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Sufi Poetry in Twentieth-Century Nigeria a Khamriyya and a Ghazal by Shaykh Abū Bakr Al-ʿatīq (1909–1974)

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Sufi Poetry in Twentieth-Century Nigeria a Khamriyya and a Ghazal by Shaykh Abū Bakr Al-ʿatīq (1909–1974) journal of Sufi Studies 6 (2017) 190–232 brill.com/jss Sufi Poetry in Twentieth-Century Nigeria A Khamriyya and a Ghazal by Shaykh Abū Bakr al-ʿAtīq (1909–1974) Andrea Brigaglia University of Cape Town (South Africa) [email protected] Abstract This article presents the translation and analysis of two poems (the first in Arabic, the second in Hausa) authored by one of the most famous twentieth-century Islamic scholars and Tijānī Sufis of Kano (Nigeria), Abū Bakr al-ʿAtīq b. Khiḍr (1909–74). As examples of two genres of Sufi poetry that are rather unusual in West Africa (the kham- riyya or wine ode and the ghazal or love ode), these poems are important literary and religious documents. From the literary point of view, they are vivid testimonies of the vibrancy of the Sufi qaṣīda tradition in West Africa, and of the capacity of local au- thors to move across its various genres. From the religious point of view, they show the degree to which the West African Sufis mastered the Sufi tradition, both as a set of spiritual practices and techniques and as a set of linguistic tools to speak of the inner. Keywords Arabic poetry – Hausa poetry – Nigeria – qaṣīda – Sufi poetry – Sufism in West Africa – Tijāniyya * This paper is based on research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Reference number UID 85397). This paper was originally presented with the title “Sufi Poetry in Twentieth-Century Nigeria: Two Mystical Odes by Shaykh Abu Bakr al-ʿAtiq (Kano, d. 1974),” at the workshop on Muslim Scholars, Past and Present, hosted by the Leiden University Centre for Islamic Studies (LUCIS) and the African Studies Centre (ASC), Leiden, 23 April 2015. I am grateful to the audience, and in particu- lar to Prof Louis Brenner, for their insightful comments that have helped me in sharpen- ing my analysis. Shaykh Bashīr Bukhārī (Kano), as well as Shaykh al-ʿAbd Lāwī b. Abī Bakr al-ʿAtīq (Dr Lawi Atiƙu Sanka) need to be acknowledged for nurturing my love for the Tijānī literature of Nigeria, feeding it with innumerable data and insights. I would © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/22105956-12341302Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 09:50:57PM via free access Sufi Poetry in Twentieth-Century Nigeria 191 Introduction: Arabic and ʿAjamī Poetry in West Africa The West African tradition of Arabic poetry dates back to at least the twelfth century. The first record of a West African literate who composed verses in Arabic is that of Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Yaʿqūb al-Kānemī (d. 608/1211 or 609/1212 or 1213), a scholar trained in eastern Kanem and Baghirmi (today’s Chad), who travelled to Marrakesh where he engaged in a poetic duel with the scholars of the Almohad court.1 Over the centuries, with the growth of Islamic literacy, the classical forms of the Arabic literary tradition became part of the estab- lished curriculum taught in the scholarly circles of the region. The ability to write verses, in particular, as emphasized by John O. Hunwick, “was considered the hallmark of the accomplished scholar” in West Africa.2 Virtually all West African Muslim scholars wrote some verses, as even a cursory look at the titles included in the volumes of the annotated bibliography The Arabic Literature of Africa dedicated to West and Central Africa will show.3 Nigeria does not make exception, and “the greater number of the earlier writers of the area in the Arabic language” composed verses, as already pointed out Adrian H. D. Bivar and Mervyn Hiskett in one of the earliest contributions on the Nigerian Arabic literary tradition.4 While the vast majority of the written qaṣīda production was in Arabic,5 several African languages developed their own traditions of verse in like to express my thankfulness to an anonymous reviewer of the Journal of Sufis Studies, who helped improve the quality of the translation and commentary of the Arabic poem. Oludamini Ogunnaike and Rüdiger Seesemann read a draft and offered additional insights. All remaining mistakes in the interpretation of the poems are my sole responsibility. 1 John O. Hunwick, “The Arabic Qasida in West Africa: Forms, Themes and Contexts,” in Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa, Volume 1: Classical Traditions and Modern Meanings, ed. Stefan Sperl and Christopher Shackle (Leiden: Brill, 1996): 83–98, 83. 2 John O. Hunwick, “The Arabic Literary Tradition of Nigeria,” Research in African Literatures 28.3 (1997): 210–23, 218. A similar point is made by Hunwick also in “The Arabic Qasida in West Africa,” 84 and 97. 3 John O. Hunwick (compiler), Arabic Literature of Africa, vol. 2. The Writings of Central Sudanic Africa (Leiden: Brill, 1996); and, idem, Arabic Literature of Africa, vol. 4. The Writings of Western Sudanic Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2003). 4 Adrian D. H. Bivar and Mervyn Hiskett, “The Arabic Literature of Nigeria to 1804: A Provisional Account,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 25.1/3 (1962): 104–48. 5 I use the term qaṣīda here in its broadest sense to refer to any writing in verse inspired to the model of classical Arabic poetry, rather than in its stricter definition of an ode obeying to a precise structure and sequence of themes. It is in the broader sense, in fact, that the term has been used in non-Arab Africa and Asia, as opposed to the stricter definition adopted by the classical Arabic tradition. See Stefan Sperl and Christopher Shackle, “Introduction,” in Sperl and Shackle, Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa, 1:xv–xxvii. Journal of Sufi Studies 6 (2017) 190–232 Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 09:50:57PM via free access 192 Brigaglia ʿajamī (non-Arabic languages in Arabic script). As most of the Muslim scholars of the region in pre-modern times were affiliated to Sufi orders, Sufi poetry was commonly taught and original works on Sufi themes were composed. Notwithstanding the huge amount of Islamic verses produced by West African scholars, the West African qaṣīda has not yet received the attention it deserves. This neglect is due not only to the general disinterest in West Africa by the academic scholarship of Arabic and Islamic studies, but also to the fact that the bulk of the West African qaṣīda is made of homiletic (waʿẓ), didactic (juridical or theological naẓm) and devotional (mainly madḥ) verses. These genres are often seen as not “original” or “spontaneous” enough to deserve close literary studies. Establishing an artificial distinction between didactic and devotional poetry on one side, and “real literature” on the other side, for instance, Hunwick argued that “relatively little of the verse output” of West African Muslim scholars “was of what one might call a literary nature.”6 Abdul- Samad Abdullah and Abdul-Sawad Abdullah, who dedicated an otherwise interesting article to an overview of the panegyric genre in West Africa, also repeat a similar stereotype. One the one side, in fact, they recognize the “mas- tery of Arabic language,” the “eloquence” and the “high levels of linguistic skill” of West African authors of Arabic poetry, as well as the “very high standard of technical skills” demonstrated by their use of various classical meters. Still, for them Islamic poetry in West Africa has “no philosophical depth.”7 Some studies in western languages have contributed to invert this trend, drawing attention to the West African qaṣīda tradition in both its literary and its religious/philosophical dimensions. Jean Boyd and Beverly Mack, for instance, have extensively documented the remarkable poetic output of Asmāʾu bt. Fūdī (Nana Asma’u; 1793–1864).8 Though the poetry of Nana Asma’u is mainly of a purposive (political, homiletic, celebratory, elegiac) character,9 it is also un- doubtedly “real literature” by any definition of the term. Christiane Seydou’s 2008 annotated anthology of Fulfulde mystical poetry from Mali is also a very 6 Hunwick, “The Arabic Qasida of West Africa,” 84. 7 Abdul-Samad Abdullah and Abdul-Sawad Abdullah, “Arabic Poetry in West Africa: An Assessment of the Panegyric and Elegy Genres in Arabic Poetry of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Senegal and Nigeria,” Journal of Arabic Literature 35.3 (2004): 368–39. 8 For a biography, see Beverly B. Mack and Jean Boyd, One Woman’s Jihad: Nana Asma’u, Scholar and Scribe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). For a comprehensive col- lection and translation of her works, Jean Boyd and Beverly B. Mack, Collected Works of Nana Asma’u, Daughter of Usman ‘dan Fodiyo (1793–1864) (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997). 9 Jean Boyd and Graham Furniss, “Mobilize the People: The Qasida in Fulfulde and Hausa as Purposive Literature,” in Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa, 1:429–50. Journal of SufiDownloaded Studies from 6 Brill.com10/04/2021(2017) 190–232 09:50:57PM via free access Sufi Poetry in Twentieth-Century Nigeria 193 rich work, which masterfully breaks down the artificial boundary between oral and written, popular and learned literary traditions in an Islamic (prevalent- ly Sufi) context, showing the degree to which the popular literary cultures of Muslim West Africa are infused with classical Sufi doctrinal themes.10 Some works on the topic have also appeared in Arabic, from the now clas- sical (and outdated) ʿAlī Abū Bakr’s al-Thaqāfa al-ʿarabiyya fī Nījīriyā,11 to the more recent al-Shiʿr al-ṣūfī fī Nījīriyā by ʿUthmān Kabara,12 al-Adab al-ʿarabī al-nījīrī by Kabīr Ādam Tudun Nufawa13 and Shiʿr al-rithāʾ fī Sukutū by Bābikir Qadramārī.14 Besides the homiletic (waʿẓ) genre,15 the bulk of Sufi poetry from West Africa is cast within the apparently repetitive madḥ genre (panegyric ad- dressed to the prophet or a saint).
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