reaches such a peak in the Tijānī system of thought that it seems to their opponents, fellow Sufis among them, that Tijānīs hold it to be coequal with the foundational sources of the religion. For example, the influential nineteenth-century Qādirī shaykh of West Africa Aḥmad al-Bakkāʾī (d. 282/1865) highlighted precisely this point in the letters of reprimand he sent to proponents of the Tijāniyya. In one of his letters, addressed to Alfā ʿUmar, a lieutenant of the renowned Tijānī scholar and commander al-Hājj ʿUmar al-Fūtī (d. 1280/1864),⁵⁶ Alfā ʿUmar is chastised for his alleged confusion concerning the hierarchical structure of authority in Islam, with regard to Allah, the Prophet and the saints. Alfā ʿUmar is advised to approach the Prophet in the light of the divine command, to adhere firmly to his Sunna, and to accept from his master Aḥmad al-Tijānī only that which conforms with the Sunna. Otherwise, al-Bakkāʾī warns him, he will have to face divine wrath and a bitter end. “Approach the prophets as God has commanded you… and do not let any walī or ʿālim lead you astray; for only the prophets are infallible, and none but they are sent with a [divine] message”.⁵⁷ Salafī critics of the brotherhood also stress the fact that impeccability is reserved for the Prophet alone; therefore, along with divine commands, his Sunna should serve as the yardstick for the evaluation of Sufi doctrines. One Salafī author reminds his Tijānī interlocutors of the command of their own supreme master, which explicitly made it incumbent upon Tijānīs to apply the measure of sharīʿa while dealing with his (their master’s) own sayings.⁵⁸

5.3.Acquiring Capital

55 Rudolph T. Ware, The Walking Qur’an, p. 205.

56 On the life of AHājj ʿUmar, see: Aḥmad Sukayrij, Kashf aḥijāb ʿamman talāqā maʿa Shaykh aTijānī min l-aṣḥāb, Fez, 1381-1961, pp. 334-342; Muḥammad al-Ḥafiẓ, ʿUmar al-Fūtī al-Fūtī: sulṭān al-dawla al-Tijāniyya bi-gharb Ifrīqyā shay min jihādihi wa-tārikh ḥayātihi, Cairo: al-Zawiya al-Tijāniyya, 1383 AH; B.G. Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 68-98; David Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.

57 For a detailed account of the letter, see: Jamil Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: a Sufi Order in the Modern World, p.

168.

58 Muḥammad Taqī al-Dīn al-Hilālī, al-Hadiyya al-hādiya, pp. 37-38.

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Writing polemical treatises in defence of a specific set of values or religious doctrines is a process in which one transcribes one’s cultural capital—both via its embodied state (such as when one manifests it through culture, cultivation and Bildung, as articulated by Bourdieu, as well as via esoteric knowledge and the sciences, as well as exsoteric knowledge and sciences, according to Kane⁵⁹), and via its objectified state (such as when it is manifested in the forms of writings, paintings, monuments and instruments, for example)—into social capital and symbolic power, yielding titles of honour, nobility and recognition.⁶⁰ While cultural capital is related to the individual, social capital is related to the group. When the first is converted to the second,⁶¹ the group confers a special status on its owner. Thus, just as in a patriarchal family, the father, as the eldest and most senior family member, is perceived by other members as the only authority who may speak on behalf of the family, in all sorts of official situations and other circumstances, in this context, a producer of polemical writings gains the right to speak on behalf of the group, in the eyes of his followers. Proponents of the Tijāniyya who defend the brotherhood against its opponents are viewed as defenders of the collective honour of the group. Therefore, they are entitled to act as spokespersons for the order, authorized to define its borders, and to cure the individual lapses that may occur among its members. If any such a lapse is irredeemable, they also have the authority to excommunicate the member responsible for the embarrassment.

Defending the brotherhood (ṭarīqa) is, and always has been, a legitimate means of acquiring social capital that is recognized as such by fellow Tijānīs. Muḥammad al-Ḥāfiẓ, for example, is praised

59 In an application of Bourdieu’s theory to the religious field of Northern Nigeria Ousmane Kane develops five types of capital: a) Non-formally certified cultural capital such as exoteric knowledge and esoteric sciences of Sufism; b) formally certified cultural capital such as esoteric knowledge like university certificate or mastery of Qurʾān; c) economical capital such a material wealth; d) symbolic capital such as fighters of the cause of Islam; e) social capital such as supporters, clients and disciples among others. See details in: Ousmane Kane, Muslim

Modernity in Postcolonial Nigeria: A study of the Society for Removal of Innovation and Reinstatement of Tradition, Leiden: Brill, 2003, pp. 21-23.

60 According to Bourdieu, capital can present itself in three guises. 1) economical capital, institutionalized in the form of property rights; 2) cultural capital, institutionalized in educational qualifications, and 3) social capital, consisting of social obligations and connections, instituionalized, for example, in the form of a title of nobility.

Cultural capital is further divided to three subforms: its embodied state, its objectified state, and its institutionalized state. See: Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of capital”, in: John Richardson (ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education, New York: Greenwood Press, 1986, pp. 241-258. For a more detailed account of Bourdieu’s theory, see: Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. For an application of the theory to the puritanical Salafī Movement of Izāla, see: Ramzi Ben Amara, The Izāla Movement in Nigeria: Its Split, Relationship to Sufis and Perception of Sharīʿa Re-implementation, (PhD thesis, University of Bayreuth, Germany, 2011), pp. 47-56.

61 On the convertibility of one form of capital to another, see: Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital”, where he discusses “conversions”.

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by the Sudanese Tijānī author al-Fātiḥ al-Nūr for having undertaken the task of defending the brotherhood for no less than forty years.⁶² Producing polemical treatises thus serves as a serious method for acquiring a certain kind of authority that distinguishes its owner from others, and this renders such sources into sources of legitimacy in return. Just as Michael Chamberlin describes the aʿyān (elite) of medieval Damascus as “models for opinions on the questions of the time”,⁶³ the producers of polemical writings occupy a similar place in Tijānī world, as the ones who may define the true doctrines and defend their legitimacy. To illustrate this point, when I sought to know the personal views of some of ʿUmar Masʿūd’s disciples on certain controversial Tijānī tenets, they deliberately avoided sharing their own takes with me. Instead, it was recommended that I should refer to those of the treatises written by the Sudanese shaykh himself that address the issues in question. The production of polemical writings in defence of the brotherhood is as important to Tijānī scholars in enhancing their personal recognition as the accumulation of prestigious ijāzas, authoritative licenses that link them, via their chains of transmission, to the founding figure of the order. As in medieval Damascus, where “books were emblems of prestige for the elite”,⁶⁴ in the world of the Tijāniyya, the production of literature in defence of the the brotherhood is a strong marker of one’s distinction and authority. A scholar who has produced a large amount of polemical literature is entitled to a higher social status than others. This is also perceived a sign of his solid spiritual, as well as discursive, knowledge.

The efforts displayed by the Sudanese Tijānī ʿUmar Masʿūd in his refutation of al-Ifrīqī may also be described in terms of the concept of capital. His treatise, al-Radd ʿalā al-Ifrīqī, provides nothing particularly new when compared to that of this Egyptian master Muḥammad al-Ḥāfiẓ, except that, in ʿUmar Masʿūd’s treatise, the polemical tone reached the level of mockery and ridicule. These aspects of his polemical discourse strongly suggest that the intention behind his producing such a treatise, in the first place, was to enhance his personal recognition in Tijānī circles, both within and outside of Sudan. Certainly, his polemical writings, including this one, have gained him

62 The author in question is the Sudanese writer al-Fātiḥ al-Nūr. See: Al-Fātiḥ al-Nūr, al-Tijānīyya wa-l-mustaqbal, El-Obeid: Dār Kordofan li-l-Ṭabāʿa wa-l-Nashr, 1997, p. 198.

63 Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1350, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 109.

64 Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1350, p. 136.

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recognition at both a national and an international level.⁶⁵ He uses his discursive knowledge, as well as his esoteric knowledge of the doctrine of the order (cultural capital), to generate recognition among his fellow Tijānīs (social capital). The absence of novel aspects to its discourse does not mean that his treatise is of no use at all; rather, it ensures continuity in the production of polemical writings, confers prestige and recognition upon its author, and assures the ordinary followers of the Tijāniyya of the consistency and reasonableness of the doctrine and tenets of the brotherhood.

Moreover, in fact, this is the goal par excellence of Tijānī polemical writings.⁶⁶ In addition to this, ʿUmar Masʿūd invests a great deal of energy in proving his opponent’s purported ignorance regarding the religious sciences. His attempt to portray al-Ifrīqī to Tijānīs as an ignorant person, one who is devoid of the requisite scholarly credentials,⁶⁷ and thus needs to educate himself prior to engaging in serious and sensitive spiritual affairs, is in line with an observation made by Louis Brenner concerning the the tasks of dogmatic argumentation. Brenner argues that dogmatic argumentation revolves around three crucial topics, one of which is the demonstration of the opponent’s ignorance.⁶⁸

The same line of argumentation can be developed to an even greater extent with regard to Dakhīl Allāh’s treatise, Dirāsa li-ahamm ʿaqāʾid al-Tijāniyya, and to a lesser extent, al-Hilālī’s al-Hadiyya al-hādiya. At the time of composing his treatise, the latter was a newly recruited professor at the Islamic University of Medina. Transcribing his own cultural capital (that is, his exoteric and discursive knowledge of the religion, along with his familiarity with the esoteric knowledge of Sufism) into the form of a written book (objectified cultural capital) would certainly have enhanced his social capital (scholarly authority and recognition among fellow Salafīs), and this may be seen to have paid off in the form of support from the famous Salafī Shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Bāz (d.

1419/1999),⁶⁹ the chairman of the University at the time. Ibn Bāz not only encouraged him to write such a treatise in the first place, but also helped him with the process of its publication, through

1419/1999),⁶⁹ the chairman of the University at the time. Ibn Bāz not only encouraged him to write such a treatise in the first place, but also helped him with the process of its publication, through