B – Hybrid Learning

BURHANUDDIN, SAYYIDNA MUHAMMAD

Batoota — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 14:13:41 +0000

BURHANUDDIN, SAYYIDNA MUHAMMAD (b. AH 1333/1915 CE), head of the Da’udi Bohra Isma’ili community and fifty-second occupant of the office of da`i mutlaq (“absolute summoner”). The office held by Burhanuddin originated in Yemen in AH 532/1138 CE when the heir to the Fatimid caliphate, the twenty-first imam al-Tayyib, chose seclusion. The Isma’ili community believes that since then the imamate has continued in seclusion in the progeny of al-Tayyib and that prior preparations had been made by his predecessors to ensure that the Fatimid Isma’ili mission would continue through the da’i. mutlaq. The da’i thus represents the secluded imam and operates with the imam’s authority. He carries out virtually all the imam’s religious and juridical functions and sustains the social structure of the community of believers. The present da’i resides in Bombay, the headquarters of the mission having been transferred to India from Yemen in 974/1567. Like his predecessors, he is greatly revered by his followers.
Burhanuddin received his religious and administrative training during the leadership of his renowned father and predecessor, Tahir Sayf al-Din (1915-1965) and succeeded him in 1965. He has led his community into an era of fresh vibrancy and renewed zeal by devoting his efforts to the preservation of the Fatimid Isma’ili heritage in a number of ways: he has ushered in a spiritual reawakening by requiring his followers to adhere closely to Qur’anic injunctions in their everyday lives. He has emphasized adherence to Islamic business ethics that include the prohibition of interest and institutionalized interest-free loan schemes to cater for the community’s borrowing needs. He has strengthened the age-old Sh-`Y practice of lamenting the martyrdom of Imam al-Husayn; the annual gatherings to mourn the martyrdom during the first ten day of Muharram (`Ashura’) has become the major spiritual expression of the community, with thousands of Bohras attending the sermons of the da’i, which are relayed live to Bohra centers all over the world. He has promoted the blending of secular and religious studies by initiating Islam-oriented schools which attempt to provide an integrated education in an Islamic atmosphere. Finally, he has undertaken the restoration of Fatimid relics and has promoted Fatimid architecture and design in the construction of a large number of mosques, mausolea, and other public buildings all over the world. The most important of such works has been the restoration in 1980 of al-Jami` al-Anwar, the grand mosque in Cairo built by the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim (996-1021).
Sayyidna Burhanuddin is an accomplished scholar. He personally supervises the curriculum of the Arabic academy al-Jami`ah al-Sayfiyah where his followers receive religious training. He is the author of several books on Isma’ili religious thought and has composed thousands of verses in Arabic on supplication and in praise of the Prophet, imams and da’is. He has received honorary doctorates from al-Azhar University (1966) and from Aligarh Muslim University (1966).
He has frequently visited Da’udi Bohra centers all over the world to personally imbue Islamic values in his followers, a practice he has continued even at an advanced age. He spends many hours each day in attending to the needs of the Da’udi Bohras, who seek his advice on all aspects of life, even on mundane matters such as the choice of name of a newborn. His charitable endeavors, promotion of institutes and trusts for educational and economic welfare, support of projects on environmental issues, and renovation activities have earned him international recognition, including the highest civilian honors of Egypt (1976) and Jordan (1981).
[See also Bohras; Fatimid Dynasty; Isma`iliyah; Ja- BURMA. See Myanmar. mi’ah al-Sayfiyah, al-.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sayyidna Burhanuddin’s annual commemorations of the martyrdom of Imam al-Husayn are recorded in publications of the Bohra community where the commemorations are held, for instance, Dhikr al-Safar al-jamil (Bombay, 1993) and The Mombasa Experience (Bombay, 1993) Examples of Burhanuddin’s published works include Istiftah Zubad al-Ma’arif (Bombay, 1965) and Al-munajdt al-sharifah alRamaddntyah (Bombay, 1990), a compendium of poetic supplications for Ramadan written from 1965 to 1990. The secretariat of Al-Da`i alMutlaq publishes a series of pamphlets providing statistical and historical information, including the following titles: A Golden Chapter in Islamic Economy (Bombay, 1985); B. H. Zaidi, From Strength to Strength (Bombay, 1991), T. A. A. Davoodbhoy, Day of Thanksgiving (Bombay, 1992); and Kauser Niyazi, Heir to a Great Spiritual Heritage (Bombay, 1992). The reader may also consult the following works: Najmuddin, Y. Fifty-Second El-Dai el-Fatimi: Seventy-Five Momentous Years in Retrospect. Bombay, 1985.
Quarashi, ‘Idris ‘Imad al-Din. ‘Uyun al-akbar wa -funun al-athar. Vol. 7. Beirut, 1974
Sayf al-Din, Tahir. Dhu’i Nur al-Haqq al-Mubin. Bombay, 1917. Doctrinal exposition on the transfer of authority from the imam in Fatimid Egypt to the da’i mutlaq in Yemen which quotes from the fourth/ninth-century work by Ja’far ibn Mansur al-Yaman, Kitab al-shawahid wa-al-baydn.
Sayf al-Din, Tahir. Al-Mashrab al-Kawthari. Bombay, 1920. Souvenir Akhbar Nur. London, 1982.
A Treasury of Reminiscences. Bombay, 1967. Informative pictorial book charting the early life of Sayyidna Burhanuddin.
MUSTAFA ABDULHUSSEIN

BRUNEI

Batoota — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 14:05:45 +0000

BRUNEI. Islam is the national religion of the tiny but oil-rich sultanate of Brunei on the northwest coast of Borneo. An estimated 65 percent of the population of about 230,000 is Muslim, virtually all Sunnis of the Shafi’i school, with most of these being Brunei Malays (55 percent of the population). Most of the other Muslims are traditionally Muslim Kedayans, converted members of small indigenous tribal groups, and converts from among Chinese immigrants (the second largest ethnic group with about 25 percent of the population).

Brunei Malays adopted Islam during the fifteenth century, or possibly as early as the fourteenth, after one of their leaders was installed as sultan (according to oral traditions) by the sultan of Johore. As head of the faith, the sultan has always been responsible for upholding the Islamic way of life, but he has traditionally delegated this responsibility to appointed non-noble officials.
Islam provided a unifying theocratic and political base that allowed Brunei, a trading center for jungle produce, to attain the status of empire during the sixteenth century. However, internal dissension and European encroachment led to disintegration, and Brunei probably would have disappeared entirely had not the British taken it on as a protectorate in 1888. In 1906 Brunei yielded control of internal affairs to a British Resident, with the sultan retaining responsibility only for matters related to Islam.
During the nineteenth century and through the mid twentieth, the status and institutions of Islam continued to reflect traditions broadly shared with the sultanates of the Malay Peninsula. The available literature on this period contains little to suggest that there were any significant movements or events focusing on Islam. Brunei was truly a backwater, untouched by the religious controversies that occasionally flared elsewhere in the region. The British accepted Islam as the established way of life, while most Bruneians respected the British as akin to saviors of their country.
The situation began to change after World War II. The British promoted experimentation with democracy even as control of internal affairs was returned to the sultan with the adoption of the constitution of 1959. The socialist Brunei People’s Party (BPP) emerged as dominant by playing on the dis affections of commoners over the hereditary privileges of the nobility and by proposing Brunei as the power center of a new Pan-Islamic state that would recover territories in Borneo lost to private British interests during the nineteenth century. The BPP was never allowed a share of power and staged a short-lived rebellion in 1962, which proved so traumatic to the ruling elite that they reversed course on democracy. Revenues from oil exports, which began during the 1930s, were fortuitously climbing, allowing the late Sultan Sir Omar Ali Saifuddin to address the disaffection of his poorer subjects through an extensive social welfare system and the promotion of Islam. He built one of Asia’s largest mosques, greatly expanded the Department of Religious Affairs established in 1954, and subsidized performance of the hajj to make it the norm rather than the exception for Brunei Malays.
Sultan Omar abdicated in favor of his eldest son Hassanal Bolkiah (the twenty-ninth sultan) in 1967, but he remained the power behind the throne until his son began asserting himself in the early 1980s. The resulting power struggle between them was often played out along religious lines, reflecting a rift within the royal family and the government between what have been called “ideologues” who want a theocratic Islamic state and “pragmatists” who are secularly oriented and open to Western values.
Sir Omar, who died in 1986, was allied with the ideologues, many of whom attended Cairo’s al-Azhar University and hold top positions in the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Ministry of Education (a ministerial form of government was introduced at full independence from Britain in 1984). Sultan and Prime Minister Hassanal, who often warns of the dangers of religious extremism, is considered a pragmatist. Yet, to the dismay of many pragmatists, he has promulgated the concept of Malay Islamic monarchy as a national ideology that would entrench what the pragmatists see as an anachronistic system of governance. Some believe the Islamic monarchy is meant to preclude demands for an Islamic theocracy by mollifying the ideologues and keeping the general populace focused on religion rather than politics. The most prominent pragmatists are Western educated and tend to come from wealthier, higher-ranking sectors of the nobility, which strongly suggests that the social class tensions underlying the 1962 rebellion remain unresolved and that the place of
Islam in Brunei society will continue to be contested for some time.
[See also Islam, article on Islam in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bartholomew, James. The Richest Man in the World: The Sultan of Brunei. London, 1989. Biography includes discussion of how Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has grappled with the sultanate’s most critical political issue: the relationship of Islam to government and society. Brown, Donald E. Brunei: The Structure and History of a Bornean Malay Sultanate. Bandar Seri Begawan, 1970. In-depth study of historical influences underlying the structure of modern Brunei Malay society.
Leake, David. Brunei: The Modern Southeast Asian Islamic Sultanate. Jefferson, N.C., 1989. The only comprehensive overview of Brunei’s history and current society.
Singh, D. S. Ranjit. Brunei, 1839-1983: The Problems of Political Survival. Oxford, 1984. Describes how Brunei sultans have used international diplomacy to maintain the sultanate as a distinct entity. Tarling, Nicholas. Britain, the Brookes, and Brunei. Kuala Lumpur, 1971. Highly detailed treatise on early British involvement in northern Borneo; Islam was rarely a contentious issue.
Weaver, Mary Anne. “In the Sultan’s Palace.” The New Yorker (7 October 1991): 56, 63-78, 8o-86, 88-9o, 92-93. Author’s conversations with Bruneians and officials up through the sultan provide rare insights into the ongoing rift between Islamic “ideologues” and “pragmatists.”
DAVID LEAKS, JR.

BRAZIL

Batoota — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 14:04:30 +0000

BRAZIL The history of Islam in Brazil begins in Portugal, which conquered and colonized Brazil from 1500 to 1822. Colonial customs such as the seclusion of women and their wearing of the veil have been traced to Muslim influence in Portugal. However, a deep seated anti-Muslim sentiment was expressed by the Portuguese crown in its determination to bar descendants of Muslims from filling posts of authority either at home or in its colonies. Moors-like Jews, Indians, and blacks were considered an “infectious race.” The Inquisition persecuted Islam as well as Judaism and other non Christian beliefs, although there is no record of the arrest of Muslims in Brazil.

The first important Muslim migration to Brazil originated not in the Mediterranean but in tropical Africa.
These Muslim Africans were probably islamized Mandinka slaves, brought to Brazil in small numbers over the sixteenth to eighteenth century. Very little is known about their religious practices beyond the fact that they gave name to the famous bolsas de mandinga (Mandinka pouches or amulets). The great wave of African Muslims came in the first half of the nineteenth century. They were primarily Hausas and Yorubas and less frequently Bornus, Nupes, and Fulanis brought as slaves to work in mines, on cotton and coffee plantations, in cities, and above all on sugar plantations. Historians have estimated that at least 354,100 slaves, including a significant number of Muslims, were imported from the Bight of Benin between 1791 and 1850. Most had been taken prisoner during political and religious conflicts within present-day Nigeria, including successive revolts that led to the demise of the Yoruba empire of Oyo and the jihad initiated by Usuman Dan Fodio in 1804, followed by Islamic expansion into Yoruba land.
In Brazil, Muslim slaves were initially known by the Hausa term musulmi and later by the more popular Yoruba term imale or male, indicative of the greater number of Yoruba in the Muslim community in the 1820s and 1830s. These slaves’ religious culture became interwoven with their political history. They remain known for their involvement in a series of more than twenty revolts in Bahia, then a sugar-producing province in northeastern Brazil that received the majority of Muslim slaves.
In 1814 slave fishermen from whaling warehouses on the coast revolted with the help of runaway slaves and freedmen from the Bahian capital city Salvador. More than two hundred men set fire to nets and warehouses, attacked a nearby village, and tried to reach the plantation area, killing more than fifty people before being overpowered by troops. The rebel ranks were overwhelmingly Hausa but included a few Nupe, Bornu and Yoruba. Their principal leader, a man called Jodo, was described as “malomi or priest”, the term malomi being certainly derived from malam, a Hausa word for a Muslim priest. The Muslim contribution to the episode is confirmed by confiscated papers written in Arabic.
A more serious episode occurred on 25 January 1835, the so-called “Male revolt.” For nearly four hours, about five hundred African rebels fought in the streets of Salvador. They were mostly Yoruba and Hausa slaves and freedmen, who paid bitterly for their actions, receiving punishments that varied from the death penalty to whippings and hard labor.
The movement was led by Muslim preachers, most of them elders who had promised to protect their followers with Islamic amulets. Although there is no reason to believe they sought to establish an Islamic state or saw the movement as a jihad of the sword, the uprising did not lack a ritual dimension. For instance, it was planned to occur at the end of Ramadan, probably after the Laylat al-Qadr festival of AH 1250 (25 January 1835). The trial that followed revealed, through the testimony of participants, a network of Muslim practices: the celebration of Muslim holy days, daily prayers, the observance of food and sexual taboos, initiation rites, Qur’anic reading meetings, the teaching of the Arabic language, and the making of Muslim clothes and amulets. There is evidence that a strong process of conversion to Islam was under way at the time of the rebellion, particularly among Yoruba slaves and freedmen.
The brutal repression disrupted and dispersed the Muslim community. Hundreds of freedmen were deported back to Africa, and others willingly crossed the Atlantic to avoid continued police violence and ethnic discrimination; numerous slaves were separated and sold south to coffee plantations. Any blacks found with Muslim writings were immediately viewed as suspect. Following the abolition of slavery in 1888, in Bahia and elsewhere in Brazil, Muslim ex-slaves could still be found as isolated practitioners of their faith; some of them became famous for making amulets, which they sold to a clientele immersed in magical beliefs. But beyond this, Islam was unable to penetrate the African Brazilian community, who developed a syncretism of Catholicism and African ethnic religions.
As the last African Muslims were disappearing at the turn of the century, Middle Eastern Muslims were arriving to Brazil in small numbers along with Christian immigrants from the Ottoman territories of Syria and Lebanon. Today, however, the great majority of Muslims in Brazil are descendants of Sunni Muslims who left Lebanon after World War II. Mostly engaged in commerce, some two hundred thousand (estimates vary widely) are concentrated in the greater Sao Paulo area, the economic heart of Brazil, where they continue to follow Muslim ways through mosques, Islamic centers, periodicals, and social clubs.
[See also Islam, article on Islam in the Americas.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kent, Raymond. “African Revolt in Bahia, 24-25 January 1835.” Journal of Social History 3.4 (1970): 334-356.
Nina Rodrigues, Raimundo. Os africanos no Brasil. 4th ed. Sao Paulo, 1976.
Reis, Joao Jose. Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia. Translated by Arthur Brakel. Baltimore, 1993.

JOAO JOSE REIS

BEKTASHIYAH

Batoota — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:50:35 +0000

BEKTASHIYAH. This Sufi order became widespread in the Ottoman Empire and today has communities in Turkey, in Albanian regions of the Balkans, and among Albanian immigrants in North America; Bektashiyah is the Arabic form of its name, while in Turkish it is Bektasi. The Bektasi order traces its origin to central Anatolia in the thirteenth century. It takes its name from Haji Bektash Veli, a religious leader from Khurasan in northeast Iran, who, according to tradition, was sent by command of the famous Sufi of western Turkestan, Ahmed Yesevi, to Anatolia where he settled in a village near the present city of Kirsehir. The organization of the Bektasi order, however, is credited to a later personage, Blim Sultan, known as the “Second Pir” (patron saint) of the order, who became head of the Bektasis in 1501. Balim Sultan was born of at least partly Bulgarian parentage near the city of Edirne, now in European Turkey. In addition to centralizing authority at the Bektasi headquarters in Anatolia, Balim Sultan instituted the celibate branch of the order that has continued to coexist with the married branch.
Central to Bektasi teachings is the importance of the spiritual teacher (Ar., murshid; Tk., Mursit). One cannot progress in spiritual growth without a spiritual teacher, and prayer and blessings are mediated by the teacher. Unlike orthodox Muslims, Bektasis believe in intercession. This intercession can also be through earlier spiritual teachers, including the two pirs of the order, the saints, the twelve imams, and `All, whom the Bektasis as well as many other Sufi orders view as the one who revealed mystic understanding of the Qur’an. Thus the Bektasis are `Alid in orientation, professing strong love and loyalty to Ehli Beyt, the “household of the Prophet.” They have been called Shi’s but theologically they differ from many Shi’is in their emphasis on the mystic path, as well as in their understanding of Muhammad and `Ali, which includes reference to “Muhammad ‘Ali” as a single personage; thus they both raise the status of `Ali and emphasize the complementarity and unity of the word of God and its mystical dimension. Practices that reflect the `Alid orientation of the Bektasis are their two main annual holidays: A§ure (Ar., `Ashura’), which commemorates the martyrdom of `Ali’s son Husayn; and Nevruz (Nawruz), which is celebrated at the spring equinox and is understood as the birthday of `Ali.
Further practices that are distinctively Bektasi include their initiation rites. These rites are private, reserved for other initiated members, and include ceremonial use of candles, sheepskins, and sweet drink. What is striking about these rites, in the context of Islamic society, is the presence of unveiled women. Bektasis have always accepted women as initiated members, thereby sanctioning their participation in these ceremonies.
Another Bektasi practice is their communal praise of God (dhikr), which involves the alternation of the chanting of spiritual poetry (nefes) with formalized sharing of food and drink. Much of the teaching of the order is in these spiritual poems. Also distinctive is a disregard for certain basic practices of Islam; for example, Bektasis pray twice daily rather than five times. Finally, during the ten-day period before Asure, Bektasis engage in a special fast and each evening read aloud from the sixteenth-century Turkish poet Fuzuli’s account of the suffering of the prophets and martyrs.
Throughout their history the Bektasis have been criticized by Sunni Muslim authorities for a range of offenses, from laxness in following standard Muslim practices and immorality in including women in their private rites, to heresy in elevating `Ali to the level of the prophet Muhammad or above him, and in comparing both to God. (These last allegations of heresy reflect Sunnis’ inability to deal with the mystic expression.) Yet despite these criticisms, the order flourished in the Ottoman Empire among townspeople (in contrast to the Mevlevi order (Ar., Mawlawiyah), which drew more urban intellectuals), in frontier regions in the Balkans, and among the Janissaries, the elite troops of the empire. Estimates of the number of Bektasis in 1900 range from one to seven million. Careful sources (Birge, 1965; Rexhebi, 1972) see 1o percent of the population of Turkey (with modern boundaries) and 15 percent of the population of Albania as directly or indirectly influenced by the order at that time. The popularity of the Bektasi order may be partly explained in that it embodied and also shaped popular Turkish piety, and that it was syncretistic in its inclusion of per-Islamic pagan and Christian elements, thus appealing to populations that were formerly Christian. Certainly it provided a broader range of religious expression than the mosque; socially, it added communal networks of interaction at a local level and across the empire.
In addition to its religious and social roles in more settled communities, the Bektasi order was a source of missionaries of Islam who traveled with Ottoman forces into the Balkans. The mobility and simplicity of Bektasi organization, its relaxed attitude toward the letter of Muslim law, and its tolerance of non-Muslim peoples were all well suited to facilitating the gradual conversion of people in these regions.
The Bektasis also had a longstanding special relationship with the Janissaries, many of whom had been born of Christian parents. Scholars have debated the onset of this relationship, but it was in place at least by the end of the fifteenth century (the Janissaries were founded in the fourteenth). The Bektasis officially blessed the troops, provided an ideology of bonding among them, and traveled with them as chaplains. This relationship was also a source of political power for the Bektasis within the empire.
The connection of the Bektasis with the Janissaries was such that in 1826, when Sultan Mahmud II abolished the Janissaries as part of his campaign to modernize the military, the Bektasis were also targeted. Bektasi tekkes, or centers, were destroyed; some Bektasi leaders were executed, some were exiled, and some refigured themselves as Naksibendis (Ar., Naqshbandiyah) to ride out the persecution. Yet by the second half of the nineteenth century, the Bektasis had regained their tekkes and were publishing numerous books. Politically, many Bektasis of this period were progressive and included members of the Young Turks as well as Albanian patriots. Nonetheless, the Bektasis again suffered the closing of their tekkes when in 1925 Ataturk abolished all Sufi orders in the Republic of Turkey. In response, the Bektasis moved their headquarters from Anatolia to Albania.
With the Communist takeover of Albania in 1944 the Bektasis again began to suffer restrictions. In 1945 all property of religious institutions was confiscated in Albania, and in 1947 an attempt was made to force celibate Bektasi clerics to marry. The 1967 proclamation of Albania as an atheist state was followed by more destruction of Bektasi tombs and mausoleums (turbes), along with mosques and churches. Countering this, Albanian immigrants and refugees in America established a Bektasi tekke in Michigan in 1953 Yet another blow to the Bektasis followed in 1957, when the government in Egypt under Nasser closed the Bektasi tekke in the Muqattam outside Cairo, which since the nineteenth century had been led by Albanian babas.
In the 1990s, the situation in both Albania and Turkey has improved somewhat for Bektasis The Communist regime in Albania fell in 199o-1991, and the Bektasi headquarters there reopened in April 1991. In Turkey there has been recognition of the contribution of the Bektasis to Turkish culture through their extensive spiritual poetry that is largely in Turkish. After great decline in the early part of the century, there has recently been some growth in Bektasi fellowships in Turkey and among Turkish guest workers in Europe. Further, in the second half of the twentieth century there has been public acknowledgment by Bektasis that the village Alevis (Ar., `Alawiyah; including the Kizilbash) and the Bektasis have much in common in terms of practice and belief (Noyan, 1985).
Overall, the Bektasi order was an important expression of and influence on Islam among Turkish people in Anatolia and an important agent of Islam in the Balkans. Its practices, theology, and link with the Janissaries attest to the wide range of variation in Islam. The spiritual poetry produced and preserved by its adherents is a valued contribution to Turkish and Albanian culture.
It appears unlikely, however, that the Bektasis will regain the popularity and political power they once held. In Turkey there remain laws limiting the order, and the Islamic political parties are not favorable toward them. In Albania, in the Muslim Albanian regions of the former Yugoslavia (Kosova and Macedonia), and in Albanian communities in North America, there is a critical lack of trained Bektasi clerics, partly reflecting the secularization of the times but also exacerbated by the direct suppression Bektasis have suffered in the twentieth century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Birge, John Kingsley. The Bektashi Order of Dervishes. London, 1937; reprint, 1965. Still the most comprehensive overview (history, beliefs, practices) on the Bektasi order to date. It is clearly written and well documented.
Clayer, Nathalie. L’Albanie, pays des Dervcshes: Analyse due rayonnement des ordres msytiques musulmans en Albanie a l’epoque postottomane, 1912-1967. Berlin, 1990. An interesting analysis of the spread of Sufi orders in Albania in this century, including much on the Bektasis.
De Jong, Frederick. “Problems concerning the Origins of the Qizilbas in Bulgaria: Remnants of the Safaviyya?” In La Shi’a nell’Impero Ottomano. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Fondazione Leone Caetani, Rome, 15 April 1993. One of the few references to Bektasis in Bulgaria, based partly on ethnographic work conducted in the early 1980s.
Faroqhi, Suraiya. Der Bektaschi-Order in Anatolien (from the late 15th century to 1826). Vienna, 198i. An economic and social history of the Bektasi order in Anatolia, based largely on archival material. Includes maps of the location of Bektasi tekkes in Anatolia in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
Noyan, Bedri. Bektasilik Alevilik: Nedir? (Bektashism and Alevism: What are They?). Ankara, 1985. A thorough description of Bektasi beliefs and practices by a scholarly Bektasi leader in Turkey, whose father was also a high-ranked Bektasi.
Nfizhet, Sadettin. Bektafi Sairleri (Bektashi Poets). Istanbul, 1930. An anthology of selections of poets along with brief biographies. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bektasi poets are particularly well represented.
Rifat Efendi. (The Mirror of Retaliation in the Refutation of Villainies). Istanbul, 1876. The Bektasi response to a bitter attack on the order by the the Sunni Ishak Efendi in 1873.
Rexhebi, Baba. Misticizma Islame dhe Bektashizma (Islamic Mysticism and Bektashism). New York, 1972. A contextualization of mysticism in Islam, and Bektashism in Islamic mysticism by the baba of the Bektasi tekke in Michigan. Includes biographies and poetry of otherwise inaccessible Balkan Bektasis.
Trix, Frances. Spiritual Discourse: Learning with an Islamic Master. Philadelphia, 1993. A sociolinguistic study of learning in the Bektasi master-student relationship, based on extensive research with Baba Rexheb of the Michigan Bektasi tekke.
FRANCES TRIX

BAZARGAN, MEHDI

Batoota — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:39:43 +0000

BAZARGAN, MEHDI (1 September 1907 – 20 January 1995), Iranian Muslim modernist and reformer, regarded as one of the major voices of Islamic opposition in the pre- and postrevolutionary eras. Mehdi Bazargan was born into a religious family of bazaar merchants. His elementary and secondary education in Tehran combined traditional Qur’anic learning with a modern curriculum. In 1928 he was one of the few students chosen by the government to study abroad. He studied engineering at the Ecole Centrale in Paris, returning to Iran in 1935 after receiving his doctorate. After a year of military service, he worked at the National Bank and joined the engineering faculty of Tehran University. Later in the 1930s he began a lifelong collaboration with Sayyid Mahmud Taleqani, one of the leading oppositionist clergy, spreading the message of progressive Islam. In 1939 he was imprisoned for opposing the shah’s religious policies. Since 1941, Bazargan has been instrumental in establishing various professional Islamic organizations, including Muslim student associations and the Association of Engineers.
As an ardent nationalist Bazargan was also drawn to Mohammad Mossadegh’s nationalist cause. After World War II he collaborated with Mossadegh and the National Front. Known for his honesty and integrity, he was named deputy minister in 1951, heading a committee that supervised the nationalization of Iranian oil. Subsequently he became the first chairman of the board of directors of the National Iranian Oil Company.
After the downfall of Mossadegh in the CIA-backed coup d’etat of 1953, he joined the nationalist resistance movement, Nahzat-i Muqavamat-i Milli (NMR). The NMR was crushed in 1957 and many of its leaders, including Bazargan, were imprisoned. In 1961, with Ayatollah Taleqani and Yadollah Sahabi, he founded the Liberation Movement of Iran (LMI), which called for an end to foreign domination and the restoration of constitutional and democratic rights. Their political activities brought all three men prison terms. Between 1963 and 1977, Bazargan was sentenced to several short prison terms for his political activities.
In the 1950s and 1960s Bazargan also collaborated with Ayatollah Murtaza Mutahhari, another prominent cleric, by contributing to the monthly Religious Society Lectures. Mutahhari, Taleqani, and Bazargan were among the founders of the Islamic Association of Teachers and organized its first and second national congresses.
Shortly before the emergence of massive anti shah political activism in the late 1970s, Bazargan co-founded the Human Rights Association in 1977 to defend the democratic rights of the opposition. Bazargan also played an active role in the revolution that toppled the shah, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sent him to organize the oil workers’ strikes in mid-1978. In February 1979 Khomeini appointed him as the first prime minister of the provisional government, but in November of that year he resigned complaining of powerlessness and multiple centers of power and more specifically over the seizure of the American embassy on 4 November 1979. Bazargan was also a member of the Council of the Islamic Revolution and was elected to the first parliament in 198o as a representative for Tehran. In the early 1980s when the Islamic Republic launched a major assault on the opposition, Bazargan’s LMI was the only political group that escaped suppression. Although tolerated as a loyal opposition, LMI members were often imprisoned and harassed. Disillusioned with the policies of the Islamic Republic in general and the suppression of democratic rights in particular, Bazargan cofounded the Association for the Defense of the Freedom and Sovereignty of the Iranian Nation (ADFSIN) in 1984. In the early 1990s Bazargan was active in both the LMI and ADFSIN.
Throughout his political career Bazargan has attempted to reconcile Shi’i theology with the modern world and his own democratic aspirations. His politics represent a synthesis of nationalism, gradualism, liberalism, and Islam. These attributes distinguished him from the traditionalist clergy, such as Khomeini, and the radical Islamists, such as ‘Ali Shari’ati. Whereas Shari`ati’s firebrand rhetoric galvanized the youth and Khomeini articulated the resentment of the underprivileged and the traditional social groups, Bazargan’s appeal was confined to more enlightened members of the traditional middle class. By the time the revolutionary mass movement erupted, Bazargan’s political reformism was out of step with the revolutionary fervor of the masses. Bazargan’s liberalism and gradualism had a wider appeal in the 1950s when Mossadegh’s liberalism and his parliamentary method of political struggle captured the imagination of the postwar generation. But by the mid-1960’s and early 1970s, because of the radicalizing impact of such global events as the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions on Iranian youth, Bazargan’s reformist political program and his liberal rendition of Islam seemed increasingly irrelevant to them. The generation of the 1960s had no memory of Mossadegh’s liberal nationalism; rather, it was inspired by a radical vision that attributed the defeat of Mossadegh to his parliamentary method of political struggle. Some of the founding members of Mujahidin-i Khalq, a guerrilla organization that fought against the shah’s regime and the Islamic Republic, began their political careers as members of the LMI, many joining the party in 1963; by 1965, inspired by the example of armed struggle, they founded their own political party. Therefore, the moderate LMI did not greatly grow in strength throughout the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Iranian Revolution
On 4 February 1979, after the revolution forced the Shah to leave Iran, Bazargan was appointed prime minister of Iran by Ayatollah Khomeini. He was seen as one of the democratic and liberal figureheads of the revolution who came into conflict with the more radical religious leaders – including Ayatollah Khomeini himself – as the revolution progressed. Although pious, Bazargan initially disputed the name Islamic Republic, wanting an Islamic Democratic Republic. He had also been a supporter of the original (non-theocratic) revolutionary draft constitution, and opposed the Assembly of Experts for Constitution and the constitution they wrote that was eventually adopted as Iran’s constitution.
Bazargan resigned along with his cabinet on 4 November following the US Embassy takeover and hostage-taking. His resignation was considered a protest against the hostage-taking and a recognition of his government’s inability to free the hostages, but it was also clear that his hopes for liberal democracy and an accommodation with the West would not prevail.
Bazargan continued in Iranian politics as a member of the first Parliament (Majles) of the newly formed Islamic Republic. He openly opposed Iran’s Cultural Revolution and continued to advocate civil rule and democracy. In November 1982 he expressed his frustration with the direction the Islamic Revolution had taken in an open letter to the then speaker of parliament Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The government has created an atmosphere of terror, fear, revenge and national disintegration. … What has the ruling elite done in nearly four years, besides bringing death and destruction, packing the prisons and the cemeteries in every city, creating long queues, shortages, high prices, unemployment, poverty, homeless people, repetitious slogans and a dark future?
In 1985 the Council of Guardians denied Bazargan’s petition to run for president. He died of a heart attack on 20 January 1995 while traveling from Tehran to Zurich, Switzerland.
Bazargan is considered to be a respected figure within the ranks of modern Muslim thinkers, well known as a representative of liberal-democratic Islamic thought and a thinker who has emphasized the necessity of constitutional and democratic policies. He opposed the continuation of Iran-Iraq war and the involvement of clerics in all aspects of politics, economy and society. Consequently, he faced harassment from militants and young revolutionaries within Iran.
Bazargan is noted for having done some of the first work in human thermodynamics, as found in his 1946 chapter “A Physiological Analysis of Human Thermodynamics” and his 1956 book Love and Worship: Human Thermodynamics, the latter of which being written while in prison, in which he attempted to show that religion and worship are a byproduct of evolution, as explained in English naturalist Charles Darwin’s 1859 Origin of Species, and that the true laws of society are based on the laws of thermodynamics.
[See also Iranian Revolution of 1979; Liberation Movement of Iran; and the biographies of Mutahhari and Taleqdni. ]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bazargan, Mehdi. Mudafa’at dar dadgah-i ghayr-i salih-i tajdid-i nazari nizami. Tehran, 1971. Good biographical source on Bazargan’s personal life and political career.
Bazargan, Mehdi. Rah-i Tayy shudah. Houston, 1977. Reflects on the political problems of Iranian society, including the role of opposition groups under the Pahlavis, and proposes remedies to overcome them.
Bazargan, Mehdi. Bazyabi-i arzishha. Tehran, 1983. Provides an interesting perspective on the evolution of Bazargan’s Islamic modernism.
Bazargan, Mehdi. Inqilab-i Iran dar du harakat. Tehran, 1984. Analysis of the Iranian Revolution and the postrevolutionary situation, from the political perspective of the Liberation Movement of Iran. Chehabi, H. E. Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini. Ithaca, N.Y., 1990 One of the best studies available to date on Bazargan and the Liberation Movement of Iran.

BAYRAMIYE

Batoota — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:34:26 +0000

BAYRAMIYE. Established in the early fifteenth century, the Bayramiye (Ar., Bairamiyah) is a Turkish Sufi order. Its eponym, Haci Bayram Veli, was born near Ankara around the middle of the fourteenth century. In conformity with a pattern typical in Sufism, he abandoned a successful career as a teacher of the law to become a disciple of Hamiduddin Veli Aksarayi, remaining with him for at least three years until his death in 1412. Haci Bayram thereupon returned to Ankara and began, with great success, to propagate the order that became known after him. Either because of the size of his following or because of his master’s links to the Safavid order in Ardabil, which was then in the process of transition to Shiism, Haci(Haji) Bayram Veli was summoned to the Ottoman court in Edirne for interrogation by Murad I. He favorably impressed the sovereign, who not only permitted him to return to Ankara but also provided for the establishment of a Bayrami hospice in Edirne. By the time of Haci Bayram Veli’s death in 1429, the order had spread to Gelibolu, Karaman, Beypazari, Balikesir, Bursa, Larende, Bolu, Iskilip, Kiitahya, and Goynuk.
The central hospice of the Bayramiye remained that established in Ankara by Haci Bayram Veli himself, and its administration became vested in his descendants.
Nonetheless, the most important of his successors was Aksemsettin of Goynuk, a Syrian who had joined his following in 1426. Although Aksemsettin gained the favor of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror by participating in the conquest of Istanbul in 1453, he chose not to settle in the new capital, remaining in Goynuk, until his death in 1457. Aksemsettin had a number of successors, the most influential of whom were Ibrahim Tennuri (because of whose prominence one branch of the order became known as Bayramiye-Tennuriye) and Samli Hamza, active in the region of Adana. The line of Tennuri continued for at least three generations, but it was eclipsed in the seventeenth century by the Himmetiye, founded by Himmet Efendi, a descendant by initiation of Samli Hamza. The Tennuriye and the Himmetiye were classified together as Bayramiye-Semsiye because of their shared descent from Aksemsettin
In radical opposition to both stood the Bayramiye-Melamiye, going back to a certain Omer Dede Bicakci, who had disputed Aksemsettin’s succession to Haci Bayram Veli. The Bayramiye-Melamiye rejected, for the most part, all forms of dhikr (invocation of the divine name), the wearing of distinctive garb, and most of the other external appurtenances of Sufism; this line may be thought of as perpetuating antinomian tendencies that had been suppressed in the first Bayrami congregation. Its adherents followed a cult of devotion to the Twelve Imams of Shiism and cultivated an extreme interpretation of the doctrine of the unity of being (wahdat alwujud). The combination of these characteristics earned execution for several prominent representatives of the Bayramiye-Melamiye. The two varieties of the Semsiye were largely restricted to Anatolia (particularly its western regions), but the Bayramiye-Melamiye became widespread in the Balkans, especially in Bosnia, where its best known figure, Seyh Hamza Bali (executed in Istanbul in 1573) originated a branch of the order known as the Hamzevi.
Bayramis of the two Semsi lines also adhered to wahdat al-wujud, although in more circumspect fashion, and this may well have furnished the basis for an unspoken rapprochement with the Bayramiye-Melamiye during the nineteenth century. The authority of two Istanbul shaykhs, Hafiz Seyyid Ali Efendi (d. 1838) and Ibrahim Efendi (d. 1898), was accepted by all existing branches of the Bayramiye. Despite this reunification, the order failed to produce any leader of significance in early modern times, with the possible exception of Seyyid Abdiilkadir Belhi (d. 1921), an immigrant to Istanbul from Balkh in Afghanistan, who combined a Hamzevi affiliation with an inherited loyalty to the Naqsh-bandiyah. [See Naqshbandiyah.]
In 1840 the Bayramiye had only nine hospices in Istanbul, far fewer than several other Sufi orders. By 1889, the number had sunk to four; these appear still to have been functioning when in 1925 the Turkish Republic banned all the Sufi orders. By that time, the Bayramiye existed outside Istanbul only in lzmit, Kastamonu, and Ankara, where the central hospice was presided over by Semseddin Bayramoglu (d. 1945), a descendant of Haci Bayram Veli in the twenty-seventh generation. Unlike other Sufi groups, the Bayramiye was unable to survive the official proscription of the orders and the closure of its hospices. Although the subterranean cells used for retreat at the shrine of Haci Bayram Veli in Ankara are still frequented, it is primarily Naqshbandis who make use of them.
There are traces of the Bayramiye in the twentiethcentury Balkans. They were one of the orders represented in the Savez Islamskih Dervigkih Redova Alijje u SFRJ, a federation of the Sufi orders existing in Yugoslavia, established at Prizren in Kosovo in 1974. A Hamzevi hospice (led in 1986 by Abdulkadir Orlovic) survived through many generations in Zvornik, northeastern Bosnia, until the pillage of that city by Serbian forces in the spring of 1992.
[See also Sufism, articles on Sufi Thought and Practice and Sufi Orders.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ayni, Mehmed Ali. Hact Bayram Veli. Istanbul, 1343/1924. Bayramoglu, Fuat. Hact Bayram-t Veli. 2 vols. Ankara, 1983. Bayramoglu, Fuat, and Nihat Azamat. “Bayramiye.” In Tfirkiye Diya net Vakfi Islam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 5, pp. 269-273. Istanbul, 1988-. Cehajic, Dzemal. Derviski rodovi u jugoslovenskim zemljama. Sarajevo, 1986. See pages 185-204.
Golpinarli, Abdulbaki. Meldmilik ve Meldmilir. Istanbul, 1931. See pages 33-228.
Golpinarli, Abdulbaki. “Bayramiye.” In Islam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 2, pp. 423-426. Istanbul, 1943.
Kissling, Hans Joachim. “Zur Geschichte des Derwischordens der Bajramijje.” Siidost-Forschungen 15 (1956): 237-268.
HAMID ALGAR

BARELWIS

Batoota — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:22:02 +0000

BARELWIS. The Barelwi movement emerged during the 1880s in the North Indian town of Bareilly, in the Rohilkhand region of the United Provinces. The movement is so called because of its close association with the writings of Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan (1856-1921), who, as a resident of Bareilly, had the toponymic (nisbah) name “Barelwi.” Followers of Maulana Ahmad Riza, however, have always identified themselves as the Ahl al-Sunnat wa-al-jama’at or “people of the (prophetic) way and the majority (community).” The significance of this nomenclature is clear: they believe themselves to be the true representatives and heirs in South Asia of the earliest Muslim community, the companions and followers of the prophet Muhammad.
The late nineteenth-century emergence of the Barelwi movement is significant. The failure of the Indian revolt of 1857 was followed by the formal colonization of India by the British, leading to the final dissolution of the Sunni Muslim Mughal Empire. This sequence of events, traumatic from the Indian Muslim point of view, led to a period of lively religious debate among the scholars of Islamic law (the `ulama’) in North India. They could all agree that Indian Muslims had lost political power because of internal moral weakness and decay (because, in other words, they had neglected to be good Muslims), but they differed widely in their understanding of what constituted a “good” Muslim and how renewal (tajdid) and reform should proceed. The Barelwi movement emerged in this context of internal debate about identity and action deemed necessary to reverse a politically unfavorable situation.
Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan was born into a well-to-do family of Pathan origin. His ancestors had been associated with Mughal rule and had become local notables (ru’ass’) with land holdings and trading interests in and around Bareilly. Ahmad Riza’s grandfather, Maulana Riza `Ali Khan (1809-1 865/66), breaking with family tradition, devoted his life to jurisprudential (fiqh) scholarship and the Sufi way of life (tasawwuj). There is no evidence that he was involved in the 1857 revolt; the suggestion in Ahmad Riga’s biography Hayat-e a’la hazrat (1938) that Riza ‘Ali’s piety protected him from falling prey to a British punitive expedition can be variously interpreted as complicity or as covert opposition, depending on one’s perspective. Naqi `Ali Khan (1831188o), Ahmad Riza’s father, developed close ties with the nawab of Rampur, a ruling family of largely Shi’i persuasion. In scholarly terms, Ahmad Riza had a strong orientation toward the “rational” (ma`qulat) sciences, and jurisprudence. His voluminous writings, estimated by some at one thousand, consist for the most part of fatwas, decisions on specific aspects of the law delivered in response to questions posed by Muslims from all parts of the country and even outside (including the Haramayn in Arabia). The rapid growth of telecommunications and railway networks in late nineteenth-century British India facilitated the wide dissemination of Ahmad Riza’s views. Ahmad Riza and his followers were also Sufi shaykhs or pirs (masters of select circles of disciples), owing particular though not exclusive allegiance to the Qadiri order. In this capacity, Ahmad Riza enjoyed close relations with a number of prominent Qadiri Sufi families in the Rohilkhand region, particularly those of the Barakatiyah Sayyids in the rural town (qasbah) of Marahra (Etah district) and the `Uthmani pirs of Badayun. The impact of these ties on Ahmad Riza was twofold: a strong emphasis that a “good” Muslim accord primacy to the shari’ah (Islamic law) over tariqah (the Sufi path); and an insistence that being a “good” Muslim was contingent on personal devotion to the prophet Muhammad as a loving guide and intercessor between Allah and the individual through a chain of pirs ending in the living pir to whom each individual was bound by an oath of loyalty or bay’ah. Barelwi ritual practice reflected this interpretation of correct belief and practice in its emphasis on activity centered on Sufi shrines, particularly the periodic observance of the death anniversaries (`urs) of the founder of the Qadir! order, Shaykh `Abd al-Qadir Jilani Baghdad! (d. 1166) and of one’s own personal pir. The Barelwi observance of the `urs sprang from the insistence (based largely on Ahmad Riga’s interpretation of medieval fiqh works) that individual believers needed the Prophet’s intercession with Allah if they hoped for Allah’s forgiveness. Those who denied the importance of intercession on the grounds of the equality of all believers before Allah were deemed by Ahmad Riga to be guilty of arrogance. What brought the Barelwis into conflict with other Sunni Muslim reform movements of the late nineteenth century, particularly with the `ulama’ associated with the Dar al-`Ulum at Deoband, was primarily the Barelwi vision of the prophet Muhammad’s attributes. These attributes included his ability to see into the future, to have knowledge of the unseen (`ilm al-ghayb), to be spiritually-and perhaps physically, if the Prophet so wished-present in many places simultaneously, and to be invested with Allah’s preeminent light. Ahmad Riza argued on the basis of certain verses of the Qur’an, as well as hadith and fiqh scholarship, that the prophet Muhammad had been invested with these and other qualities by God, with whom his relationship was that of a beloved. Denial of these prophetic attributes was interpreted by Ahmad Riza as denial of some of the “fundamentals of the faith” (daruriyat al-din). These fundamentals, which fall under the rubric of ‘aqa’id (articles of faith), broadly interpreted, were indivisible: one could not accept some and reject others, as some `ulama’ in his view had done, for denial of even one of these fundamentals was tantamount to apostasy from Islam, or kufr (unbelief). Such denial, to Ahmad Riza’s mind, was implicit in the position taken by those he designated as “Wahhabis,” a term he applied variously to Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi (d. 1831), leader of the early nineteenth-century jihad against the Sikhs; to Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. 1898), the founder of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh; and to various Deobandi `ulama’ of his own time. In Husam alharamayn, a fatwa written in I 9o6, he specifically designated a handful of Deobandi `ulama’ as “Wahhabis” [See Deobandis and the biographies of Ahmad Khan and Barelwi. ] During Ahmad Riza’s lifetime, the Barelwi movement centered on a small core of followers personally loyal to him. These followers, returning to their own towns after receiving khtlafat (the right to accept students of their own), carried his vision beyond the confines of learned `ulama’ circles into a wider arena. Since Ahmad Riza’s death in 1921, “Barelwi” leaders (most of them from towns other than Bareilly)–among them Maulanas Na’imuddin Muradabadi (d. 1948), Shah Aulad-i Rasul Marharvi (d. 1952), Zafaruddin Bihari (d. 1950s), Ahmad Riza’s son Mustafa Riza Khan Barelwi (d. 1981), and Burhanulhaqq Jabalpuri (d. 1984)-have led the movement in varying directions in terms of the leading political issues of twentieth-century British India, most importantly that of partition in 1947. Although the movement has been viewed as largely rural in terms of its following, it is currently in the throes of a resurgence among urban, educated Pakistanis and Indians. Schools and madrasahs identifying themselves as “Ahl al-Sunnat wa-al-Jama’at” are to be found in South Asian cities and towns including Lahore, Karachi, Bareilly, Mubarakpur, and Hyderabad (Deccan). Beyond South Asia, the movement also has followers in Great Britain and South Africa. [See also Islam, article on Islam in South Asia.] BIBLIOGRAPHY Ahmad Riza Khan. Al-`Ataya lil-nabawiyah ft al-Fatawd alRidawiyah. Vols. 1-7, 10-11. Saudagaran, Bareilly, 198i-1987. Ahmad Riza Khan. Malfuzat-i A’la Hazrat. 4 vols. Gujarat, Pakistan, n.d. Metcalf, Barbara D. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900. Princeton, 1982. See pages 296-314. Sanyal, Usha. “In the Path of the Prophet: Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and the Ahl-e Sunnat wa Jama’at Movement in British India, c. 1870-1921.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1990. Zafaruddln Bihari. Hayat-i A’la Hazrat. Vol. 1. Karachi, 1938.
USHA SANYAL

BARELWI SAYYID AHMAD

Batoota — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:13:38 +0000

SAYYID AHMAD BARELWI SHAHEED, (1786-1831), North Indian activist and leader of jihad. Born in Rai Bareilly in the old Mughal province of Awadh in north India, this dynamic visionary died in battle on the mountainous frontier of the Northwest. Three strands of experience in his life came together in this utopian military endeavor. First, he was born into a family of sayyids, known for their piety and learning but, like many of the educated and well-born, now impoverished and frustrated in finding employment in a princely court. Second, in Delhi from 18o6 to 1811, he entered into the circle of the family of Shah Wali Allah with its program of the dissemination of scripturalist norms. Third, at about the age of twenty-five, he left Delhi to spend some seven years as a cavalryman for Amir Khan (1768-1834) in central India, immersing himself in the world of local state-building so characteristic of this period.

Back in Delhi, Sayyid Ahmad rejoined the reformist `ulama’ but rapidly distinguished himself by more far reaching and stringent reform, for example in opposing certain Sufi practices and enjoining such aspects of family behavior as the remarriage of widows. His teachings were written down in two works, the Sirat e mustaqim, compiled by Maulana Muhammad Isma’il, and the Taqwiyat al-iman; both circulated in the vernacular language of Urdu thanks to the newly available lithographic press. The texts identified practices derived from false Sufism, Shi’i doctrine, and local customs; these were said to compromise God’s unity (tawhid). It is notable that Sufism as such was not opposed (as it was by the Wahhabis in Arabia and the Fara’izi [Fara’idi] in Bengal); it is also noteworthy that reformers rarely attributed deviations to Hindu influence, but rather blamed Muslims themselves.
With a small group of followers, Sayyid Ahmad toured northern India in 1818-1819. In 1821 he undertook the hajj as a prelude to jihad, traveling downriver to Calcutta, preaching, and collecting a band of some six hundred for a journey whose very practice had long been neglected. In 1823 he returned to Rai Bareilly where he spent two years teaching and preparing for jihad.
His followers regarded him as the mujaddid of the age; some considered him the Mahdi. They were prepared to abjure customs that had defined and given honor to personal and family status; many were prepared to leave their homes and even to die. The model for jihad, while seen as following Prophetic precedent, took its shape from the quest for new states in the post-Mughal period.
In 1826 Sayyid Ahmad left for the frontier, an area of Muslim population as precedent required, to launch warfare on the Punjab, then under Sikh rule. Although he was called amirulmu’minin (Ar., amir al-mu’minin; “commander of the faithful”) by his followers, many of the local tribes disliked the reforms of the mujahidin and had their own quarrels to prosecute. Sayyid Ahmad was trapped in Balakot with some six hundred followers and killed in 1831. Many cherished the idea that he was still alive because his body was not found. Followers kept the embers of the jihad alive until the 1860s; Sayyid Ahmad’s example and teachings inspired reformers long after his death.
[See also Islam, article on Islam in South Asia; Messianism. ]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahmad, Mohiuddin. Saiyid Ahmad Shahid: His Life and Mission. Lucknow, 1975. A detailed biography that also provides information on both primary and secondary sources available in Urdu and Persian.
Hardy, Peter. best overall religious movements.
Metcalf, Barbara D. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900. Princeton, 1982. Although focusing on a later Islamic movement of the colonial period, also provides material on the first half of the nineteenth century as background.
Muhammad Isma’il. “Translation of the Takwiyat-ul-Iman, preceded by a Notice of the Author, Maulavi Isma’il Hajji.” Translated by Mir Shahamat Ali in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 13 (1832): 479-498. An influential tract of Sayyid Ahmad’s movement. Muhammad Isma 11. “Notice of the Peculiar Tenets Held by the Followers of Syed Ahmad, Taken Chiefly from the `Sirat-ul-Mustaqim,’ a Principal Treatise of that Sect, Written by Moulavi Mahommed Isma’il.” Translated by J. R. C. The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 1 (1832): 479-498.
The Muslims of British India. Cambridge, 1972. The survey, providing a good context for this and other
BARBARA D. METCALF

BANNA’, HASAN AL

Batoota — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:11:20 +0000

HASAN AL BANNA (1906-1949), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and author of Majmu’at al-rasa’il (Letters) and Mudhakkirat al-da`wah wa-al-da` iyah (Memories of the Message and the Messenger). Born in Mahmudiyah near Alexandria, Egypt, Banna’, from his youth onward, took part in the Hasafiyah Sufi brotherhood with his friend Ahmad al-Sukkari. After attending the Damanhur teachers’ training college from 1923 to 1927, he went to the Dar al-`Ulum in Cairo, founded by Muhammad `Abduh (d. 19o5) and made famous by Muhammad Rashid Rida, who taught there until his death in 1935. By his own account, Banna’ read Spengler, Spencer, and Toynbee while a student there. In September 1927, he began teaching primary school in Isma’iliyah. There, he continued to be a correspondent of the Cairo Muslim Youth magazine Al fath (The Beginning) and pursued his relationship with Rida’s Maktabah Salafiyah (Fundamentalist Library) group and with his scholarly journal Al-mandr (The Lighthouse), which Banna’ took over from 1939 to 1941.

Political Activities. In Isma’iliyah in March 1928, Banna’ and six friends founded a “religious association devoted to the promotion of good and the rooting-out of evil,” a branch of the Hasafiyah (perhaps until 1933). By 1929, the organization was already being referred to as the “Muslim Brotherhood” (Jam’iyat al-Ikhwan alMuslimun) in the semi-official Al-ahram newspaper, where a photograph of the group was shown. Banna’ received donations, in particular five hundred books from the Suez Canal Company, which had its headquarters in Isma’iliyah, and he obtained permission to build offices and a mosque for the Muslim Brotherhood. The growth of the movement, which moved its base to Cairo in 1933, was rapid, numbering four branches in 1929, fifteen in 1932, three hundred in 1938, and eventually two thousand branches in 1948, according to its own journals. In 1945, Banna’ made mention of a half million “active members” in Egypt. There were also branches in Palestine, Sudan, Iraq, and Syria beginning in the period of 1946 to 1948. By 1930, the organization of the movement had been established by Banna’, and it was publicized in 1933, confirmed at the Third Congress in 1935, and codified in a “Fundamental Law” at the Eighth Congress in 1945. Banna’ was the author of the law, which conferred absolute personal authority on him. The “oath of obedience” of the active member, according to this law, stipulates “absolute trust in the leader and total obedience in all circumstances, good or ill.
In 1933, Banna’ transformed the Muslim Brotherhood into a political movement, excluding nonpolitical elements, but he kept the title of murshid (“guide”). He chose from twelve to twenty members to be his personal assistants, who made up the organization’s governing body. Decisions made by the executive committee required unanimity, and Banna’ alone had final decision making power. Parallel to the organization defined by these statutes was a Special Organization (al-Tanzim al-Khass), referred to outside of the brotherhood as a “secret organization” or “military machine.” This body answered directly to Banna’s authority at first, but perhaps as early as 1938 it was controlled by Salih `Ashmawi, an activist who became increasingly autonomous and who was even to maintain contact with the 1939 secessionist group Muhammadan Youth (Shabab Muhammad) whose journal Al-nadhir (The Warner) belonged to him. The armed units of this Special Organization demonstrated their ability and their stock of weaponry when they took part in the Arab revolt in Palestine in 1936, and later in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949
From 1944 to 1948, the armed units of the Muslim Brotherhood were the same as the Secret Organization of the Free Officers commanded by Gamal Abdel Nasser within the army, according to the account of Hasan al-`Ashmawi in Al-ikhwan wa-al-thawrah (The Brotherhood and the Revolution, Cairo, 1977). Anwar el-Sadat met Banna’ in 1940, and Nasser and Banna’ had contact in 1944, thanks to Sadat and to the Free Officer Muslim Brother Kamal al-Din Husayn. In 1948, the two secret armed organizations of the Muslim Brothers and the Free Officers separated, but they continued to cooperate. Banna’s “Letter of Teachings” (c. 1943) explicitly addresses the “fighting” brothers, ranked fourth after the assistant brothers, the affiliated brothers, and the active brothers.
All developments in Egypt, especially from 1940 to 1952, were necessarily affected, in one way or another, by Banna’, who was wooed by the government from 1933 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1948. Between 1941 and 1945, and from 1948 until his assassination in February 1949, he was active in the underground movement. In order to explain this success of the “idea,” as Banna’ called it, one must take into account the fact that after the euphoria in Egypt of the 1920s, the 1930s were marked by deep disappointment. The formal independence of Egypt that was declared in 1922 and the 1923 constitution were both attributable to the Wafd party, a popular movement born in 1919 during nationalist demonstrations and riots; both were eroded by the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty that confirmed Egyptian dependence. From that time onward, the Wafd party increasingly lost its credibility and popularity. The enthronement of the young King Faruq in 1937 gave Banna’ the opportunity to acclaim him enthusiastically, in hopes of being able to manage him and to replace the Wafd party with the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1939, Banna’ stated that he was both separate from and yet close to the Muslim Youth and Young Egypt (Misr al-Fatah; the future Socialist party), from which Nasser and several Free Officers were later to emerge. During these years he was courted by King Faruq as well as Mustafa al-Maraghi, head of the Islamic university al-Azhar, who wished him to compete with parliament and the political parties, especially the Wafd party.
World War II brought about further internal conflicts. In addition to Egyptian neutrality as provided for in the 1936 treaty, in 1942 Great Britain demanded general support for the Wafdist government that it had installed in February of that year. The Wafd party found itself discredited by Egyptian political public opinion and was harshly criticized by the Muslim Brotherhood. Banna’, who was a personal friend of the respected Arab Muslim nationalist `Aziz al-Misri, like all the members of the Egyptian nationalist movement, felt sympathies for the Nazis and fascists, Britain’s enemies. However, his politics were inconsistent, and he was criticized by the political parties on that account. At the beginning of the war, he relied on the support of King Faruq and his prime minister `Ali Mahir. When the king was forced to submit to British authority in 1941-1942, Banna’ found himself harassed and even incarcerated briefly in Cairo in 1941, and again in 1945. This did not, however, prevent him from maintaining close contact during these years with the government. During the 1930s and 1940s, he founded Muslim schools and started a publishing house, which put out the newspaper Al-ikhwan al-muslimun from 1933 to 1938 and from 1942 to December 1948, as well as the weekly Al-ta’aruf (Knowledge) from 1940 to 1942. In addition, it published Almanar, inherited from Rashid Rida, from 1939 to 1941. In these publications, Banna’ argued against the Christian schools of the missionaries.
In his letter to the Fifth Congress of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1939, Banna’ was already advising the king to dissolve the parties and to form a “People’s Union” that would “work for the good of the nation in conformity with the principles of Islam.” In 1945, he again made this suggestion and refused to join with the Wafd party as his friend Sukkari had suggested. Sukkar-1 then broke with him and censured him for his nepotism, particularly for enriching his uncle `Abidin. Sukkari left the Muslim Brotherhood in 1947. Rather than coinciding precisely with the Muslim Brotherhood, the People’s Union was to form its own nucleus. Banna’ reassured the king and the British that there was no threat of military action by the Muslim Brotherhood against the government.
Banna’s movement, which had weakened in the 1940s, faltered. He withdrew from the 1943 elections in favor of the Wafd party, and having lost the king’s support, suffered an outright defeat in the 1945 elections. Nevertheless, in 1946 the Muslim Brotherhood’s militia (scouts and the Special Organization) served to back up demonstrations in favor of the king against the “blue shirts” of the Wafd and even against the “green shirts” of Young Egypt. In the same year, the Muslim Brotherhood organized student demonstrations and independent workers’ strikes.
A crisis with the government developed in 1948, after Banna’ tried in vain, apparently with secret help from the British embassy, to regain the favor of the king and Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha, who were unpopular.
The volunteer units of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestine-Israel war of 1947-1948 were compelled to become part of the Egyptian army and to observe the ceasefire against their will. Although Banna’ submitted, not all of the fighting members of the Muslim Brotherhood followed him. They kept their weapons, and under the leadership of Shaykh Faraghli they withdrew to the Suez Canal until 1952, with the intention of guerrilla warfare against the British. Faced with the Wafd party and the Socialist party (formerly Young Egypt) in 1948, Banna’ even allied himself with the Communist groups, participating in demonstrations and writing tracts against the British and the government, but not the king.
The assassination on 22 March 1948 of a judge by a young Muslim Brother seems to have been completely independent of Banna’s authority. In November 1948, a large student demonstration of brotherhood members ended in the death of two British officers, and a jeep loaded with explosives and weapons on its way to brotherhood members was intercepted in Cairo. A military decree dissolved the Muslim Brotherhood on 6 December 1948. On 28 December, Prime Minister Nuqrashi, who had issued the decree, was assassinated by a student affiliated with the brotherhood. Banna’ denied responsibility for any of these actions in three papers that were only printed after his death. These were: Al-qawl al -fasl (The Conclusive Word), Al-bayan (Declaration), and Laysu ikhwdnan wa-laysu mushmin (They Are Neither Brothers Nor Muslims). The secret police assassinated Banna’ in the street on 12 February 1949. The funeral ceremonies took place under heavy military escort and without a procession. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood was regarded as a martyr, and a 1951 trial found him innocent of the criminal actions of 1948.
Replacing Banna’ was to prove difficult, for the movement, still secret in 1951, was moving in three different directions. One school of thought, that of the Banna’ family (expressed in Banna’s son-in-law Said Ramadan’s journal, Al-muslimun), was moderate and loyal to the reformist wait-and-see policy of the majority of Banna’s writings. Another more activist and combative group was led by Salih `Ashmawi, who was Banna’s de facto successor in the underground movement and who in 1951 started the publication Al-da’wah (The Call). The third branch saw itself as moderate and was led by Shaykh Baquri (a future minister in Nasser’s government) and Kamal al-Din Husayn, the Free Officer. The new guide of the Muslim Brothers, Hasan al-Hudaybi, appointed in 1951 after the relegalization of the movement, represented the moderate tendency.
Sayyid Qutb, who officially rejoined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1951, was to inspire extremist groups from the 1970s to the 1990s. The ideologue of the Islamic Jihad Organization, Muhammad `Abd al-Salam Faraj, in his 1981 tract The Missing Precept (Al faridah al-ghaybah), deemed Banna’ and the Muslim Brotherhood to have compromised with “the pagan power” and become an enemy of the “minority of activist believers.” However, the brotherhood’s traditional adversaries mistakenly believed that violent extremism was contained in letters written by Banna’ himself, in particular the “Letter of the Jihad” and the “Letter of Teachings,” and that his disavowal of the 1948 crimes was only tactical. Nasser and his associates, who were at first respectful of Banna’ and his memory, after 1954 wrongfully imputed the 1945 assassination of Prime Minister Ahmad Mahir to him. The beliefs held about Banna’ and his movement by Nasser and his circle were often echoed in general works on contemporary Egypt.
Ideas and Philosophy. Two main themes dominate Banna’s doctrine, aside from his traditional dogmatic beliefs concerning faith in a single God and in his book as revealed to the Prophet. Four terms dominated his discourse-nation, state, social justice, and society. If we add the qualifier “Islamic” to these four terms, we will have characterized Banna’s “idea,” the key to which is the view of Islam as a comprehensive system of life. According to Banna’, it was this conviction, this intimate and illuminating discovery in the face of Western intrusions, which specifically defined the Muslim Brotherhood as an active political movement. The slogans that the Muslim Brotherhood took up from Banna’ were: “The Qur’an is our Constitution,” “No other Constitution but the Qur’an,” and “The Qur’an is our Law and Muhammad is our model.” And yet, an analysis of existing trends in the Islamic world shows Banna’ as accommodating and much more “westernized” than he would have acknowledged.
Banna’ rejected the movement for secularization begun in the nineteenth century, and also the secular Arab nationalism mapped out by Sati` al-Husri (d. 1968) in the 1920s and systematized by Michel `Aflaq (d. 1989) in Damascus in the 1940s. `Aflaq launched the secret Arab Bath (“Renaissance”) party in 1941 and founded it publicly in 1947, explaining that “Islam is the soul; Arabism is the body.” For Banna’, however, “The Arabs are the backbone of Islam, and its guardians. The Muslim Brotherhood speaks about Arabism in the same terms as the Prophet. In effect, just as Islam is a faith and a religion, it is also a country and a citizenship that erases differences of background between men: `The faithful are brothers.’ Thus Islam knows no geographical frontiers, nor `racial or civic differentiations’ ” (“Letter to the Fifth Congress”). Banna’ considered all Muslims to exist in a sole ummah (nation-community) and felt that the Muslim country is one country, no matter how physically distant its provinces might be. He did not hesitate to condemn expressly modern nationalism, especially European fascism or Nazism.
On the subject of war, or “combat for God,” Banna’s texts do not demonstrate that he preached terrorist violence. However, he asserted that war was an obligation at the time that Egyptians faced British colonial power. He interpreted the jihad tradition by making it a present-day individual obligation (fard `ayn) for all, rather than a collective obligation (fard kifayah) in which some could represent the whole. To the “fighting” brothers, the elite that was militarily trained and armed, Banna’ explained the stages of combat, especially that to which those who are part of the “first rank,” the Special Organization, are normally called. The fact that they went to fight in Palestine and then, against Banna’s decision, in the Suez Canal Zone against the British, was according to “the engagement that the first line of Muslim Brothers undertook on the 5 Rabi’ al-Awwal 1359 [13 April 1940]” (“Letter of Teachings”).
Finally, Banna’ advocated certain major principles of Islamic social justice. These were to be expanded on and specified, in the 1950s, by the socialist-leaning branch of Banna’s disciples. This group included Qutb, Muhammad al-Ghazali, `Abd al-Qadir `Awdah, and especially the Syrian Mustafa Siba`i, who were part of the pro-Nasser segment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1952-1953 and later. Banna’ envisioned a radical Islamic reform of the Egyptian economic and social situation. Out of zakat (“alms”), one of the pillars of Islam, Banna’ constructed a rigorous fiscal system: “Islam consecrates the zakdt entirely to social expenses. This is used to help the insolvent and the destitute, which all the best sentiments in the world could not do. Thus we must at all costs attend to establishing social taxes by stages, taking into account wealth and not profits. The poor, naturally, will be exempt. Taxes will only be levied on the rich, and will be used to raise the standard of living” (“Letter on Our Problems in Light of the Islamic System”). Banna’ also rejected the modern system of interest in banking, and he condemned bonds (at a fixed interest rate) but not stock dividends. He was firmly opposed to speculative interest, which he called ribs (usury).
An Islamic society will thus be a society of social justice, said Banna’, not through righteous thinking and good works alone, but through institutions, the intervention of the state, and taxes on income and wealth, including progressive taxation. This interpretation is not explicitly traditional; it reflects a modernist and quasi socialist reading of the Qur’an and the hadiths. But this theoretical reflection was the product of the daily concrete experience of a man of the people who traversed Egypt for almost twenty years, and who knew his countrymen better than many liberal or Marxist Egyptian intellectuals. We have as evidence this extract from a text serving as the Muslim Brotherhood’s political program in 1943: “Remember, brothers, that more than 6o percent of Egyptians live in conditions worse than those in which animals live; they can only get their food by breaking their backs. Egypt is threatened with deadly famine, exposed to economic problems which have no solutions except through God” (“Letter on From Yesterday to Today”).
As to Islamic criminal law, in particular the hudud (Qur’anically prescribed penalties), Banna’ advocated its application only on the condition that an Islamic society with social justice was established, with appropriate legal interpretations required by present and future situations. The Muslim Brothers of the 1980s, in particular in Sudan, were disloyal to Banna’ in this regard and inverted his priorities. However, it is true that Banna’ wanted to see the implementation of all the Qur’anic laws in the proper circumstances.
[See also Egypt; and Muslim Brotherhood.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carre, Olivier, and Gerard Michaud. Les Freres Musulmans, 19281982. Paris, 1983.
Delanoue, Gilbert. “Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 3, pp. 1068-1071. Leiden, 1960-.
Harris, Christina. Nationalism and Revolution in Egypt: The Role of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Hague, 1964. Informative, in particular on the connections between al-Banna’ and the Free Officers. Husayni, Ishaq Musa al-. The Moslem Brethren. Beirut, 1956. Detailed information on Banna’ and his relations and actions throughout the Arab East.
Imam, `Abd Allah. `Abd al-Nasir wa-al-Ikhwan (Nasser and the Brethren). Cairo, 1981. Well-documented, pro-Nasserist view.

BAKKA’I AL-KUNTI, AHMAD AL

Batoota — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 07:04:13 +0000

BAKKA’I AL-KUNTI, AHMAD AL- (c. 1803-1865), Sudanese religious and political leader. Ahmad al-Bakka’i inherited the religious and economic influence of the Kunta confederation in the Timbuktu region of the West African Sudan in the years 1847-1865 and was titular head of the Qadiriyah tariqah in West Africa during that period. He was a grandson of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (d. 1811), patriarch of the Kunta Awlad Sidi al-Wafi to whom most strains of the Qadiriyah in West Africa are traced. He worked closely with his elder brother, Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Saghir ibn Sidi Muhammad, who succeeded at his father’s death in 1824 as principal shaykh of the Kunta until his own death in 1847. During this period the autonomy of Timbuktu and environs came under threat from the Masina mujahid Ahmad Lobbo, whose forces were initially welcomed in Timbuktu in 1824 as a counter to the Tuareg extractions of tribute that were blamed for a half-century decline in the city’s fortunes. A revolt by the urban elite of Timbuktu in 1833 set the stage for a thirty-year effort by Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Saghir and then Ahmad al-Bakka’i to negotiate the city’s autonomy with the Masina rulers. In the 1850s al-Bakka’i initially sought the support of al-Hajj `Umar Tal, whose jihad eclipsed Masina in 186o, but thereafter he directed a coalition of Kunta, Tuareg, and Fulbe forces that took control of the city while launching a general offensive against `Umar’s control over Masina. This warfare led to the deaths of both al-Hajj `Umar (in 1864) and Ahmad al-Bakka’i in 1865.
Ahmad al-Bakkai’s career and voluminous correspondence focus upon his efforts to assert Kunta control over the Timbuktu region, his objections to efforts in Masina to restrict the sale and use of tobacco (not unconnected to Kunta commercial interests), and his mounting antipathy toward the Tijanlyah and its adherents. Al-Bakka’i visited Sokoto before 1837 while al-Hajj `Umar was in residence there. Correspondence between al-Bakka’i and the Tijani reformer a decade later gives no indication of the virulent attacks against al-Hajj `Umar and the Tijanlyah that were to come, despite contemporaneous heated debate between al-Bakka’! and the Masina Tijani leader, `Umar’s disciple al-Mukhtar ibn Yirkoy Talfi. From the early 1850s until his death, however, al-Bakka’s correspondence reveals a growing hostility toward the Tijaniyah that led him to write to `ulama’ in Marrakesh warning of the dangers posed by the tariqah. At the same time, an issue that set al-Bakka’i at odds with the Masina authorities was the hospitality he offered the explorer Heinrich Barth, who visited Timbuktu in 1853. The event marked both the nadir of al-Bakka’s formerly cordial relations with Masina’s ruler Ahmadu III and the beginning of his efforts, which continued to 186o, to attract British assistance against the French advance (and control over commerce) in the central Sahara. Al-Bakkd’s defense of his hospitality for the Christian traveler reveals his sophisticated grasp of contemporary Mediterranean and European politics and his self-appointed role as a representative of both Ottoman and Moroccan authority in the region.
Ahmad al-Bakkais correspondence provides a rare, detailed glimpse into political and religious thought in the West African Sudan relating to three overriding concerns in the mid-nineteenth century: the nature of the imamate/caliphate in Sahelian and Sudanese communities; the problem of coming to terms with encroaching Christian powers; and the growing politicization of tariqah affiliation. The nature of the imamate had long preoccupied southern Saharan savants in the zdwiyah tradition out of which al-Bakka’i arose. Two positions had emerged by the early nineteenth century. One legitimated the acquisition of authority by force in times of fitnah (conflict, by which Saharan society, in the absence of a state, defined itself). The second, which was earlier argued by al-Bakka’!’s father, was that a sovereign is only an agent of corruption on earth, and that to seek the authority of the imamate is to challenge the established powers ordained by God. Al-Bakka’i used the latter argument to question the legitimacy first of the Masina jihad and then of al-Hajj `Umar’s movement, pointing up the fact that religious suzerainty in the region was owed to the `Alawi sultan in Morocco and/or the Ottoman sultan, because that was the largest Islamic polity of the time. The imam, he argued, must be a descendant of Quraysh Arabs in any event, and Fulani claims to this title represented innovation (bid’ah). In advice he ignored during the last three years of his life, al-Bakka’i summarized this position in his reply to Muhammad Bello’s suggestion that the Kunta shaykh declare a jihad himself. Al-Bakka’i warned, “jihad . . . leads to kingship, and kingship to oppression, and our condition as it is now is better for us than jihad, and safe from the error to which it leads” (Robinson, 1985, p. 305).
European visitors to the Muslim communities of the West African Sudan from the 1820s, growing European commercial interests along the West African coast by mid-century, and French colonial ventures in Algeria posed new religious and economic issues for West Africa’s Islamic leaders. For al-Bakka’i, Barth’s visit crystallized these issues. His response was to assert himself as an enlightened defender of Christians and Jews as people of the book, against his less informed critics who sought scriptural justification for detaining them. In correspondence with Ahmadu III of Masina he argued that since the only enemy of the Muslim peoples at the time was Russia (the Crimean War had just begun), Barth, a German under English sponsorship, could not be detained but rather deserved aman (safe passage).
Al-Bakka’s hostility toward the Tijaniyah tariqah was closely linked to the political implications of al-Hajj `Umar Tal’s movement. It was a threat to the longstanding Kunta religious hegemony symbolized by the Qadiriyah, and al-Bakka’i was further scandalized by the authority granted to persons from the lower classes in the `Umarian state. Al-Bakka’i increased his attacks on the Tijaniyah during the 1850s, and by the time he was leading armed attacks on the `Umarian forces he was labeling Tijanis as infidels and atheists (zandaq). This confrontation effectively marks the beginning of a politicization of tariqah affiliation in the Western Sudan that was to gain even greater momentum in the years following his death.
Ahmad al-Bakka’i was one of the last principal Muslim spokesmen in the Western Sudan in the precolonial era for an accommodationist stance vis-a-vis the threatening Christian European presence and, until the last years of his life, an exponent of noninvolvement in temporal matters. He was also the last of the great Kunta shaykhs, whose prestige and religious influence were interwoven with the Qadiriyah and the economic fortunes of the Timbuktu region. His significance lies in his wide range and voluminous correspondence documenting these issues.
[See also Mauritania; Qadiriyah; Tijaniyah; and the biography of `Umar Tal.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ba, Amadou Hampate, and Jacques Daget. L’empire Peul de Macina. Mouton, 1962. Provides oral tradition of al-Bakkai’s career as it touched on Masina politics after 1848.
Robinson, David. The Holy War of Umar Tal. Oxford and New York, 1985. By far the best account of al-Hajj `Umar’s movement and alBakka’i’s career from an `Umarian perspective.
Saad, Elias N. A Social History of Timbuctu. Cambridge and New York, 1983. Surveys al-BakkaTs career from the perspective of Timbuktu history.
Zebadia, Abdel kader. “The Career of Ahmed al-Bakkay.” Revue d’Histoire Maghrebine 3 (1975): 75-83. Summarizes his 1974 University of London Ph.D. thesis, which is the most thorough compilation of al-Bakk ai’s correspondence to date.
CHARLES C. STEWART