EPILOGUE: END OF THE SUFI ERA
The 1920s represent something of a high water mark for the Somali Sufi leadership. Qassim al-Barawī died in 1926 at a youthful 49. Following a brief period publicly antagonizing the followers of the āli iyya in Mogadishu in the 1920s, Shaykh Abdullāhī al-Qu bī appears to have settled down to a quietest life of teaching eschewing a high public profi le and commenting little on social issues. Following his death in 1950, there was no new generation of Sufi ulamā waiting in the wings to continue mediating public moral discourse. Abd al-Ra man b. Umar was a mere compiler, who had only put together his collections under instructions from his own shaykh.1 If any- one came close to taking up the mantle, it was the businessman, alim and historian, Sharīf Aydarūs b. Alī. In 1950, Aydarūs published what he touted as the fi rst “scientifi c” history of Somalia, one based on books and “manuscripts” and not the “tales which persist on the tongues,” of Somalis.2 The purpose of his work was to provide a comprehensive history of the region that carved out a space for urban Benaadiris in a society increasingly defi ned by its rural and pastoral character.3 He even seems to have fancied himself as a leader of the community, courting the favor of the Somali religious leadership, as well as the Italian Trusteeship Administration and local United Nations representatives.4 However, his efforts seemed to have produced little in the way of real infl uence. Instead, this was to be the era of the nationalists with Western-style political parties such as the Somali Youth League and Benaadir Youth Club holding sway.5 When he died in 1960, his tomb would become a stop on the network of local Sufi pilgrimages but little else.6
1 Abd al-Ra man b. Umar, Rā at al-Qalb, p. 1. 2 Aydarūs, Bughyat al-Āmāl, p. 8. 3 See Scott S. Reese, “Tales Which Persist on the Tongue: Arabic Literacy and the Defi nition of Communal Boundaries in Sharif Aydrus’ Bughyat al-Āmāl. Sudanic Africa v. 9, 1998 pp. 1–17. 4 The evidence for this comes largely from photographs of himself with various leaders published in the Bughyat al-Āmāl. 5 Paolo Tripodi, The Colonial Legacy in Somalia: Rome and Mogadishu: from colonial admin- istration to Operation Restore Hope (Basingstoke: MacMillan Press, 1999). 6 Abd al-Ra man b. Umar, al-Jawhar al-Nafīs, pp. 183–84. 218 epilogue
While the infl uence of Sufi leaders as intellectuals with broad social infl uence seems to have declined after the 1920s, and been more or less eclipsed by the 1950s, this should not diminish their historical legacy. As we have seen throughout this book, the Somali ulamā envisioned themselves as central social and political actors almost since the time of Islam’s arrival on the Benaadir coast. The Banū Qa ān viewed themselves as literal king-makers, physical protectors and social guides (through their position as qā īs) from time immemorial. By the same token, the Sufi leadership of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw themselves not only as moral guides, but true social mediators playing an active role in resolving the problems and disputes facing Somali society at large. On the one hand, they sought to mediate man’s relationship with God in an effort to save souls and guide the community along a more moral path that would ultimately result in a revival of their social and economic fortunes. On the other, they played a crucial role in mediating relationships between rural and urban communities as well as so-called “noble” and “servile” elements of society. Whether it was Shaykh Uways warning townsmen of the moral dangers of īkow or Murjān arbitrating relations between pastoralists and client cultivators, the Sufi ulamā saw themselves, and are remembered, as the principal shapers of a great deal of social discourse. The relationships they mediated, however, were not purely local. While adjudicating affairs between men and God, town and country, or “noble” and “servile,” the arīqa leadership also saw themselves as providing a bridge between their own community and the intellectual world of the much broader umma. The Sufi leadership of Somalia considered itself cosmopolitan and well-traveled both regionally and further afi eld. All, or so it seems, went on the Hajj at least once, while the learned centers of the Hadramaut and royal courts of Zanzibar and Harar were no strangers to their presence. Some, such as Abdullāhī al- Qu bī, traveled in even wider circles. While al-Qu bī seems among the fi rst Somali ulamā to study in Cairo, he was by no means the last. His Majmū a, was endorsed by another Somali alim, Shaykh Umar A mad “the Somali”, who was long resident in Egypt and an instructor at al- Azhar.7 By the 1950s, a suffi cient number of students were trained in
7 Al-Qu bī, al-Majmū a al-Mubaraka, pt. II, p. 194. Shaykh Umar wrote a glow- ing review of al-Qu bī’s work which is appended to the last page. He was labeled a “troublemaker” by both the British and Italians for his trouble and ultimately refused permission to return to either British or Italian Somaliland. See R/20/A/3031.