NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Closer than Your Jugular Vein: Muslim Intellectuals in a Malian Village, 1900 to the 1960s A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of History By Jeremy Raphael Berndt EVANSTON, ILLINOIS June 2008 2 © Copyright by Jeremy Berndt 2008 All Rights Reserved 3 ABSTRACT Closer than Your Jugular Vein: Muslim Intellectuals in a Malian Village, 1900 to the 1960s Jeremy Berndt In Muslim West Africa, food-producing villages also produced literate scholars. This study examines how such unlikely intellectuals acquired and gave meaning to Islamic knowledge through one village’s experience from 1900 to the 1960s. Unlike the colonial sources underlying conventional approaches to West African Islam, libraries and oral sources from Ruumde do not define Islam in relationship to the colonial state. Ruumde’s sources uncover meanings of Islamic intellectual culture, closer to ordinary Muslims’ lives. The biography of a modest village scholar reveals his individual path to competence as a legal reader, and community standing as an imam and legal debater. It also exposes how Islamic texts shaped community discussions about such intimate issues as gender relations and how such concerns shaped, in turn, the meanings that village intellectuals attached to the law. Histories of Ruumde’s family units chart the social distribution of Islamic knowledge. Though one family claimed special status as the “neighborhood” of “Scholars,” the general rule was not lineage specialization, but diversified investment of family labor resources. All families, including the “Scholars,” had to engage in subsistence agriculture. Almost every family also invested labor in scholarship. Islamic esoteric sources help explain why ordinary families determined that textual skills were too valuable to be left to specialist lineages. Memories of an esoteric working-group active in the 1930s and 1940s, and textual toolkits from village libraries reveal that Islamic secret knowledge was powerful because it put solutions to ordinary rural problems within the reach of ordinary people. The final section of the thesis explores how intellectuals in Ruumde and nearby communities defined 4 slavery and a process of emancipation that accelerated in the late 1950s and 1960s. Many masters identified the most offensive aspects of increasing slave autonomy not in loss of control over labor, but in “revolts” against Islamic legal distinctions between slave and “free.” Slaves, likewise, defined emancipation in Islamic terms, using new social leverage to enter into their masters’ intellectual tradition and assert new scholarly identities. State actions initiated emancipation, but village intellectuals determined its deepest meanings. Rural commoners had the power to produce Islamic knowledge and bind its significance closely to their own lives. 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deepest thanks go to my wife Eka, my parents David and Ann Berndt, my mother-in- law Liana Gurgenadze, and my sons Giorgi and David. Without their support and, regrettably, their sacrifices, I could not have completed this project. My brothers Adam and Nathaniel, my sister-in-law Nata, and her husband Gela also supplied help and humor at key times. I owe a great debt also to my many teachers, especially my thesis supervisor David Schoenbrun, a source of stimulating ideas and a model of scholarly dedication since my first graduate seminar. From my studies at Northwestern, I thank also John Hunwick, Jonathon Glassman, Carl Petry, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, and Rex Sean O’Fahey. From Boston University, I thank particularly Merlin Swartz, Charles Lindholm, Herbert Mason, and Jon Hutchison. Along with Jon Hutchinson again, I thank my many language instructors in Boston, Chicago, Damascus, Niamey, Madison, and Gimbala. Malam Mahamane Adda and Amadou Tidiane Fofana deserve special mention. Bura Huseeni and Salaou Alhassane deserve special mention as teachers of Islamic subjects. For various forms of help, encouragement, conversation, companionship, comments, or correction along the way, I acknowledge the following partial list of colleagues, mentors, library- owners, interviewees, njaatigii бe, and well-wishers: Aama Garaasa, Aamadu Adu, Aamadu Tuure, Alex Zito, Ali Num, Alice Bellagamba, Alida Boye, Allay Amiiri, Alphonse Otieno, Amy Settergren, Anh Ly, Ani Gadabadze, Baba Ba, Baba Seyni Kassambala, Baz Lecocq, Ben Soares, Bernard Salvaing, Brandon County, Bruce Hall, Buri Kaasim Tarawere, Buukari Amiiri, Candace Keller, Carolyn Brown, Chris Hayden, Chris Lee, Clara Kimmet, Craig Davis, Craig Tower, Dado Coulibaly, Dahibu Num Allay, Daaha Bireema, Dioulde Layya, Djebou Tall, Dursi Hammadu, Dustin Langan, Edward Doctoroff, Emily Burrill, Francesco Zappa, Ghislaine Lydon, 6 Greg Mann, Guuri Num Haalidu, Guuri Konare, Haafi Daaha, Hamma Koola, Hamma Layya Mbiiga, Hammadi Sankare Awna, Hammadoun “Dinnda” Sankare, Hammadu Aamadu Aduraaman, Hammadu Amiiri, Hammadu Barka, Hannah Koenker, Ismael Musa Montana, Izabella Worwag, Jeanne Marie Penvenne, Jim Brennan, Jim Sweet, Johnston Njoku, Jon Eastwood, Jon Ewing, Kai Kresse, Kate de Luna, Koola Maabo Drame, Laura Ternan Casanova, Layya Mbiiga, Lena Wong, Maikorema Zakari, Manchi Bekashvili, Marie Rodet, Martin Klein, Moulaye Hassane, Muhammad Sani Umar, Muusa Num, Nata Jaliashvili, Neil Kodesh, Nicole Warren, Nino Mazmishvili, Ousmane Traore, Penda Gungare, Rachel O’Toole, Rebecca Shereikis, Rhiannon Stephens, Saajo Nawma, Sammba Sankare Awna, Sammba Seeku, Sammba Yero Aljuma, Sandra Greene, Sean Hawkins, Sekou Mamadou Barry, Seyni Moumouni, Souleymane Sogoba, Trevor Getz, Umaru Allay Aamadu, Umaru Usu Yatara, Usman Hammadu Usman, Usman Aba, Yacine Addoun, Yaya Drame, Zeyni Uld Medi, Almaami Geeje, Almaami Saare Ngayna, Almaami Seke, Almaami Toggere Mayru, Almaami Wango, and Amiiri Ruumde. If I have left some important people out, it is not because I have forgotten them, but only because clearly I have already over-indulged in this chance to acknowledge some of those who have made my years of research more pleasant, stimulating, and doable than they otherwise would have been. The tremendous hospitality of far too many Gimbalans to list merits extra emphasis. Also in Mali, I thank the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique for providing me with research authorization and renewing it multiple times. Boubacar Guindo was especially helpful and professional. The equally helpful, professional staff of the Archives Nationales du Mali, Koulouba very kindly facilitated the archival portion of my research. I thank Director Aly Ongoïba, Alyadjidi Almouctar, Souleymane Koné, Timothé Saye, and Abdallahi Traoré. Commandant Touré facilitated my work in the Niafounké Cercle Archives. 7 Butch Ware and, again, Jonathon Glassman deserve special mention as members of my thesis committee and as keen, but generous critics. The late Saadu Aamadu was a peerless host and protector ( Allah hokku munyal caggal makko!). Ralph Piccardi came to the rescue in a moment of crisis. The generosity of Janet Calvey and Donna Wall has been staggering. I benefited greatly from the comments of the participants in seminars and conferences at Northwestern University, the University of Niamey, the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University, the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures at Boston University, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Conference Center, and other venues where I have been fortunate to present my work. My graduate studies, field research, and thesis writing benefited from the following sources of fellowship support: a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (provided by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation), a Helen O. Piros Fellowship, a David L. Boren Graduate Fellowship (from the National Security Education Program), a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, a Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship, a Social Science Research Council International Predissertation Fellowship Program Award, an Evan Frankel Foundation Fellowship, a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship Program Award (funded through Michigan State University), and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies (from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation). I received generous travel funding from the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa, The Graduate School, and the History Department at Northwestern University. The faults of this thesis are mine. Its merits have developed out of my associations with the individuals and institutions mentioned above, as well as others whom I have had to restrain myself from listing. 8 GLOSSARY almaami (Fulfulde) – Fulfulde rendering of the Arabic im ām. The office signified both religious and political authority at the local level in nineteenth-century central Mali. Subsequently, the almaami became a strictly religious designation and local political responsibilities were transferred to a separate office of the amiiri . amiiri (Fulfulde) – Chief. ‘aq īqa (Arabic) – Naming ceremony for week-old babies. ar бe yirray бe (Fulfulde) – Warrior-chiefs who ruled central Malian Ful бe communities prior to the establishment of Seeku Aamadu’s Diina. arrondissement (French) – Postcolonial administrative division in Mali. The term replaced the colonial term canton . canton (French) – Colonial administrative division, which grouped together