The Testamentary Waqf as an Instrument of Elite Consolidation in Early Twentieth-Century Massawa (Eritrea)

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 78-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Miran ◽  
Aharon Layish
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Real Estate Assets ◽  
Annotated Translation

This study examines the testamentary waqf of Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghūl (1853-1919), a prominent merchant and communal leader in the cosmopolitan Red Sea port town of Massawa in Eritrea during the period of Italian colonial rule (1885-1941). We provide an annotated translation of the document and a detailed socio-legal analysis of its features. We argue that the testamentary waqf was a vehicle for ensuring the family’s integration in Eritrea in perpetuity. We also consider how the testamentary waqf was used as a strategy to sustain the al-Ghūl family as a corporate unit by preserving the integrity of its real estate assets and by upholding the family’s internal hierarchy of authority. Finally, by endowing properties to mosques and wells, the testator-founder sought to establish the family’s role as a patron of the Muslim community.


Islam and Colonial Rule in Lagos

1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-80
Author(s):  
Olakunle A. Lawal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Southwestern Nigeria ◽  
Urban Settlement ◽  
Islam And Politics ◽  
British Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
Process Of Urbanization

IntroductionThis essay provides an explanation of the dynamics of the interactionbetween Islam and politics by placing emphasis on the role played byMuslims in the collision of traditionalism and British rule as colonialismtook root in Lagos. The focus is on the development of a political schismwithin the nascent Muslim community of metropolitan Lagos at the startof the twentieth century up until the end of the 1940s. It highlights therole of Islam in an emerging urban settlement experiencing rapid transformationfrom a purely rural and traditional center into a colonial urbancenter. The essay is located within the broader issues of urban change andtransition in twentieth-century tropical Africa. Three major developments(viz: the central mosque crisis, the Eleko affair, and the Oluwa land case)are used as the vehicles through which the objectives of the essay areachieved.The introduction of Islam into Lagos has been studied by T. G. O.Gbadamosi as part of the history of Islam in southwestern Nigeria. Thisepic study does not pay specific attention to Lagos, devoted as it is to thegrowth of Islam in a far-flung territory like the whole of modem southwesternNigeria. His contribution to a collection of essays on the historyof Lagos curiously leaves out Islam’s phenomenal impact on Lagosianpolitics during the first half of the twentieth century. In an attempt to fillthis gap, Hakeem Danmole’s essay also stops short of appreciating the fundamentallink between the process of urbanization, symbolized in this caseby colonial rule, and the vanguard role played by Muslims in the inevitableclash of tradition and colonial rule in Lagos between 1900 and 1950.

In International Pursuit of a Caliphate

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Age ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
New Models ◽  
Muslim Intellectuals ◽  
Post War

This chapter analyzes the vibrant discussions of the early twentieth century over how to revive a caliphate best suited to the post-war era. While some advocated preservation of a traditional caliphal figurehead, many Muslim intellectuals were greatly persuaded by new models of internationalism embracing the nation-state and proposed international caliphal councils and organizations, similar to the League of Nations, or other purportedly spiritual institutions, similar to the refashioned papacy, to preserve the bonds of a transregional religious community. To varying degrees, all the participants in the debate over reviving a twentieth-century caliphate were influenced by an intriguing confluence of both the historic transregionalism of the Muslim community as well as the modern thrust of the new age of global internationalism.

In Search of One Word's Meaning: Zaman in Early Twentieth-Century Kano

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 95-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Christelow
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
West African ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Oral Discourse ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Do So

When Caliph Attahiru of Sokoto chose flight over submission to the British in March 1903, it was left to the blind and aging Waziri, Muhammad al-Bukhari, to provide those who remained behind with an explanation of how they could remain good Muslims while accepting infidel rule. Citing a text of the caliphate's founder, Shehu ʿUthman Dan Fodio, he argued that one could befriend the British with the tongue, without befriending them with the heart. It remained for others to develop the vocabulary that their tongues would need for this task.A particularly intriguing item in the vocabulary that emerged during the turbulent first decade of colonial rule was a new usage of zaman(time, era) that occurs in the records of the Emir of Kano's judicial council in such terms as hukm al-zaman (rule of the era) and ʿumur al-zaman (things of the era). It is worth noting that the judicial council did not keep written records before being instructed to do so by British Resident C.L. Temple in 1909, so the records might be seen as preserving what was essentially oral discourse—expressions of the tongue. These terms occur uniquely in relation to legal matters in which the British had intervened. Understanding them can shed new light on the religious and political adaptation of northern Nigerian Muslim leaders to life under British rule. To explore their meaning requires a threefold process of examining various usages and understandings of zaman in non-legal sources; describing how the judicial council used the word; and then analyzing how this usage may have been related to any of a number of influences, ranging from British officials to West African Islamic scholars to Western-educated North Africans passing through the region.

scholarly journals TATAR MUSLIM COMMUNITY OF ASTRAKHAN IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 201-216
Author(s):  
M. M. Imasheva
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The North ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Provincial Center

The article discusses the main features of the Astrakhan Muslim community in the early twentieth century. During this period, Muslims of Russia entered the period of institutionalization of ethnic and religious identity. Astrakhan Muslim community in the period under review was one of the centers of the Muslim Tatar movement in the Russian Empire. At the same time, due to the historical and geographical features of the settlement of the Astrakhan region, the formation of the urban population of the provincial center, the community had a number of characteristic features that could not but aff ect all aspects of life of the mahalla. The work is based on the analysis of archival and published sources, works of local historians and orientalists. Unconditional numerical and material domination of the Tatar ethnic group became decisive in the development of the regional Muslim community. But at the same time, the factor of its polyethnicity had a great infl uence on various aspects of mahalla’s life. Even the Tatars, who formed the basis of the community, came from diff erent provinces and represented diff erent territorial groups of the Turkic-Tatar world. But as part of the Astrakhan Muslim community successfully managed to overcome the ethno-group interests, the isolation of local corporations. Islam has emerged as an integrating core value. Astrakhan mahalla has become an exceptional example of ethnic tolerance among co-religionists and loyalty to state institutions, on the other. Today, when the fl ow of migrants from the North Caucasus republics (primarily Dagestan and Chechnya) is directed to the Astrakhan region and the number of Muslims in the region increases annually, the experience of a century ago is very much in demand for the formation of a new religious identity here.

scholarly journals In the Shadow of Ghadar: Marxism and Anti-Colonialism in Colonial Punjab

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Ammar Ali Jan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Communist Movement ◽  
Political Project ◽  
Popular Movements

The Ghadr Party, an eclectic group of diasporic Punjabis, was perhaps one of the most significant political movements led by emigre Indians in the early twentieth century. Designated as one of the biggest threats to colonial rule in the 1910s, the Ghadr Party spread its operations over five continents, and repeatedly committed acts of sabotage aimed at colonial officials from India. By the 1920s, however, the birth of popular movements in India marginalized various groups that believed in the spectacular actions of a vanguard as a strategy for overcoming the stifling impact of colonial rule. Members of the party, eager to find a foothold in the changed political scenario, opened discussions for building a popular front in Punjab, with many returning to the country to participate in such an endeavour. In this article, I study the encounter between the Ghadarite tradition and the communist movement in colonial Punjab through the writings of Sohan Singh Josh, who attempted to bring these two traditions together to produce a viable political project. I argue that Ghadar's encounter with Marxism not only influenced the former, but also radically transformed Marxism itself, particularly on questions of History, violence and volition.

A Nation of Realtors®: The Professionalization of Real Estate Brokerage and the Construction of a New American Middle Class

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-619
Author(s):  
Jeffrey M. Hornstein
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Real Estate Brokerage ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Economic Trends

The rise of professional real estate brokerage is an ideal window into the internal dynamics of the cultural transformation of the American middle class in the twentieth century. Emerging as a full-time occupation in the late nineteenth century, real estate brokerage embodied a variety of early twentieth-century cultural, social, business, and economic trends, including the drive to professionalize business, the rapid expansion of white-collar labor and its feminization, the rise of independent contracting as a prominent form of labor relations, and the enormous growth of the home-building and -selling industries. As many scholars have noted, the home became a crucial site of both consumption and middle-class identification in the early twentieth century.

Imperial Romance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Su Yun Kim
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Japanese Empire ◽  
Familial Relationships ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Colonial Policies

This book argues that the idea of colonial intimacy within the Japanese empire of the early twentieth century had a far broader and more popular influence on discourse makers, social leaders, and intellectuals than previously understood. The book investigates representations of Korean–Japanese intimate and familial relationships — including romance, marriage, and kinship — in literature, media, and cinema, alongside documents that discuss colonial policies during the Japanese protectorate period and colonial rule in Korea (1905–45). Focusing on Korean perspectives, the book uncovers political meaning in the representation of intimacy and emotion between Koreans and Japanese portrayed in print media and films. It disrupts the conventional reading of colonial-period texts as the result of either coercion or the disavowal of colonialism, thereby expanding our understanding of colonial writing practices. The theme of intermarriage gave elite Korean writers and cultural producers opportunities to question their complicity with imperialism. Their fictions challenged expected colonial boundaries, creating tensions in identity and hierarchy, and also in narratives of the linear developmental trajectory of modernity. Examining a broad range of writings and films from this period, the book maps the colonized subjects' fascination with their colonizers and with moments that allowed them to become active participants in and agents of Japanese and global imperialism.

scholarly journals The Mantle Odes

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-140
Author(s):  
Francis Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

Non-Muslims, perhaps blinded by the claims of their own faiths, have longunderestimated Muslim reverence for the Prophet Muhammad. By thesame token, they have paid relatively little attention to Muslim traditionsof praising the Prophet, whether it be the naths sung by Sufi qawwali musiciansin South Asia, the maulid lectures on the first twelve days of Rabi al-Awwal ‒ or the biographies of the Prophet, which have become so numerousover the past century. This is unfortunate because, intermingled withpraise for the Prophet, there are often other messages, which non-Muslimsneed to note if they are better to understand their Muslim neighbors.The Mantle Odes contains translations, and interpretations in their context,of three of the most highly prized poems in the Arab-Islamic traditionin praise of the Prophet. One poem dates from the time of the Prophet, thesecond from the thirteenth century AC under the Mamluks, and the thirdfrom Egypt under colonial rule in the early twentieth century. The author’saim is “to bring these Islamic devotional masterpieces into the purview ofcontemporary literary interpretation in a way that makes them culturallyrelevant and poetically effective for the modern reader, whether Muslim ornon-Muslim” (xi) ...

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