Hausaland’s Islamic Modernity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Eltantawi
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
History Of ◽  
Islamic Society

This chapter provides a history of the rise of Islam in west Africa, in particular to Hausaland, which is today’s Northern Nigeria. The chapter then concentrates on the Sokoto Jihad and subsequent caliphate led by Uthman Dan Fodio. The chapter traces his intellectual history, highlighting his engagement with the Arabian peninsula and championing of unifying the Hausaland region under the textual regimen of the Maliki school of Islamic law. The second layer of the sunnaic paradigm, the role the Sokoto jihad plays in contemporary northern Nigerian idealizations of an ideal Islamic society, is explained. Idealization of scholars and hudud punishments are shown to be reinscribed into Nigeria’s present moment as a source of authentication of the 1999 sharia experiment.

Turkish Archival Sources for West African History

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (03) ◽  
pp. 59-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. G. Martin
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Political System ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Early History ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
African History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Islamic Society

About 1960, the study of West African history took a new turn as historians became aware of the interest and value of Islamic sources for their work, particularly manuscript materials in Arabic. To be sure, the use of Arabic sources for the history of West Africa is nothing new: in 1841, W. Des-borough Cooley published his The Negroland of the Arabs Examined and Explained; or, an Inquiry into the Early History and Geography of Central Africa. But Cooley's pioneering book was discounted by later British and American writers on Africa as the work of an eccentric. In the 1880's and 1890's, many of these writers were spellbound by their vision of what Christianity might do for the African, while others were preoccupied by what they deemed to be the morally indefensible activities of the Muslims as slave-raiders and traders in West and East Africa. As late as the 1930's, the well-known British anthropologist C. K. Meek indicted Islam in northern Nigeria when he wrote: “The institution of slavery is a pivotal feature of Islamic society, and we are justified with charging Muhammadanism with the devastation and desolation in which Northern Nigeria was found at the beginning of this century.” Other writers, like Sir A.C. Burns for Nigeria, and A. W. Cardinall and W. E. F. Ward for Ghana, dismissed the Islamic side of West African history in few words, or gave it no mention at all. There were other reasons for this lack of emphasis. In northern Nigeria, for example, many British officials were apprehensive of an outbreak of “Mahdism” among the Muslims; and very frequently, French officials looked on Islam as a rival political system, dangerous and potentially subversive.

The Cultural Significance of k-NN

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-130
Author(s):  
James E. Dobson
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Nearest Neighbor ◽  
First Century ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Big Data Applications ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
History Of ◽  
Formalized Description

This chapter turns to a lower level of computation to produce a cultural critique and historicization of one of the most important algorithms used in digital humanities and other big-data applications in the present moment, the k-nearest neighbor or k-NN algorithm. The chapter reconstructs the partial genealogy, the intellectual history, of this important algorithm that was key to sense making in the midtwentieth century and has found continued life in the twenty-first century. In both its formalized description, its exposition in the papers introducing and refining the rule and its implementation in algorithmic form, and its actual use, the k-nearest neighbor algorithm draws on dominant midtwentieth-century ideologies and tropes, including partitioning, segregation, suburbanization, and democratization. In the process of situating the k-NN algorithm within the larger field containing other residual and emergent statistical methods, the author seeks to produce an intervention within the developing critical theory of algorithmic governmentality.

The Socio-economic Aspects of hijra

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 161-178
Author(s):  
Latife Reda
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Economic Hardship ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Economic Deprivation ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Islamic Society

The paper highlights the socio-economic aspects of the concept of hijra or migration in the Islamic tradition. The paper argues that the conception of migration in the Islamic tradition has been shaped by not only religious and ethical values, but also social and economic motivations and consequences ever since the first migrations to Abyssinia and Medina. The paper addresses the notion and practice of hijra in Islamic history by highlighting its ethical and religious value as well as its nature and evolution into a socio-economic activity motivated by different forms of oppression, including social and political oppression as well as economic deprivation. The study draws on the history of Islam and the Islamic society, the sources of Islamic law and doctrines, and the thought of scholars in relation to the changes in approaches to migration, and the conceptualization of hijra as an activity motivated by oppression and economic hardship.

scholarly journals Сведения о Шихаб ад-Дине ал-Марджани в дагестанских рукописях в контексте дискуссий об иджтихаде в первой трети ХХ в.

Islamology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
Shamil Shikhaliev
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Arabic Script ◽  
History Of

The article is devoted to the references to the Tatar scholar Shihabaddin Mardjani in the Dagestani Arabic-script manuscripts written in the first third of the 20th century. Daghestani scholars noted the important role of Mardjani and his works in the intellectual history of Islam. For this reason, they travelled to Kazan to get an acquaintance with him and copied his works. Dagestani scholars wrote reviews on his works as well as dedicated poems to Mardjani himself. Later, the name Mardjani entered the Dagestani legal tradition in the framework of debates on taqlid and ijtihad. Along with classical Arab scholars, the name of Mardjani has been often referred in Daghestani manuscripts on the theory of Muslim Law. Althoug Dagestani Muslim jurists held different views on issues of taqlid and ijtihad, each of them interpreted the ideas of Mardjani on Islamic legal issues in his own way. Regardless of their preferences in the matters of theory of Islamic law, Dagestani scholars highly valued the authority of Mardjani as a one of the major scholars in the Islamic World.

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