Becoming a Friend of God in Eighteenth-Century North Africa Artwork

90 Second Narratives

90 Second Narratives is a podcast featuring engaging true stories told by trained historians. Each episode includes a short story interwoven with expert analysis of the story’s historical significance. The concise length and storytelling format of the episodes make history accessible, dynamic, and entertaining. The subjects of the stories are diverse—spanning the globe and ranging from the pre-historic to the modern age. While individual stories stand alone, the episodes in each season are linked thematically and combine to offer comparative perspectives that illuminate connections from across the human experience. Every episode also includes recommendations for further reading. 90 Second Narratives provides a novel way to hear historians share the wonders of the past in their own voices.

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Becoming a Friend of God in Eighteenth-Century North Africa

October 04, 2021 • Sky Michael Johnston • Season 9 • Episode 3

“‘The true scholar,’ the 18th-century North African Sufi master Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani told his disciples, ‘is the one who gives form to what is clear, and clarifies what is ambiguous, and this from the strength of his knowledge, the breadth of his understanding, the soundness of his spiritual vision (naẓr) and his verification (taḥqīq)’…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Zachary Wright.

For further reading:
Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World by Zachary Valentine Wright (University of North Carolina Press, 2020)

90 Second Narratives
Season 9: “Friendship”
Episode 3: “Becoming a Friend of God in Eighteenth-Century North Africa”

Sky Michael Johnston:

Welcome to 90 Second Narratives. I’m Sky Michael Johnston and I am pleased to introduce today’s storyteller, Dr. Zachary Wright, an Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies at Northwestern University in Qatar. Here he is now with the story, “Becoming a Friend of God in Eighteenth-Century North Africa.”

Zachary Wright:

“The true scholar,” the 18th-century North African Sufi master Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani told his disciples, “is the one who gives form to what is clear, and clarifies what is ambiguous, and this from the strength of his knowledge, the breadth of his understanding, the soundness of his spiritual vision (naẓr) and his verification (taḥqīq).” While it appears that political fragmentation and corruption, along with the alleged moral decay of ordinary people were everywhere witnessed in the Muslim world in the eighteenth century, less appreciated has been the dynamic efforts of a self-confident Islamic intelligentsia to respond to the perceived crises of their age. The Tijaniyya, the Sufi order or network of Islamic mystical realization spread by Shaykh Ahmad Tijani in Algeria and Morocco from 1782 to 1815, has since become one of the largest Islamic learning communities in the world, with tens of millions of followers particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The reason for this appeal was the offer of personal religious realization, or taḥqīq, that the Tijaniyya offered to Muslims of all backgrounds, allowing them to transcend the unprecedented corruption of a new age of human history.

On the basis of constant companionship with the spiritual presence of the Prophet Muḥammad beyond the grave, Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani assured followers that his “Muhammadan way” (tariqa Muhammadiyya) connected them to the enduring light of the Prophet and could thus transform the least of them into the beloved friends of God. This emphasis on religious realization or transformative actualization (tahqiq) was a discourse that pervaded eighteenth-century Islamic thought and extended to fields of Quran learning, hadith study, jurisprudence, theology, talismanic esotericism, and most certainly to Sufism. Perhaps most intriguingly, tahqiq connected individuals with the latent potentiality of their own souls, endowed with divine gnosis since the beginning of creation, and thus generated insight into the internal condition of all humans. Shaykh al-Tijani thus observed, “There is no difference between a believer and a non-believer in terms of their humanity.” This essential human spirit explained God’s “general love” for all of humanity: “All the worlds are included in this love,” al-Tijani explained, “even the disbelievers, for they are His beloveds at God’s words, ‘I loved to be known, so I created all of creation and made Myself known to them, and by Me they know Me.’” With ensuing colonial conquest and the erasure of distinct boundaries between peoples and cultures in an increasingly globalized world, perhaps the Tijaniyya has been so successful for its perceived ability to offer a vision of human interaction and individual Islamic actualization independent of political or other worldly affiliation.

Sky Michael Johnston:

You can learn more about the enlightening history of the Tijaniyya in Dr. Wright’s book, Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World. It was published in 2020 by the University of North Carolina Press. It is available in paperback and you can find a link to the publisher’s page in the episode description.

Thank you for listening to this week’s “little story with BIG historical significance.” Please subscribe to the podcast and join me every Monday on 90 Second Narratives.