Secrets on the Muhammadan Way: Transmission of the Esoteric Sciences in 18th Century Scholarly Networks

Abstract

The eighteenth century witnessed a flurry of Islamic scholarly exchange, connecting North and West Africa to the Middle East and even India. The Islamic sciences transmitted through these networks have had lasting resonance in Africa, particularly in chains transmitting Ḥadīth and Sufi affiliations. Academics have been justly skeptical as to the actual content of these often short meetings between scholars, suggesting such meetings tell us little about shared scholarly understandings. Study of unpublished manuscripts detailing the acquisition of “secrets” (asrār), apparently widespread in these eighteenth-century networks, can add new understanding to the affinities between scholarly legacies emerging in the period. This paper considers such questions in relationship to Aḥmad al-Tijānī (d. 1815, Fez), the founder of the Tijāniyya Sufi order prominent in West Africa today.