Instructing African Pilgrims and Anti-Colonialism

The African shaykh is credited for the establishing the tradition of introducing pilgrims to the Salafī creed and instructing them in the practice of Islam, particularly those coming from West Africa, where people were suffering from strict colonial rule, in addition to the alleged ignorance of the adherents of Sufi brotherhoods. It was in this context that al-Ifrīqī came into conflict with the proponents of the Tijāniyya Sufi order, against which he wrote a small but highly effective treatise.²⁶⁰ To make sure this tradition was continued, during the last years of his life, he introduced some of his clever disciples to Shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Ṣāliḥ, the chief imām and khaṭīb at the

258 In it, he constantly refers to his interlocutors as ikhwan, which means “brothers” in Arabic. He never calls them unbelievers, as often happens in literature of this type.

259 ʿAṭiyya Muḥammad Sālim, Minaʿyān ʿulamāʾ al-Ḥaramayn, p. 394.

260 See his influential treatise al-Anwār al-raḥmāniyya li-hidayat al-ṭarīqa al-Tijānīyya.

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Mosque of the Prophet as well as the head of the court of justice of Medina at the same time, for him to appoint them to engage in pilgrim instruction. The suggestion was accepted and the students were duly appointed. Some of these students, such as ʿUmar Fallāta, who after the demise the African shaykh was widely viewed his adherent, went on to become well-known authorities in the future.²⁶¹

As alluded to earlier, the reason behind al-Ifrīqī’s migration to Hijaz had been to acquire sufficient knowledge of the Islamic sciences that was apparently not available in his home country, at least to him. Another, if somewhat less urgent factor that seems to have motivated his migration was that of the colonial rule and plunder of African Muslims by the French colonial system. The French colonial authorities had begun to suppress intellectual voices with increasingly nationalist tones in the 1950s (CE). These Muslim intellectuals encompassed a great range of personalities, trained both inside as well as outside of the country, in al-Azhar in Egypt and Dār al-Ḥadīth in Saudi Arabia.²⁶² When al-Ifrīqī undertook his migration to the holy lands, these voices had been absent or less audible. At that time, French colonial officers had managed to establish strong control over most Muslim intellectuals and scholars, turning them into propaganda machines in favour of colonialism. One strong example is that of Seydou Nourou Tall, a grandson of Al-Ḥājj ʿUmar and the grand marabou of French West Africa, who proselytized in favour of colonial rule.²⁶³

After his migration to Hijaz, al-Ifrīqī’s disdain to colonialism grew stronger over time. There is no evidence, however, that he engaged in direct political activities against French colonial rule.

Instead, in service of the ideal of the liberation of West African Muslim communities from the systematical oppression and exploitation of French colonialism, he dedicated his life to the education and training of students. Unlike other West African personalities motivated by the same factor, he saw education as the perfect means of actualizing his ideals. This side of his personality is well documented by Marcel Cardair, a French agent assigned with the mission of gathering information about the activities of West African pilgrims and the network of Hijaz-based ʿulamāʾ who were seen to be responsible for the spread of anti-French sentiments in Francophone Africa.

This was a time in which both the British and French were highly suspicious of those West African

261 Chanfi Ahmed, West African ʿUlamāʾ and Salafism in Mecca and Medina, p. 54.

262 See details in Benjamin F. Soares, “Islam and Public Piety in Mali”, pp. 214-215.

263 On his pro colonial propaganda see: Benjamin F. Soares, “Islam and Public Piety in Mali”, pp. 210-211

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Muslims who travelled to the Middle East for higher education, ²⁶⁴ some of whom chose to reside there, and who were assumed to be important exporters of anti-colonialism to West Africa. Al-Ifrīqī, at the time, was at the centre of a network of West African students which extended from the Middle East into all of Muslim sub-Saharan Africa. The network accommodated students from West Africa in Hijaz, where students were exposed to anti-colonial sentiments; the African shaykh with his widespread reputation among the pilgrims provided a source of leadership for these likeminded Muslims and students, whose network in turn provided an ideal context for the free exchange of ideas and an invaluable means of communication.²⁶⁵ Encounters with the African shaykh caused many West African visitors to embrace Salafī ideas, as in the case of the Sufi pilgrim mentioned above, and take them back home to others.²⁶⁶ Cardaire describes al-Ifrīqī as a non-political but still extremely dangerous Wahhābī who could use his love of God as an effective tool for raising anti-colonial sentiments among his visitors from West Africa, calling him a “pious, religious man who is motivated to convince others through his love of God”.²⁶⁷ When the African shaykh was asked by one of these pilgrims about the nature of his Salafī mission and whether it had to do with politics or not, he replied: “Take it as you wish; we only see it as an application of the Quranic law”.²⁶⁸ This behaviour could be witnessed in many West African scholars trained in religious institutions of Saudi Arabia and Egypt who, after returning to their homelands, were deliberately left unemployed by their governments: that, despite the economic challenges, they continued to educate their fellow Muslims without receiving compensation.²⁶⁹

After al-Ifrīqī had spent twenty-sex years of his life in the holy lands, striving to spread what he deemed as the true creed of the pious predecessors and reviving anti-colonial sentiments in West African Muslims, his body failed to endure the heavy work tempo that it had used to. He grew seriously ill in 1957 CE, and when he was sent to Beirut for medical treatment it was too late. His

264 John Hunwich, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Wider World of Islam: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 236.

265 Louis Brenner, Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power and Schooling in West African Muslim Society, pp. 96-98.

266 Lancine Kaba, The Wahhabiyya: Islamic Reform and Politics in French West Africa, p. 52.

267 AMI, “Rapport du Capitaine Cardaire, Commissaire du Gouverneur de l’AOF au Pèlerinage à la Mecke en 1952.

quoted in Louis Brenner, Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power and Schooling in West African Muslim Society, p. 97.

268 AMI, “Rapport du Capitaine Cardaire, quoted in Louis Brenner, Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power and Schooling in West African Muslim Society, p. 98.

269 Abdulai Iddrisu, Contesting Islam in Africa, p. 235.

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corpse was brought back to Medina, where his funeral took place, a place dearer to him than any other.²⁷⁰

1.7.Writings

For a list of al-Ifrīqī’s writings, see appendix I.

270 Muḥammad al-Majdhūb, ʿUlamāʾ wa-mafakkirūn ʿaraftuhum, vol. I, p. 76.

85 2. Muḥammad Taqī al-Dīn al-Hilālī 2.1.Early Life and Affiliation to Sufism

A man called ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Hilālī, had a dream vision in which he was told to name his as-yet-unborn son Muḥammad al-Taqī, and duly did so. Later, however, the child would come to be known as Muḥammad Taqī al-Dīn, after being called by this name by the people of India; as well as by the nickname Abū Shākib, since he had named his first son after Shakib Arslan, one of his mentors, who had helped him during his stay in Europe. Here, we will simply refer to him as al-Hilālī. He was born either at the end of 1311 AH or at the turn of 1312 AH, equivalent to 1894 CE, in a small village called Ghayḍa and Farkh²⁷¹ in Sijilmassa, a district in the region of Tafilalt, in the south-east of what today is Morocco. His family, locally known for producing scholars, had migrated to the country from the famous city of Kairouan in Tunisia towards the end of the ninth century AH. His genealogy goes back to Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī, a grandson of the Prophet Muḥammad.²⁷² His father, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Hilālī, was one of the few scholars in the area, serving as imām and vice-judge of the village. He began his education at home under the supervision of his father, from whom he learned the Qurʾān until he had mastered it by heart, as early as when he was twelve years old. He mastered the science of tajwīd (the science of the recitation of the holy Qurʾān) under the supervision of a certain Shaykh Aḥmad b. Ṣāliḥ, as per his father’s wishes, albeit posthumously fulfilled.²⁷³ While sources do not mention much about al-Hilālī’s childhood studies, given the fact that his father was one of a few scholars in the area, and that he belonged to a family of literacy, it is not hard or unreasonable to imagine that he studied at least the basics of some of the religious sciences in his childhood. Sporadic hints in his writings suggest that after his initiation into the Tijāniyya, he also studied basic Tijānī sources such as the Munyat al-murīd (The Wish of the Disciple) by Ibn Bābā and Bughyat mustafīd (The Demand of the Wayfarer) by Ibn ʿArabī

271 The village had two names, according to al-Hilālī.

272 Muḥammad al-Majdhūb, ʿUlamāʾ wa-mafakkirūn ʿaraftuhum, vol. I, pp. 193-94. The pedigree of al-Hilālī’s family as proceeding from Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī has been approved by many scholars as well as Ḥasan the first, Sulṭan of Morocco, during one of his visits to Sijilmassa in 1311 AH. For a full genealogy of al-Hilālī’s relation to the grandson of the Prophet see: al-Hilālī, al-Daʿwa ilā Allāh fi aqṭār mukhtalifa fi aqṭār mukhtalifa, Sharjah: Maktaba al-Ṣaḥāba, 1424/2004, p. 3.

273 Al-Hilālī, Daʿwa ilā Allāh fi aqṭār mukhtalifa, p. 3; Hilālī, Hadiyya hādiya, p. 9; Muḥammad al-Majdhūb, ʿUlamāʾ wa-mafakkirūn ʿaraftuhum, vol. I, p. 194.

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Sāʾiḥ, the latter being a commentary upon the former, alongside the Jawāhir al-maʿānī by ʿAlī Harāzim,²⁷⁴ the most authoritative book of the order.

Historical sources suggest that Sufi brotherhoods were widespread in the region.²⁷⁵ The Sufi teachings of the Tijāniyya and other competing brotherhoods played a key role in the daily lives of the inhabitants,²⁷⁶ for whom affiliation to one of these brotherhoods was considered an inseparable part of their identity. Al-Hilālī’s remarks on the educational atmosphere and exceptional striving of Sufism are in line with historical documents. He relates:

I grew up in Sijilmassa...and I found the people of our area to be fond of the Sufi brotherhoods. You would hardly come across one person, either literate (ʿālim) or illiterate (jāhil), who was not engaged in the service of one of the brotherhoods, and not bound to its master with a strong bond. He would recall him [the master of the brotherhood] while dealing with hardships and seek his help while facing misfortunes. He would constantly utter his thankfulness to him [the master] and praise him; if he had benefitted from a favour, he would be thankful to him, but if he was struck by calamity he would blame himself for negligence, in the love of his master, and in following his ṭarīqa. He would never think that his master was incapable [of intervention] in the matters of heavens and earth, for [according to him] his master is competent in all things.

I have heard people saying: “He who does not have a master, Satan is, indeed, his master.” They would repeat Ibn ʿĀshūr’s saying in his arjuza [a specific type of poem] about the Ashʿarī faith, Mālikī jurisprudence and Sufi principles:

One [should] accompany a master who knows all the routes, Who [can] rescue him from all sort of dangers on his way.

274 For an account of the life of ʿAlī Ḥarāzim, see: Aḥmad Sukayrij, Kashf al-hijāb, pp. 68-94.

275 The remarks of Walter B. Harris, in his book Tafilet: Narrative of a Journey of Exploration in the Atlas Mountains and the Oasis of the North-West Sahara are illuminating in this regard. In his words, “the love of belonging to some particular brotherhood is extremely noticeable amongst the superstitious people of the Sahara, who are far more religious than their brethren in Morocco proper”. Brotherhoods like the Ṭayyibiyya, Ḥammādiyya and Darqāwiyya were then on the rise, and most of the people were affiliated to one or another. For further detail, see: Walter B. Harris, Tafilet: The Narrative of a Journey of Exploration in the Atlas Mountains and the Oases of North-West Sahara London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1895, pp. 298-299.

276 The importance of Sufism in Moroccan Islam has been highlighted by a number of studies on the topic. For an excellent study, see: Dale F. Eickelman, Moroccan Islam: Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center, Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1976; Ernest Gellner, Saints of the Atlas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

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Who reminds him of Allah when he sees him, and who takes a servant to his lord.²⁷⁷

According to al-Hilālī, the competing Sufi brotherhoods of the region were of two types: (a) those to which most of the scholars and elites of the region were affiliated, and (b) those which mostly recruited the ordinary people of Tafilalt. He was more inclined to the first type, to which the Tijāniyya and some other brotherhoods like the Kattāniyya²⁷⁸ and the Darqāwiyya²⁷⁹ reportedly belonged. He relates that his father would have joined the Tijāniyya, was it not for the rigorously exclusive attitude of the brotherhood preventing its followers from venerating and visiting the shrines of any saints other than the shrine of the Prophet, those of his companions, and those of Tijānīs. Thus, as his father could not afford to cease visiting the shrine of his own grandfather, ʿAbd al-Qādir b. Hilāl, one of the divinely elected saints whose tomb constituted a regular site of visitation in the region, he was prevented from joining the Tijāniyya.²⁸⁰ Despite his father’s deliberate distance from the Tijāniyya, al-Hilālī states that he decided to join the order when he had barely reached the age of puberty.²⁸¹ He went to a Tijānī muqaddam (representative/deputy) called ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Manṣūrī and revealed his interest in the Tijāniyya and his intention.

Apparently delighted by the interest of his young visitor, Al-Manṣūrī initiated him into the brotherhood and gave to him the litanies. For the following nine years, al-Hilālī would stick to the litanies of his ṭarīqa with the greatest sincerity. Whenever he was afflicted by misfortune, he would invoke the supreme master of the brotherhood Aḥmad al-Tijānī, though without any help offered

277 Al-Hilālī, al-Hadiyya al-hādiya, p. 7.

278 The Kattāniya is a Sufi brotherhood founded by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Waḥid al-Kattānī (d. 1289/1872) in Morocco. For information of its founder, see: Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar b. Idrīs al-Kattānī, Salwat al-anfās wa-muḥādatha akyās bi-man Uqbira min ʿulamāʾ wa-l-sulahāʾ bi-Fās, vol. I, ed. Muḥammad Ḥamza b. ʿAli al-Kattānī, n.d, n.p, pp. 132-134.

279 The Darqāwiyya was founded by Abu Ḥāmid Aḥmad al-ʿArabī al-Darqāwī (d. 1823 CE), a contemporary of the founding figure of the Tijāniyya. The importance of the Darqāwiyya in nineteenth-century Morocco may be observed in the fact that more than half of the biographies dating from the period after 1930 in Salwat al-anfās, by the influential Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, are devoted to associates of this brotherhood. See: Bettina

Dennerlein, “Asserting Religious Authority in late nineteenth/early twentieth Century Morocco: Muḥammad b.

Jaʿfar al-Kattānī (d. 1927) and his Kitab Salwat al-Anfās”, in: Gudrun Krämer and Sabine Schmidkte (eds.), Speaking for Islam: Regligious Authories in Muslim Societies, Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 128-152, (p. 144). On al-Darqāwī and his order see: J.S. Triminghem, The Sufi Orders in Islam, New York: 1998, pp. 110-114; and R. Le Tourneau, “Darkāwā”, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, vol. II, p. 160.

280 Al-Hilālī, al-Hadiyya al-hādiya, pp. 7-8.

281 This information is given by al-Hilālī in al-Hadiyya al-hādiya, but a close investigation of al-Hilālī’s writing suggest that he became affiliated to the brotherhood when he was at least eighteen years old.

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on the part of the latter. One of these situations happened when he decided to cross the border to the neighbouring Algeria in 1333/1915, so as to make himself a living.²⁸²

The young Moroccan was accompanied on the journey by a friend with a camel at his disposal.

One day, in a place called al-Mushariyya near the border of Morocco, al-Hilālī was asked to look after the camel. However, the camel managed to run away into the desert; al-Hilālī chased it but in vain. Then, to his amazement, the camel started playing with him. It would run a fair distance and stop until al-Hilālī had almost arrived there, and then it would jump up again, run to another place and wait for him to come after it. It was the afternoon, the hottest time of the day in the desert, with unbelievable waves of heat. The young Moroccan realized that it was time to call on his supreme master, Aḥmad al-Tijānī, and seek his help. Though his appeals resulted in disappointment, he failed to attribute this to the shortcomings of his master, instead, blaming himself for his own lack of sincerity and deficiency in the service of the brotherhood.

Although new aspirants were supposed to confine themselves to the books of the ṭarīqa and abstain from reading others—a recommendation made to new affiliates by Tijānī shaykhs, according to al-Hilālī,²⁸³—he came across a volume of al-Ghazāli’s magnum opus Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (The Revival of the Religious Sciences), which he read and was impressed by. Apparently distressed by failing to obtain the favour of his supreme master al-Tijānī, and deeply influenced by Iḥyāʾ, he began to dedicate most of his time to divine worship. One midnight, while performing supererogatory prayers, he witnessed a gigantic white cloud coming from eastward. A man came out of the cloud and started praying behind him. The darkness rendered it impossible to see the face of the visitor; thus, he then felt afraid to the extent he could no longer focus on his recitation of the Qurʾānic verses. Both the guest and host prayed together without talking to each other.

Indeed, al-Hilālī was not supposed to talk, for withdrawal from worldly activity was a part of his

282 Muahammad al-Majdhūb, ʿUlamāʾ wa-mafakkirūn ʿaraftuhum, p. 194. See also Henri Lauzière, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century, New York: Columbia University Press, 2016, p. 52. Sources relate that prior to the journey to Algeria al-Hilālī spent at least two years in the zāwiya of Ayāt Ishaq in the tribe of

282 Muahammad al-Majdhūb, ʿUlamāʾ wa-mafakkirūn ʿaraftuhum, p. 194. See also Henri Lauzière, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century, New York: Columbia University Press, 2016, p. 52. Sources relate that prior to the journey to Algeria al-Hilālī spent at least two years in the zāwiya of Ayāt Ishaq in the tribe of