‘Whoever wants to sit with God,” wrote Rumi, the great Persian mystic, ”let him sit with the Sufis.”
In a world where Islam is associated less with mysticism and peace than with ham-fisted (ahem) loutishness and Luddites, the figure of the peacenik Muslim mystic, the Sufi, is all but absent from current discourse around the faith. And yet, for millions of Muslims around the world, religion occupies a deeply personal space.
In its early years Islam was as much about culture as it was about conquest, with the various Muslim dynasties promoting a flowering of the arts, literature, music and poetry, from Turkey to India and to Iran. But perhaps nowhere has this blooming of Islam been more apparent than in the ancient desert town of Timbuktu, home to the Ahmed Baba Institute.
Big navels and scholars
This town at the southernmost tip of the Niger River is said to have been founded around 1 100AD and was for centuries a caravan meeting point for the Songhai, Waranga, Fulani, Tuareg and Arab tribesmen in the region.
Legend has it that the town was named after a hag endowed with a rather unusual anatomical feature.
According to the United States-based Timbuktu Educational Foundation, Timbuktu was founded by Tuareg tribesmen in the 11th century. Though various theories persist as to the origins of the lyrical name, the foundation claims the travelling tribesmen would leave their goods in the care of an old woman, Tin Abutut, when it rained. In the local language this translated to ”the lady with the big navel”. Over the passage of time, ”Tin Abutut” became the more pronounceable Timbuktu.
Although the condiment was part of Timbuktu’s claim to fame in bygone years, what made the town truly worth its salt was its production of scholars.
Since the 12th century, the town has been what some have called ”a celebrated centre of Islamic learning” through its three learning centres, Sankore, Djingereyber and Sidi Yahya.
As the numerous clichés penned by travel writers from time immemorial remind us, the town’s name has become a byword associated with unreachable, faraway places. But despite the mythical status accorded the town, European exploration did not reach there until the 19th century.
The paleskins were beaten to it by several other medieval nosey parkers like the legendary Leo Africanus. Travelling through the town in 1526 he wrote of the splendours of the royal court, the poor quality of the horses, and of salt being in short supply.
But he also mentioned the proliferation of scholarship and the trade in books, noting that there was ”more profit made from this commerce than from all other merchandise”.
Under the looking glass
Entering the city’s gates for the first time, one almost feels the weight of antiquity bearing down.
Wizened old men make their way to the mosque, clutching dog-eared texts as the muezzin sounds the call to prayer. Indigo-veiled tribesmen saunter by on their camels as though — in this unforgiving Sahara heat — time has stood still.
And as the sun burns less brightly at late afternoon, one picks up the chanting of dozens of children as they recite the Qur’an at the many madressas or schools.
At the centre of the town lies the Ahmed Baba Institute, a modern brick, mortar, steel and glass edifice sprawled across the desert sand. Most of the structures surrounding it are preserved in the traditional wood and mud.
The building is a gift from South Africa, the culmination of the efforts of the South Africa/Mali Project to preserve the country and the continent’s heritage. Inside the air-conditioned building, housed under protective glass, are thousands of rare manuscripts devoted to various intellectual pursuits like astronomy, mathematics and medicine. Scribes who lived centuries ago put pen to parchment, paper and even animal skin to record the history of not just the town, the region and its peoples, but also the tenets of their Islamic faith.
Under carefully filtered light, designed to protect the manuscripts from exposure to the elements, the fine Arabic calligraphy stretches across the pages, in some cases delicately embossed in filigree or decorated at the edges. Some of the manuscripts have accompanying illustrations – an optics text, to make its point, bears the image of a huge dissected eyeball.
Fertile ground
Not only has Timbuktu for centuries been a honeypot of scholarship and other literary pursuits, there is also a strong Sufi tradition among the authors of the texts — a form of Islam dedicated to the betterment of the self and conjuring up images of poetry, whirling dervishes and, yes, wine and song. Metaphorically, that is.
For Sufism in its purest form is not about worldly pursuits but the yearning for the akhirat or afterlife.
Several historians write that Islam in Timbuktu is highly influenced by Sufism, in particular the at-Tijaniyya and al-Qadiriyya branches.
They write that a characteristic feature of Sufism in the region is its maraboutisme, or cult of saints, and that Sufism found ”fertile ground” among the local populations steeped in traditions of magic and animism.
Historian Dr Shamil Jeppe, who co-authored the book, The Meanings of Timbuktu, says one of the aims of the project was to widen access to Timbuktu manuscripts, previously accessible only to Arabists and historians. Jeppe, who heads a research unit at the University of Cape Town dedicated to the study of the manuscripts, says the unit has come across numerous Sufi-oriented manuscripts, dedicated to studies in mysticism and communication with the divine.
He emphasises that the variety of the scholarship indicates that the Islam practised in the town was neither purely religious nor obsessed with ritual. The majority of the manuscripts are devoted to logic and reason. Researchers at the unit have had difficulty in archiving because so few of the texts are dated or have the authors’ names recorded. Even this, some say, points to a grounding in Sufism.
Jeppe writes the manuscripts point to ”the deep Sufi or mystical roots of the pre-colonial style of education in which individuality, personal worldly achievement and recognition were not of any significance”.
There are other indications of a Sufi influence. Some of the Qur’ans in the collection display a particular form of notation that historians say is characteristic of North African Sufi sects. The margin notes next to the holy words include instructions that a particular word or phrase be repeated in recitation each time it occurs.
Sufism, as a branch of Islam, is devoted to ”purification of the heart and soul” through recitation, mediation and contemplation of the holy texts and the sayings of Muhammad. They are, in essence, the Buddhists of Islam.
Of Muhammad and martyrs
Throughout Islam’s history, Sufi mystics claim to have experienced heightened spiritual states and communicated with God personally.
This is not the Islam one sees much of today. Despite numerous Prophetic exhortations to peace and the pursuit of knowledge, empire building and violence are the dominant images associated with Muslims today.
Jeppe cautions against logic which holds up holy men like Rumi and Ahmed Baba (after whom the institute is named) as poster-boys for a more spiritual, less worldly alternative to militant Islam. In many parts of the world, he argues, both Muslims and non-believers alike have fallen prey to what he terms ”Sufi charlatanism”.
Promoting mysticism as an answer to people’s problems, says Jeppe, is fanciful. ”It keeps people in their place — it’s getting high with God.”
One text in the library, on loan from a private collection, is entitled Risalah ala al-Qabai’il al-Mutaqatilin (Letter to the Warring Tribes). Backed up with quotations from the Holy Qur’an and the sayings of Muhammad, it advises believers to make peace and avoid conflict.
This is among the many indications that the Islam practised in Timbuktu for centuries, an African Islam, was perhaps closer than most to the Prophetic saying: ”The ink of a scholar is holier than the blood of a martyr.”