By Rebecca Shereikis
The Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa has organized a half-day symposium October 25, 2023 to celebrate the life and work of historian and Northwestern alumnus Lansiné Kaba (PhD 1970). Born in the city of Kankan, Republic of Guinea, during French colonial rule, Kaba was a product of both Islamic and western educational institutions. Upon completing his doctoral studies at Northwestern, Professor Kaba taught African and African American history at the University of Minnesota; headed the Department of African American Studies and served as Dean at the Honors College at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar.
While Kaba wrote about a wide range of topics, this symposium is structured around themes and questions raised by Kaba’s pioneering study, The Wahhabiyya: Islamic Reform and Politics in French West Africa, 1945-1960 (Northwestern University Press, 1974). We expect a lively conversation across area studies boundaries about what it means to be Wahhabi or to be labeled as Wahhabi, in Africa or elsewhere.
Our three symposium guests were chosen for their recent books on this discourse: Cole M. Bunzel wrote Wahhābism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement (Princeton University Press, 2023) Ousman Murzik Kobo is the author of Unveiling Modernity in Twentieth-Century West African Reforms (Brill Academic Publishers, 2012), Zakyi Ibrahim has published Islamic Thought in Africa: The Collected Works of Afa Ajura (1910-2004) and the Impact of Ajuraism on Northern Ghana (Yale University Press, 2021).
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Manuscripts and Arabic-Script Writing in Africa (Isle of Man: The Islamic Manuscript Association in association with Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 2023)
Charles Stewart (emeritus University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and former ISITA director of programming) and Ahmed Chaouki Binebine have coedited Manuscripts and Arabic-Script Writing in Africa. This trilingual (English, Arabic, French) volume explores the Arabic script in its widest usage in Africa: in Arabic texts; as a sacred Islamic script; and as a script for writing African languages. Most of the essays were initially presented at a conference convened by Bibliotheca Alexandrina and The Islamic Manuscripts Association (TIMA), jointly with the library’s Manuscripts Center and the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation, held virtually September 16–21, 2021. The volume is beautifully illustrated, with full-color reproductions of some of the manuscripts being discussed alongside photos of African manuscript libraries, the scholars who frequent them, and the surrounding environment.
Charles Stewart’s concluding essay, “Literary Authority in West African Islam,” was originally presented as a talk for ISITA in May 2022. The video of the talk is available for viewing on ISITA’s YouTube channel.