The best of guides: Sufi poetry and alternate discourses of reform in early twentieth-century Somalia

Abstract

The Qadiriyya Sufi order has long been regarded as the largest and most successful Sufi tariqa in East Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chapters of the order were found from Somalia in the north to Mozambique in the south and as far inland as the eastern Congo. However, little research has been done to explain how an order with a reputation for literate learning as well as spirituality could gain such a broad following amongst Muslim populations who were largely non-literate. This article is divided into two parts. The first provides a brief discussion of the emergence of the Qadiriyya in Somalia during the late nineteenth century and provides an overview of the order's diffusion during this period, and its rise as a popular movement that crossed lines of clan and ethnicity as well as town and country. The second examines the teachings of the Qadiriyya shaykhs and the place of popular devotional poetry as the principle means of disseminating their message to their widespread, diverse and largely nonliterate constituency.