Overview

Spanning a thousand years of history--and bringing the story to the present through ethnographic fieldwork in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania--Rudolph Ware documents the profound significance of Qur’an schools for West African Muslim communities. Such schools peacefully brought Islam to much of the region, becoming striking symbols of Muslim identity. Ware shows how in Senegambia the schools became powerful channels for African resistance during the eras of the slave trade and colonisation. While illuminating the past, Ware also makes signal contributions to understanding contemporary Islam by demonstrating how the schools' epistemology of embodiment gives expression to classical Islamic frameworks of learning and knowledge. Today, many Muslims and non-Muslims find West African methods of Qur’an schooling puzzling and controversial. In fascinating detail, Ware introduces these practices from the viewpoint of the practitioners, explicating their emphasis on educating the whole human being as if to remake it as a living replica of the Qur’an. From this perspective, the transference of knowledge in core texts and rituals is literally embodied in people, helping shape them--like the Prophet of Islam--into vital bearers of the word of God.

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9781469614311

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Reviews

Ware's astute historical analysis of the teaching and memorization of the Qur'an in the wider Senegambia region, stretching over the second millennium CE, serves as a lens to rewrite the story of Qur'an schooling and West Africa, offering new and compelling perspectives on the social, political, economic, and religious history of the area. This book will do a great service to and have a lasting impact on the field of African history and the study of Islam in Africa. --Ruediger Seesemann, University of Bayreuth

An excellent and needed contribution to understanding classical Islamic learning methods.-- American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

Author Information

Rudolph T. Ware III is assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan, USA.

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