A Path of Reverent Love: The Nāṣiriyya Brotherhood across Muslim Africa (11th-12th/17th-18th centuries)

Abstract

This thesis presents the history of Islam in 11th/17th – 12th/18th century North Africa from a new angle. Our focus is the history of the Nāṣiriyya brotherhood, a spiritual community that emerged along Morocco’s Southeastern Saharan frontier during the mid-11th/17th century. Based on the teachings of Maḥammad b. Nāṣir al-Darʿī (d. 1102/1691), the Nāṣiriyya’s commitment to love, piety and knowledge helped to restore balance to Moroccan society and religious life during the tumultuous Maraboutic Crisis period and the early decades of the ʿAlawī Dynasty. Additionally, through its stewardship of the overland ḥajj, the Nāṣiriyya, and its sunna-centric reformist discourse, spread across North Africa, the Sahara, Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula during the late 11th/17th - early 12th/18th centuries.

Our study begins by analyzing the Nāṣiriyya’s religious discourse within the context of the competing legacies of 9th/15th century Moroccan Sufi scholars Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Jazūlī (d.c. 870/1466) and Aḥmad Zarrūq (d. 899/1493). It then proceeds to document the Nāṣirī community, its scholarly tradition and transregional spread in light of its discursive tradition. In this way, we seek to shed new light on the history of Sufism, Islamic scholarship and sunnī reform across Muslim Africa during this critical yet heretofore understudied period of Islamic history.