Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) is an independent, non-profit research institution and a major int... more Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) is an independent, non-profit research institution and a major international centre in policy-oriented and applied development research. Focus is on development and human rights issues and on international conditions that affect such issues. The geographical focus is Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern and Central Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. CMI combines applied and theoretical research. CMI research intends to assist policy formulation, improve the basis for decision-making and promote public debate on international development issues.
L’objet, au sens le plus concret, de ce numéro, est le papier en tant que surface matérielle d’ex... more L’objet, au sens le plus concret, de ce numéro, est le papier en tant que surface matérielle d’expression et d’impression. Il s’agit de questionner les interactions produites entre les messages textuels et leur forme, par la mise en page, les styles d’écritures, les figurations. Des mains de l’artisan à celles du chercheur, la lettre, le document d’identité ou le Coran personnel se sont chargés de la mémoire et de l’expérience de nombreux intermédiaires. Croisé avec l’étude textuelle des documents, l’objet écrit peut mettre en lumière des messages contradictoires, des sous-textes et des histoires qui seraient restés silencieux autrement. La prise en compte du matériau de l’écrit questionne le rôle de l’artefact scripturaire dans des sociétés largement orales, et son analyse rend leur voix à de nombreux acteurs présents et passés en Afrique. Fruit d’une collaboration scientifique entre l’Institut des Mondes Africains à Paris et le Centre for Middle Eastern Studies de l’Université de ...
The failure to promote a balanced, more historical understanding of Africa does a great disservic... more The failure to promote a balanced, more historical understanding of Africa does a great disservice to both Africans and to History as a subject. Historians of precolonial Africa use a much richer range of sources than most historians of Europe or North America, and almost all modern historians. Instead of being limited to written sources (documents, books, speeches), or film footage for the 20th century, they draw on anthropology, art, linguistics, music and religious practice to understand the past. The breadth and diversity of sources and disciplines that scholars use form a great way to introduce students, even very young ones, to the craft and wonder of history. 1
it is stated that "there existed between [the two] a strong bond and connection, even though the ... more it is stated that "there existed between [the two] a strong bond and connection, even though the two never met in their lives".
Islamic Sufi Networks in the Western Indian Ocean (c.1880-1940), 2014
This chapter addresses something more fleeting but also the most concrete aspect of reformist tho... more This chapter addresses something more fleeting but also the most concrete aspect of reformist thought: its words. It also discusses the fabric underpinning the networks formed by travel, trade and teacher-scholar relationships; the printed books, manuscripts, large and small, texts and commentaries that were part of the making of Sufi reformism in the western Indian Ocean. The chapter also addresses text in the most concrete terms. It discusses What books were being circulated, and who owned them? In many ways, these questions echo those of the German orientalist C.H. Becker, who in 1911 asked: "What books come into the hands of local mwalimus and so exercise a direct influence on the intellectual life of our colony? The chapter analyses the diffusion of text in the Western Indian Ocean in a related manner; along lines of integration versus diversification, or, in an alternative terminology; globalization and localization.Keywords: Arabic language; Coastal East Africa; Mecca; Sufi reformism; western Indian Ocean
Islamic Sufi Networks in the Western Indian Ocean (c.1880-1940), 2014
The immediate family history of Ṣāhib al-Ṭuyūr illustrates a pattern of migration starting in the... more The immediate family history of Ṣāhib al-Ṭuyūr illustrates a pattern of migration starting in the seventeenth century that was to expand the Jamal al-Layl family- and religious networks southwards from the Swahili coast, via the Comoro Islands to Madagascar and Mozambique. By the nineteenth century, reformist impulses were to be transmitted along the same routes, generating a geography of reform that was both multi-local and interconnected. This chapter outlines simultaneous events in time, to establish an outline of the geography of Islamic intellectual exchange in the southwestern Indian Ocean in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It navigates a set of simultaneous sunrises across the southwestern Indian Ocean. The imagery of light (and implicitly, the sun) is a central one in Islamic literature in general, where light is connected to knowledge, religion and, ultimately, access to Paradise.Keywords: Islamic literature; Luminescent Sun; Madagascar; Mecca; Sufism
... Hafiz Zakariyya locates the analysis more directly in the Malay context and focuses on one of... more ... Hafiz Zakariyya locates the analysis more directly in the Malay context and focuses on one of the key founders of al-Im¿m ... Sayyid Muhd Khairudin Aljuniedås contribution focuses on Singapore, and here, the tension between assimilation and identity maintenance is implicit in the ...
This paper discusses the interpretation of sources for Indian Ocean history, from the point of vi... more This paper discusses the interpretation of sources for Indian Ocean history, from the point of view of translocal interpretations beyond the locality of the source. The article presents three cases, all deriving from the Muslim South-Western Indian Ocean. The argument is made that the ambiguity of the sources, and the interrelationship between the various locations related to the source, affect not only the historians interpretation but also the sense of the past held by people in these locations.
1. The Al Ba (Bani) Alawi 2. The Al Bin Sumayt 3. Ahmad B. Abi Bakr B. Sumayt: Childhood and Yout... more 1. The Al Ba (Bani) Alawi 2. The Al Bin Sumayt 3. Ahmad B. Abi Bakr B. Sumayt: Childhood and Youth in the Comoro Islands 4. Hadramawt Revisited. Family and Scholarly Networks Reinforced 5. Travelling Years: Zanzibar-Istanbul-Cairo-Mecca-Java-Zanzibar: 1885-1888 6. IBN Sumayt, the Alawis and the Shafti I Ulama of Zanzibar C. 1870-1925: Profile of the Learned Class: Recruitment, Training and Careers 7. Scriptural Islam in East Africa: THe Alawiyya, Arabization and the Indigenization of Islam in East Africa, 1880-1925 8. The Work of a Qadi: IBN Sumayt and the Official Roles of the Zanzibari Ulama in the British-Bu SA IDI State, C. 1890-1925 9. Educational Efforts Within the Colonial State: The Ulama and The Quest for Secular Education 10. The Death of a Generation
For centuries descendents of people from the region of Hadramawt on the southern Arabian Peninsul... more For centuries descendents of people from the region of Hadramawt on the southern Arabian Peninsula have navigated the Indian Ocean and inhabited its far-flung littorals. Engseng Ho's The Graves of Tarim offers an anthropological history of these Hadramis, in particular the ‘Alawī Sayyids, one line of the Prophet Muhammad's descendants through his daughter Fāt˙ima and cousin ‘Alī. Beginning in the graveyards of Tarim, a town in Hadramawt where some of the earliest ‘Alawī ancestors are buried, Ho describes genealogical rituals developed at the turn of the fifteenth century used to “presence” those buried there, bringing the living into contact with the dead. These practices, which Ho identifies with a complex of Sufi practices (t˙arīqa) called “the ‘Alawī Way,” took on new resonances as a Hadrami diaspora, “a society of the absent,” spread across the Indian Ocean. Its members, like the buried ‘Alawī ancestors at Tarim, required constant “revivification.” For some this was achi...
Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) is an independent, non-profit research institution and a major int... more Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) is an independent, non-profit research institution and a major international centre in policy-oriented and applied development research. Focus is on development and human rights issues and on international conditions that affect such issues. The geographical focus is Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern and Central Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. CMI combines applied and theoretical research. CMI research intends to assist policy formulation, improve the basis for decision-making and promote public debate on international development issues.
L’objet, au sens le plus concret, de ce numéro, est le papier en tant que surface matérielle d’ex... more L’objet, au sens le plus concret, de ce numéro, est le papier en tant que surface matérielle d’expression et d’impression. Il s’agit de questionner les interactions produites entre les messages textuels et leur forme, par la mise en page, les styles d’écritures, les figurations. Des mains de l’artisan à celles du chercheur, la lettre, le document d’identité ou le Coran personnel se sont chargés de la mémoire et de l’expérience de nombreux intermédiaires. Croisé avec l’étude textuelle des documents, l’objet écrit peut mettre en lumière des messages contradictoires, des sous-textes et des histoires qui seraient restés silencieux autrement. La prise en compte du matériau de l’écrit questionne le rôle de l’artefact scripturaire dans des sociétés largement orales, et son analyse rend leur voix à de nombreux acteurs présents et passés en Afrique. Fruit d’une collaboration scientifique entre l’Institut des Mondes Africains à Paris et le Centre for Middle Eastern Studies de l’Université de ...
The failure to promote a balanced, more historical understanding of Africa does a great disservic... more The failure to promote a balanced, more historical understanding of Africa does a great disservice to both Africans and to History as a subject. Historians of precolonial Africa use a much richer range of sources than most historians of Europe or North America, and almost all modern historians. Instead of being limited to written sources (documents, books, speeches), or film footage for the 20th century, they draw on anthropology, art, linguistics, music and religious practice to understand the past. The breadth and diversity of sources and disciplines that scholars use form a great way to introduce students, even very young ones, to the craft and wonder of history. 1
it is stated that "there existed between [the two] a strong bond and connection, even though the ... more it is stated that "there existed between [the two] a strong bond and connection, even though the two never met in their lives".
Islamic Sufi Networks in the Western Indian Ocean (c.1880-1940), 2014
This chapter addresses something more fleeting but also the most concrete aspect of reformist tho... more This chapter addresses something more fleeting but also the most concrete aspect of reformist thought: its words. It also discusses the fabric underpinning the networks formed by travel, trade and teacher-scholar relationships; the printed books, manuscripts, large and small, texts and commentaries that were part of the making of Sufi reformism in the western Indian Ocean. The chapter also addresses text in the most concrete terms. It discusses What books were being circulated, and who owned them? In many ways, these questions echo those of the German orientalist C.H. Becker, who in 1911 asked: "What books come into the hands of local mwalimus and so exercise a direct influence on the intellectual life of our colony? The chapter analyses the diffusion of text in the Western Indian Ocean in a related manner; along lines of integration versus diversification, or, in an alternative terminology; globalization and localization.Keywords: Arabic language; Coastal East Africa; Mecca; Sufi reformism; western Indian Ocean
Islamic Sufi Networks in the Western Indian Ocean (c.1880-1940), 2014
The immediate family history of Ṣāhib al-Ṭuyūr illustrates a pattern of migration starting in the... more The immediate family history of Ṣāhib al-Ṭuyūr illustrates a pattern of migration starting in the seventeenth century that was to expand the Jamal al-Layl family- and religious networks southwards from the Swahili coast, via the Comoro Islands to Madagascar and Mozambique. By the nineteenth century, reformist impulses were to be transmitted along the same routes, generating a geography of reform that was both multi-local and interconnected. This chapter outlines simultaneous events in time, to establish an outline of the geography of Islamic intellectual exchange in the southwestern Indian Ocean in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It navigates a set of simultaneous sunrises across the southwestern Indian Ocean. The imagery of light (and implicitly, the sun) is a central one in Islamic literature in general, where light is connected to knowledge, religion and, ultimately, access to Paradise.Keywords: Islamic literature; Luminescent Sun; Madagascar; Mecca; Sufism
... Hafiz Zakariyya locates the analysis more directly in the Malay context and focuses on one of... more ... Hafiz Zakariyya locates the analysis more directly in the Malay context and focuses on one of the key founders of al-Im¿m ... Sayyid Muhd Khairudin Aljuniedås contribution focuses on Singapore, and here, the tension between assimilation and identity maintenance is implicit in the ...
This paper discusses the interpretation of sources for Indian Ocean history, from the point of vi... more This paper discusses the interpretation of sources for Indian Ocean history, from the point of view of translocal interpretations beyond the locality of the source. The article presents three cases, all deriving from the Muslim South-Western Indian Ocean. The argument is made that the ambiguity of the sources, and the interrelationship between the various locations related to the source, affect not only the historians interpretation but also the sense of the past held by people in these locations.
1. The Al Ba (Bani) Alawi 2. The Al Bin Sumayt 3. Ahmad B. Abi Bakr B. Sumayt: Childhood and Yout... more 1. The Al Ba (Bani) Alawi 2. The Al Bin Sumayt 3. Ahmad B. Abi Bakr B. Sumayt: Childhood and Youth in the Comoro Islands 4. Hadramawt Revisited. Family and Scholarly Networks Reinforced 5. Travelling Years: Zanzibar-Istanbul-Cairo-Mecca-Java-Zanzibar: 1885-1888 6. IBN Sumayt, the Alawis and the Shafti I Ulama of Zanzibar C. 1870-1925: Profile of the Learned Class: Recruitment, Training and Careers 7. Scriptural Islam in East Africa: THe Alawiyya, Arabization and the Indigenization of Islam in East Africa, 1880-1925 8. The Work of a Qadi: IBN Sumayt and the Official Roles of the Zanzibari Ulama in the British-Bu SA IDI State, C. 1890-1925 9. Educational Efforts Within the Colonial State: The Ulama and The Quest for Secular Education 10. The Death of a Generation
For centuries descendents of people from the region of Hadramawt on the southern Arabian Peninsul... more For centuries descendents of people from the region of Hadramawt on the southern Arabian Peninsula have navigated the Indian Ocean and inhabited its far-flung littorals. Engseng Ho's The Graves of Tarim offers an anthropological history of these Hadramis, in particular the ‘Alawī Sayyids, one line of the Prophet Muhammad's descendants through his daughter Fāt˙ima and cousin ‘Alī. Beginning in the graveyards of Tarim, a town in Hadramawt where some of the earliest ‘Alawī ancestors are buried, Ho describes genealogical rituals developed at the turn of the fifteenth century used to “presence” those buried there, bringing the living into contact with the dead. These practices, which Ho identifies with a complex of Sufi practices (t˙arīqa) called “the ‘Alawī Way,” took on new resonances as a Hadrami diaspora, “a society of the absent,” spread across the Indian Ocean. Its members, like the buried ‘Alawī ancestors at Tarim, required constant “revivification.” For some this was achi...
Anne Bang focuses on the ways in which a particular Islamic brotherhood, or 'tariqa', the tariqa ... more Anne Bang focuses on the ways in which a particular Islamic brotherhood, or 'tariqa', the tariqa Alawiyya, spread, maintained and propagated their particular brand of the Islamic faith. Originating in the South-Yemeni region of Hadramawt, the Alawi tariqa mainly spread along the coast of the Indian Ocean. The Alawis are here portrayed as one of many cultural mediators in the multi-ethnic, multi-religious Indian Ocean world in the era of European colonialism.
In the period c. 1880-1940, organized Sufism spread rapidly in the western Indian Ocean. New comm... more In the period c. 1880-1940, organized Sufism spread rapidly in the western Indian Ocean. New communities turned to Islam, and Muslim communities turned to new texts, practices and religious leaders. On the East African coast, the orders were both a vehicle for conversion to Islam and for reform of Islamic practice. The impact of Sufism on local communities is here traced geographically as a ripple reaching beyond the Swahili cultural zone southwards to Mozambique, Madagascar and Cape Town. Through an investigation of the texts, ritual practices and scholarly networks that went alongside Sufi expansion, this book places religious change in the western Indian Ocean within the wider framework of Islamic reform.
Uploads
Papers by Anne K. Bang