CHAPTER 6

The Adaptation of Traditional Learning Practices

Studies of West African Muslim identities often suggest that differences

between traditional and reformist trends are the result of the uneven imple-
mentation of pedagogical changes since colonial times.1 Reformists have
established madrasas characterized by rationalized curriculum similar to
those of modern western schools: knowledge is taken from texts, and teach-
ers emphasize Arabic literacy.2 By contrast, traditionalists, mostly adherents
of Sufi orders (ṭuruq) and the classical schools of jurisprudence (madhāhib),
assert the continued importance of person-to-person knowledge transmis-
sion that takes place in learning circles (majlis al-ʿilm), where the student’s
disposition or character is primarily emphasized, and the teacher’s physical
presence represents the actualization of Islamic religiosity.3 The narrative of
educational adaptation in Medina-Baye both confirms and problematizes this
pedagogical divide among West African Muslims.
Twentieth-century West Africa witnessed several significant developments
that threatened the legitimacy of traditional Islamic learning. Most obviously,
the modern state apparatus (whether late colonial or newly independent)
did not recognize the licenses (ijāzāt) of the personalized “knowledge-chain”
sanad tradition; rather it recognized the graduates of modern scholastic insti-
tutions. With the increased monetary needs of the modern economy, the old
system of student gift-giving (hadiya) could only support teachers in excep-
tional cases. The time constraints imposed by wage labor prevented students
from devoting the time required to memorize texts in a traditional fashion. The
expanded inclusiveness of clerical communities, the increased movement of
people, and the widespread desire for Islamic knowledge meant that a success-
ful teacher such as Ibrāhīm Niasse might have thousands of students, rendering
the romantic “majlis under the tree” model somewhat impractical. And for the
community of Ibrāhīm Niasse, the fact that the majority of his students trav-
eled long distances to see him reduced their person-to-person acquaintance

1  Brenner, Controlling Knowledge, 17.

2  Roman Loimeier, “Is there Something Like ʽProtestant Islamʼ?” Die Welt des Islams 45, no. 2
(2005), 233–236.
3  Brenner, Controlling Knowledge, 19; Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power,” 318; Wright,
“Embodied Knowledge,” 33.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004289468_008

The Adaptation Of Traditional Learning Practices 193

with him to the period of the visit (ziyāra): perhaps two weeks around the time
of the Prophet’s birthday, or the month of Ramadan.
The community responded to such changes by reemphasizing the impor-
tance of person-to-person knowledge transmission even while it incorpo-
rated modern classrooms, simplified texts, public lectures with microphones,
taped sermons, and other tools of modern mass education. With the change
in pedagogical techniques, the nature of student-teacher interactions was
altered, threatening the ability of students to acquire the desired disposition
from their teachers. The emphasis on transmitting cognizance (maʿrifa) of God
permitted shorter but more intense interactions between students and teach-
ers. By involving maʿrifa-influenced learning transmission in other fields of
Islamic learning, the community attempted to adapt to pedagogical changes
while preserving its core focus on character formation. More specifically,
the community’s pedagogical adaptation to modern circumstances entailed:
(1) a reemphasis of its authority in traditionally transmitted Islamic knowledge;
(2) the controlled appropriation of the madrasa model; and (3) the continued
use of an adapted “learning circle” model that permitted the participation of
students with limited time.

Maintaining the Sanad Tradition

When confronted with pedagogical changes, the community’s first strategy was
to demonstrate its authority in the classical licensing (ijāza) system based on a
chain of person-to-person knowledge transmission (sanad). The personalized
transfer of Islamic habitus implicit in the sanad had long symbolized peda-
gogical continuity and thus scholarly authority in West Africa, as elsewhere in
the premodern Muslim world. In the shaykh’s possession of a comprehensive
collection of traditional licenses (ijāzāt) from reputable scholars around the
world, the community anchored itself in the Islamic tradition and justified the
pedagogical changes it simultaneously began to adopt. The community thus
revived the sanad-paradigm at the same time that its students entered modern
institutions such as madrasas and lycées.
Disciples of Ibrāhīm Niasse often stated that their shaykh had, within him-
self, the entire sanad tradition; therefore connection to the person of Ibrāhīm
Niasse superseded the pursuit of individual licenses for various fields or
books. When asked about his methodology for the continued instruction of
the Islamic sciences in his school in Boghé (southern Mauritania), a promi-
nent Fulani teacher and disciple of Ibrāhīm Niasse, Thierno Abdoulaye Ba,
said simply that Ibrāhīm Niasse was like the sun, outshining the precedent