IASAR/77 IASAIV'246 68- List of eighteen imams of Wa from Yacmuru tq euthman, In addition the following two works contain references to Wa.# Account of the jih3d of a I-Hal j MahmUd karantaw (with mention of participants from Wa). A general account of the spread of Islam art West Africa (with some incidental references to Wa). In addition I have been shown the following: Ta'rTlch Ahl Tariwar min MandTi Account of the arrival in Wa of the people of Limamyire, and of their relations with the princes: with a section on the Watara, Karanta, Karanbiri, and Saghanughu. Ivor Wilks. NOTE ON THE EDUCATION AND EARLY LIFE OF AL-HTUJ cUMAR TALL The Institute of African Studies Arabic collection continues to throw out interesting new material on the major figures of nineteenth century West In addition to a hitherto unknown letter from cUthmahb. Fudi (Dan Africa. Fodio) calling upon Shaykh Adam of Admawa to join the jihad (SASAKI28), and a Tijani poem (lASAfy/72) spuriously ascribed to his son Muhammad Bello, the fact of which forgery adds weight to the evidence against Bella's membership of the Tijaniyya (despite Abun-Nasr's recent heavy-handed decision the other way, "The Tijaniyya" Oxford 1965), we have also an interesting reference to the higher education of "the Great Conqueror" al-Hajj cUmar Tall. 69. NOTES This is in IASAiyr246 "A Dated Chronicle on the Introduction of Islam to the Western Parts" by al-HoTjj Muhammad Marhaba, the present Saghanughu mufti of Bobo-Dioulasso. The reference runs: "al-flajj cUmar al-ftrti was taught cqrud (rules of Arabic vesification), the rhyming systems, logic and rhetoric, by my grandfather, Ibrahim al-Mutafannin (the artist). AI-yajjcUmar, four months after their coming to Bobo/T.e. the coming of the author's branch of the Saghanughu from Kong to Bob~q7, built for his shaykh (tutor) the mihrtSb of his mosque which is unchanged to this day". thus seems to have been following the classical pattern of Islamic education, which at this time in the early nineteenth century was being given a great impetus throughout the Western Sudan. Piecing together biographical material from several prominent lives, and what we know of the state educational systems of Futa Toro, Futa Jalon, Masina and the Northern Nigerian emirates' the following rough schedule emerges. From seven to about ten years the boy would learn elementary reading and writing of Arabic, possibly at home, as did al-Hajj with his father. Then at the age when, in the usual Fulani manner, he would stop sleeping with his mother, he would attach himself to a teacher and begin compulsory prayers and to seriously learn to Qur'ah by heart. On average this would take about four years, though ai-Hajj and Shehu Ahmadu Bari are said to have been able to recite it at twelve, the age at which, incidentally, this recitation is now the entry requirement to several primary sections of Al-Azhar. The following four year period was then spent in comprehension of the text, after which the student would graduate as a hafTd. -r- If a higher level of learning were then sought the student would be expected to travel to seek the most renowned teachers, and in this quest al-Hajj, still in his teens, began to travel extensively in Mauretania, Futa Toro, Futa Bondu and Futa Jalcon, in which country he probably received See especially the secondary sources: C. Monteil "Djenne", 1903; Ba and Daget "(.'Empire Peul du Macina" 1962. Biographical material is available on all the major jihad leaders of the nineteenth century and on many minor individuals e.g.. "Abu Bakr as - Sadik" IAS draft paper by Ivor Wilks. NOTES 70. his initiation into the Tijaniyya. Kong is the next place linked with his name, and IASAff/246 provides us with corroboration for this visit mentioned by Muhammed Aliyu Tyam and the Masina traditions, both of which drew on al-y3"jj's own biographical work "al-Rijnah", which amazingly is still only available in Arabic. At Kong al-Ha]j pursued an education which was already well advanced. In West Africa at this time Islamic higher education was divided into principal and auxiliary subjects which show little significant difference from the medieval classification of knowledge as used for example at A l- Azhar till the later nineteenth century. Qur'ah itself, tafsTr (Qur'anic exegesis), hadith (the authenticated deeds and sayings of the Prophet), tawhld (knowledge of God and his attributes), usui al-fiqh (principles of canon law) and tassawuf (philosophy of mysticism), The second category, which were taught in far fewer schools, and for which the Saghanughu of Kong seemed appropriate, comprised nahw (grammar), sarf (syntax), macani (rhetoric), bayan(a related subject concerned with public speaking) and mantiq (logic). In the former category are the The I.A.S. ms collection, the first 500 items of which have been collected more or less haphazardly, contains much further information on the state of Islamic learning in this part of West Africa in the nineteenth century, and would well repay the work of an educationist combing the collection for this purpose. The role of Kong in the diffusion of this learn- ing becomes steadily more apparent. 2. This was almost certainly from cAbd al-Karim b. Arjmad al-Naqil of Timbo, see the long biographical poem by the Tokolor, Muhammad Aliyu Tyam, translated by Caden: "Le Vie d'EI Hajj Omar", and Ha"jj's own chains listed in "al-Rimah". 71. NOTES Unfortunately, however, this reference in IASAR/246 throws little further light on the chronology of al-Hcfjj's pre-jihad career, in attemping to establish which, several recent scholars seem to have been tempted into confusion. The author's statement in fact cannot be taken quite as it stands. Al-Hajj's shaykh was not in fact the author's grandfather but his great, great, grandfather, Who, the author writes was buried in Bobo in 1224 A . H. (1810). This date is probably several years too early, as al-Hajj would then have been only sixteen,* and we understand from Ivor Wilks that the author is prepared to revise this particular date. A fuller timetable of al-Hajj's journey to Mecca and back would provide an invaluable fix for a Whole series of events in several major states as his return journey for example brought him into contact, sometimes for long periods, with the political and religious leaders of Bornu, Sokoto, Masina, Timbuktu and Segu, before he established the base for his jihad near Futa Jalon. , An example of recent confusion in this field concerns the tradition that al-Hajj paid a pre-pilgrimage visit to Masina in the birth year of Ahmadu Ahmadu, a visit which is denied by Tyam. this contradiction the authors of our major secondary source on Masina, Ba and Daget, go to the rather drastic lengths of making this grandson and second successor of Shehu Ahmadu live nearly six years longer than the very literate Masina traditions would grant him, and this in a lifetime of only twenty nine years. In an attempt to resolve Nor is it easy to accept the assertion of recent scholars^ that al-Hajj spent the years from 1826 to 1838 in Sokoto while returning from 3. 1794 rather than 1797 seems a better birth date for al-Hajj who died in 1864 aged 70, probably Solar, years ( i . e. 70 rainy seasons which was the way his father estimated age) V. Tyam op.cit. 4. Especially H.F.C. Smith "Islamic Revolutions of the 19th century" in Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria I I, 2. 1961. and D . M. Last "19th Century Sokoto" Ph.D. thesis 1964. One opposes them on this point with considerable misgivings, not having recently seen the evidence of al-Ha]j SacTd in Ta'rTkh Sokoto by O. Houdas in "Tedzkiret en-Nisian" Parfs 1899). NOTES 72. the pilgrimage. This is based mainly on a reference in Clapperton's second journey which surely must be either wrong in saying that "al-Hcfjj cUmar from Futa Toro" whom he met in Sokoto in 1826, was returning from Mecca, or must be referring to a different person, which is perfectly possible. All the other evidence points to one of these conclusions. And so the search continues, still in its infancy, for material on the early life of the man who, with the possible exception of cUthmah b. Fudi, probably had more political, religious and military influence in shopping nineteenth century West Africa than any other single figure, and whose own biographical works are still almost completely unknown to western scholars. J . J. Holden. 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