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A New History of Funj

Islamic century. And yet for all that, according to A. A. Batran, Sidi al-Mukhtar in all his extensive writings never bothered to quote al-Maghili on any point of religious law! It would appear that Sidi al-Mukhtar, and others before him, venerated the memory of al-Maghili as a Sufi and a mujaddid while at the same time ignoring the substance of his legal opinions. A deeper exploration of this pattern of apparent ambivalence might enhance our understanding of al-Maghili's religious legacy in West Africa, and of the dynamism of Islamic ideas more generally in the region. Shaikh Uthman's own attitude to al-Maghili may have been similarly ambivalent, at least in the years which preceded the jihad, for in all his writings on behalf of religious renewal and reform, the opinions of al-Maghili figured very little before 1803. In that year, when military confrontation with the Gobir state was virtually inevitable, the Shaikh began to refer extensively to the writings of al-Maghili on what would be the most critical issue of the ensuing conflict: the classification of persons as Muslims or unbelievers. Public debate on this highly sensitive question could quickly tear a Muslim community apart, and it is significant that Shaikh Uthman did not place much emphasis on it until all other avenues of reform had failed and when his own community was under threat of attack. Only then were al-Maghili's opinions on the thorny and difficult question of unbelief presented in full. Al-Maghili's ideas, therefore, were not the precedents which led Shaikh Uthman to the path of reform; nor were they the ideas on which he relied to build his community. Many of al-Maghili's legal opinions were applicable only in the heat of internecine strife, which perhaps explains why they had been virtually ignored for three centuries after he submitted them to Askia Muhammad. Shari'a in Songhay is John Hunwick's personal contribution to the publications of the Fontes Historiae Africanae series which he has directed and edited since its inception. His is a valuable and welcome addition, which sets a high standard of scholarship for others to emulate.