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The enigmatic imam: the influence of ahmad ibn idris

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Rex S. O'Fahey  and
Ali Salih Karrar
Rex S. O'Fahey
Affiliation:
Department Of History, University Of Bergen, Norway
Ali Salih Karrar
Affiliation:
National Records Office Khartoum, The Sudan
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Extract

Despite his importance, no substantial study has been devoted to the career of Abū 'l-'Abbās Ahmad b. Idrīs al-Hasanī al-'Arā'ishī al-Fāsī (d. 1837); most accounts of him appear by way of a preface to studies of his pupils. And yet through his teachings, pupils, and family, he was undoubtedly one of the key religious figures of the early 19th century Arab Muslim world. Indeed, his influence, direct and indirect, appears to have stretched from North Africa to Indonesia. Three of his pupils from his immediate circle established major brotherhoods, the Sanūsiyya, Khatmiyya, and Rāshidiyya, from which stemmed several other orders.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , May 1987 , pp. 205 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

NOTES

1 Martin, B. G., Muslim Brotherhoods in 19th-Century Africa (Cambridge, 1976), p. 217, n. 22.Google Scholar

2 For example, Trimingham, J. S., The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford, 1971), pp. 117–21Google Scholar. Although most Western writers call him “al-Fāsī”, he always referred to himself simply as Ahmad b. Idrīs, while some of his students and associates such as al-Sanūsī and al-Ahdal called him, “Abū ‘l-'Abbās al-'Arā'shī.”

3 For a recent study, see Reissner, Johannes, “Die Idrīsiden in 'Asīr. Ein historischer Überblick,” Die Welt des Islams, 21(1981), 164–92.Google Scholar

4 Both dates are given in al-Husaynī, Salih Muhammad al-Ja'farī, A'tār azhār aghsān hazīrat al-taqdīs fī karāmāt al-'ālim… al-sayyid Ahmad b. Idrīs (Cairo, 1394/1974), pp. 55 and 34Google Scholar. The date, 1163, is preferred by the descendants of Ibn Idīrs in Omdurman (The Sudan); interview, Sheikh Idrīs Muhammad 'Ābd al-'Āl/ Karrar, May 1977.

5 On his teachers, see Rinn, L., Marabouts et khouan (Algiers, 1884), pp. 402–3;Google Scholar an anonymous glossator on the margins of Majmū'a shaīfa (Awrād wa-ahzāb wa-qasā'id) (Cairo, n.d.), p. 125; al-Madanī, Sālih, ed., al-Muntaqā al-nafīs … al-sayyid Ahmad b. Idrīs (Cairo, 1380/1960), pp. 2–3,Google Scholar and Voll, J. O., “Two Biographies of Ahmad ibn Idris al-Fasi(1760–1837),” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 6 (1973), p. 644.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Muhammad, b.'Alī al-Sanūsī, Iqūz al-wasnūn bi 'l-hadīth wa 'l-Qur'ān (Beirut, 1968), introduction, p. 8,Google Scholar and Ziadeh, N. A., Sanūsīyah: A Study of a Revivalist Movement in Islam (Leiden, 1958), p. 36.Google ScholarOn Kīrān, Ibn, see 'Umar Kahhāla, Mu'jam al-Mu'allifīn, 15 vols. (Beirut, 1957), vol. 10, p. 109.Google Scholar

7 Al-Madanī, ed., al-Muntaqā al-nafīs, p. 3.

8 Ibid., 11; al-Ja⊂ farī, ed., A'tār, pp. 9–10, and Voll, “Two Biographies,” p.641 (n. 33) and 644. On the Khadiriyya, see Trimingham, Sufi Orders, pp. 114 and 277.

9 Further research is obviously needed on the milieu at the Qarawiyyīn that produced such figures as al-Sanūsī, Ahmad al-Tijānī, and Ibn ldrīs. Certainly, in the case of the latter, the sources give the impression that his ideas were formed before he left Morocco.

10 Ibn Idrīs alludes to this in 'Ākish, al-Hasan b. Ahmad, Munāzara sayyidī Ahmad ibn Idrīs. radiya Allāh 'anhu. wa-fuqahā'al-Najdiyya, Cairo, n.d., p. 22 (on this work, see below, n. 29).Google Scholar

11 Voll, “Two Biographies,” p.645 says that he arrived in Egypt in 1213/1798–99. One of Ibn Idrīs' kar¯ma or miracles was to bring about the French invasion of Egypt because the Alexandria customs damaged his books; see al-Ja'farī, ed., A'tār, p. 37. The story may not be too apocryphal in that Ahmad while traveling along the North African coast could well have heard rumors of the impending French invasion force assembling at Toulon.

12 Voll, “Two Biographies,” p. 636 and n. 18.

13 Interview, Sheikh Idrīs Muhammad 'Abd al-'Āl/Karrar, May 1977, Omdurman. On the wider background, see Abir, M., “The 'Arab Rebellion’ of Amīr Ghālib of Mecca (1788–1813),” Middle Eastern Studies, 3(1971), 185–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Al-Ja'farī, ed., A'tār, pp. 39–40. Ibn Idrīs says that in Mecca he became acquainted with three of the sons of Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Wahhāb, 'Abd Allāh, Husayn, and Sulaymān, as well as with Sa'ūd b. 'Abd al-'Azīz; 'Ākish Manāzara, p. II.

15 See Mubārak, 'Alī Pasha, al-Khitat al-jadīda (Bulaq, 1304–6/1886–88), vol. 11, p. 9.Google Scholar

16 al-Hijrisī, Muhammad Khalīl, al-Jawhar al-nafīs 'alā salawāt Ibn Idrīs (Bulaq, 1310/1892–1893), p. 6.Google Scholar

17 Ibn Idrīs' ties with Upper Egypt need further investigation. Baer, G., Fellah and Townsmen in the Middle East (London, 1982), p. 293Google Scholar reports an uprising in the Isnā area in 1824 led by, “A Maghribī called Ahmad b. Drīs (Idrīis), who had become involved with the customs at Qusayr [compare with the Alexandria story] on his way back to Mecca [and who] declared that he had been sent by God (‘se disait inspirait,’ according to Clot Bey).” According to Mubārak, , al-Khitat, vol. 14, p. 76Google Scholar (not cited by Baer), the insurgent, whom he calls simply “al-shaykh Ahmad,” after being defeated by Ahmad Pasha b. Tāhir Pasha, fled back to the Hijāz, after which no more was heard of him. Idrīsī sources repeat that Ibn Idrīs visited Upper Egypt more than once: “twice or three times,” al-Ja'farī, ed., A'tār, p. 37. Is this insurgent Ibn Idrīs our Ibn Idrīs? If they are the same person, there is a politically activist dimension to Ibn Idrīs that has yet to be discovered.

18 Muhammad 'Uthmān al-Mīrghanī, Manāqib… al-sayyid Ahmad ibn Idrīs (Wad Madanī, 1391/1971), pp. 31–32.

19 'Alī b. Muhammad b. 'Alī an alim from al-Mikhlāf al-Sulaymāni just north of 'Asīr, met Ibn Idrīs in Mecca in 1236/1820–21; 'Ākish, Munāzara, p. 7. Al-Ahdal (see below, 22) is said not only to have met Ibn Idrīs in Mecca but also to have invited him to the Yemen; see al-Rīhāanī, Amīn, Mulūk al-'Arab (Beirut, 1925), vol. I, p. 260.Google Scholar

2O 'Abd Allāh Muhammad al-Hibshī, al-Sūfiyya wa 'l-fuqahā' fī 'l-Yaman (San'a', 1396/1976), pp. 38–39, citing two works in manuscript, al-Ahdal (see below, n. 22), al-Nafas al- Yamānī wa 'l-rūh al-rīhānī fī ijāzāt al-qudāt Banī al-Shawkanī, and Lutf Allāh Jahhāf, Kitāb durar nuhūr al-hūr al-'īn.

21 'Ākish, Munāzara, p. 8.

22 On al-Ahdal, , see Encyclopaedia of Islam (new edition, Leiden, 1960–), vol. 1, pp. 255–56,Google Scholar and Kahhāla, , Mu'jam, vol. 5, p. 140. For a biography of Ibn Idrīs allegedly written by al-Ahdal,Google Scholar see Voll, “Two Biographies,” pp. 640–45.

23 A list is given in Khān, Siddīq Hasan, al-Tāj al-mukallal min jawāhir mā'thir al-tirāz al-ākhir wa 'l-awwal, al-Dīn, 'Abd al-Hakīm Sharaf, ed., 2nd ed. (Bombay, 1383/1963), p.436.Google Scholar

24 A letter from al-Shawkānī to al-Ahdal praising Ibn Idrīs is cited in 'Akish, Munāzara, p. 8. Ibn Idrīs is not mentioned in a recent study of al-Shawkānī, al-Amri, Husayn b. Abdullah, The Yemen in the 18th & 19th Centuries (London, 1985).Google Scholar

25 On al-Bahkalī, see Kahhāla, Mu'jam, vol. 5, p. 117.

26 al-Sanā'ī, Muhammad Zubara, Nayl al-watar min tarājim rijāl al-Yaman fī 'l-qarn al-thālith cashar (Cairo, 1348/1929–1930), vol. 1, pp. 314–18 ('Ākish), and p. 46 ('Attās).Google Scholar On 'Ākish, see Kahhāla, Mu'jam, vol. 3, pp. 201–2.

27 See, for example, Zubāra, Nayl al-watar, vol. I, pp. 308–9 (al-Hāshimī) and pp. 385–86 (al-Muftī); see also, al-Madanī, ed., al-Munraqā al-nafīs, pp. 16–17 and passim.

28 Zubāra, Nayl al-watar, vol. I, p. 192.

29 This is 'Ākish's Munāzara (see above, n. 10). 'Ākish says he wrote it at the request of one of the sons of al-Ahdal, Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahmān, and that he read a first draft to Ibn Idrīs. The work is not listed in the standard accounts of 'Ākish' writings and no manuscript has yet been located. The printed text is not entirely satisfactory; pp. 2–23 comprise the actual debate, followed by four pages of commentary in the form of answers by lbn Idrīs to some of the issues that arose in the debate. This breaks off in mid-sentence. Bell and O'Fahey are preparing a translation.

30 Ibid., pp. 10–11.

31 Al-Madanī, ed., al-Muntaqā al-nafīs, p. 17, and al-Ja'farī, A'tār, p.41.

32 The following pages should be read in conjunction with Martin, “Short Note,” unpublished ms. The principal source for Ibn Idrīs' teachings is al-'Iqd al-nafīs fī nazm jawāhir al-tadrīs sayyid Ahmad ibn Idrīs (many printings; the most recent being Cairo, Mustafā al-Bābī al-Halabī, 1399/1979). It was compiled by an Indian scholar, Ismā'īl al-Nawwāb, from Ibn Idrīs' lectures as recounted by one of the latter's Sudanese students, 'Abd Allah al-Mawārzī (interview, Shaykh Idrīs Muhammad 'Abd al-'Āl, Omdurman, May 1977). Al-'iqd al-nafīs also contains some of Ibn Idrīs' other writings such as his Rūh al-sunna and Risālat al-qawā'id. But a complete study of lbn Idrīs' teachings cannot be undertaken until all of his writings have been located.

33 Martin, “Short Note.”

34 For a concise statement of the Wahhābī position, see al-Rahim, 'Abdal-Rahmān, 'Abdal-Rahīm, 'Abd, Min ta'rīkh shibh al-jazīra al-'Arabiyya fī 'l-'asr al-hadīth, 2nd ed. (Cairo, 1979), vol. I, pp. 41–42.Google Scholar On al-Shawkānī, see al-Amri, The Yemen, pp. 140–71.

35 Al-Mīrghanī, Manāqib, p. 31; see also, Zubāra, Nayl al-watar, vol. 1, p. 223.

36 On al-Sawi, see Voll, “Two Biographies,” p. 637, and Delanoue, G., Moralistes et politiques musulmans dans l'Egypse du XIXe siècle (Cairo, 1982), pp. 210–11.Google ScholarFor some of the taqlid versus ijtihad arguments of this period, see Peters, R., “Idjtihād and taqlīd in 18th and 19th Century Islam,” Die Welt des Islams, 20(1980), 131–45.Google Scholar

37 Al-'Iqd al-nafīs, p. 20; see also, Martin, “Short Note.”

38 From an undated letter to a Sudanese student, Makkī b. 'Abd al-'Azīz, in al-Madanī, ed., A'tār, pp. 52–54.

39 'Ākish, Al-Hasan, Uqūd al-durar fī tarājim rijāl al-qarn al-thālith 'ashar, apud al-Ja'fari, ed., al-Muntaqā al-nafīs, p. 26. By “this tariqa,” Ibn Idrīs apparently means the Shādhiliyya; Ahmadiyya refers to the Prophet, not Ibn Idrīs.Google Scholar

40 Makhtutā kātib al-shūna, al-Jalīl, al-Shātir Busaylī 'Abd, ed. (Cairo, 1963), p. 111.Google Scholar

41 Schimmel, Annemarie, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, 1975), p. 227Google Scholar; see also, pp. 373–74 and 403–4. The tariqa Muhammadiyya concept obviously requires further research. Gran's, Peter promised (1979) article on the subject has not appeared, as far as we know, nor are his comments in his Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt. 1760–1840 (Austin, 1979), pp. 134–35Google Scholar, very helpful since he gives no references (as far as we are aware, neither Ibn Idrīs nor his pupils ever evinced “strong feelings about coined money,” which Gran asserts was one of the hallmarks of the tariqa Muhammadiyya movement). But, as Gran notes, a seminal work on the subject is Muhammad al-Birkawī (d. 1573), al-Tarīqa al-Muhammadiyya (see Brockelmann, C., Geschichte der arabischen Literatur [Leiden, 1937–1949], vol. 2, p. 585,Google Scholar and Supplement, vol. 2, p. 655). Among the several commentaries of al-Birkawī's work is one by 'Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulsī (d. 1731). There exists a précis of both al-Nābulsī's commentary and the original text by al-Salāwī, Ahmad b. Nāsir, Kitāb minah al-samadiyya fī ikhrisār al-hadīqa al-nadiyya (ms., Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, tasawwuf, 171).Google Scholar The significance of this is that al-Salāwī was born in 1206/1791–92 in Salé in Morocco and studied in Fez. He made the pilgrimage and settled in Egypt, ending his life as grand qadi of the Turco-Egyptian Sudan. He made many friends among the Sudanese religious class and wrote several works, including a commentary on the celebrated Mawlid of Ahmad al-Dardayr (see Brockelmann, supplement, vol. 2, p. 480). In other words, he was yet another North African, along with al-Tijānlli, Ibn Idrīs, and al-Sanūsī, who had studied in Fez around the turn of the 18th/19th centuries and who was preoccupied with the tarīqa Muhammadiyya idea; on al-Salāwī, see Karrar and O'Fahey, “Al-Salāwī and the Sudan,” Sudan Notes and Records (forthcoming).

42 Duveyrier, H., La confrérie musulmane de Sîdî Mohammed ben 'Ali es-Senoûsî (Paris, 1884), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

43 Karrār, 'Alī Sālih, Athar al-ta'ālīm al-Idrīsiyya fī 'l-turuq al-sūfiyya fī 'l-Sūdan, unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Khartoum, 1977, p. 69.Google Scholar

44 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Sanusi of Cyrenaica (Oxford, 1949);Google Scholar on Muhammad 'Abd Allāh Hasan, see Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods, pp. 177–201.

45 Holt, P. M., The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1970), pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

46 le Châtelier, A., Les confréries musulmanes du Hedjaz (Paris, 1887), p. 15.Google Scholar

47 Al-Ja'farī, ed., A'tār, p.83.

48 Ibid., 63; see also, Zubāra, Nayl al-watar, vol. I, pp. 314–18.

49 Al-Madanī, ed., al-Muntaqā al-nafīs, p. 35; see also, Voll, “Two Biographies,” p. 637.

50 Texts and translations of the letters are being prepared for publication by the working group at the University of Bergen.

51 Al-Ja'farī, ed., A'tār, pp. 49–52.

52 On Ibn Idrīs' impact on al-Madanī, see Lings, M., A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century: Shaikh Ahmad al-'Alawi, 2nd ed. (London, 1973), p. 71.Google Scholar See also, De Jong, F., “Madaniyya,” Encyclopaedia of Islam (new ed.), vol. 5, pp. 948–49.Google Scholar

53 Studies of the Sanūsiyya are numerous: on al-Sanūsī's teachings, see Nallino, C. A., “Le dottrine del fondatore della confraternita senussita,” in Raccolta di scritti, editi ed inediti (Rome, 1940), vol. 2, pp. 395–410.Google Scholar On the Khatmiyya, see Voll, J. O., A History of the Khatmiyyah in the Sudan, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1969.Google Scholar On the Idrīsiyya in Egypt, see De Jong, F., Turuq and Turuq-Linked Institutions in Egypt (Leiden, 1978), p. 111 and passim,Google Scholar and in the Sudan, Karrār, Athar al-ta'ālim, pp. 82–95.

54 al-Nasayh, Ahmad b. Idrīs b., Kitāb al-ibāna al-nūriyya fī shā'n sāhib al-tarīqa al-Khatmiyya, ms., if. 5–6 (Bergen collection, accession no. 240). This important source on the history of the Khatmiyya is being edited for publication by Karrar and Dr. M. I. Abu Salim and translated by the present writers.Google Scholar

55 Al-Ja'farī, ed., A'tār, p. 96.

56 We follow here Delanoue, Moralistes et politiques, pp. 350–52 (especially p. 350, n. 12) and 615. Al-‘Attār's fatwa appears to be the same work as described by Gran, Islamic Roots, pp. 139–43 and 199. There are, however, certain differences between Delanoue and Gran; Delanoue reasonably identifies the unnamed mujtahid as al-Mīrghanī because his Sudanese enquirer says that the former, while in the Sudan, called himself khātim al-awliyā', “the seal of the saints”; Gran states that the fatwa which he entitles Risālat al-'aallāma al-'Attār fī 'l-ijtihād was directed against al-Sanūsī who, as far as is known, never visited the Sudan. In an appendix (p. 199) Gran says that al-Sanūsī, “was a student or acquaintance of al-'Attār when he came to al-Azhar around 1832.” “Around 1832,” al-Sanūsī was either with his master in Sabyā or acting as his agent in Mecca. Delanoue gives the name as we have given it; Gran gives it as “Muhammad b. Abī Sa'īd al-Kirkāwī l-Sannāwī” (the latter is probably al-Sinnārī, i.e., from Sinnār, occasionally spelled with sād), from al-Shindī (obviously Shendi or Shandī), living at al-Shākī (a town unknown to us). The differences continue; according to Delanoue (p. 615), the manuscript of the fatwa is to be found in the Dār al-Kutub (Cairo), majmū'Taymūr, 343, ff. 44–81, having been copied in Jumāda II 1266/April–May 1850 by one ‘Alī Abū Futūh. According to Gran (p. 199), it is to be found in majāmī ‘Taymūr, 323, ff. 45–81, being copied in 1841/1264 (but 1264 = 1847–48) by 'Alī b. Futūh.

57 Ismā'īl al-Walī (d. 1863) says this clearly in his Kitāb al-'uhūd al-wāfiya al-jaliyya fī kayfiyyat sifat al-tarīqa al-Ismā'ī1iyya (completed Ramadān 1239/May 1824), ms. f. S (Bergen collection, accession no. 197; there are printed versions), “l took the tariqa from him, that is his tariqa known as the Khatmiyya.” Trimingham's assertion that al-Mīrghani inaugurated his order after Ibn Idrīs' death is unfounded, Sufi Orders in Islam, p. 117. For the Funj Chronicle, see Makhtūta kāsib al-shūna, Busaylī, ed., p. 73.

58 Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi, p. 12. It is, perhaps, indicative of al-Mīrghanī's relationship with his own class—the Meccan ulama—that his first zawiya was established at Dār al-Khayzarān in the heart of Mecca; Châtelier, Confréries, p. 14.

59 See further, Ibrahim, Abdalla Mahmoud, A History of the Isma'iliyya Tariqa, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1980. A qasīda on one of the Nuba Mountains expeditions by a son of Ismā'il al-Walī, Ahmad al-Azharī (d. 1882),Google Scholar is given in al-Rahīm, Muhammad 'Abd, Nafathāt al-yarā'fi 'l-adab wa 'l-ta'rikh wa 'l-ijtimā' (Khartoum, 1932), vol. I, pp. 104–6.Google Scholar

60 What follows is based on Karrar, Ali Salih, The Sufi Brotherhoods in the Sudan until 1900, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Bergen, 1985, pp. 111–24. This thesis provides a detailed account of those tariqas in the Sudan derived, directly or indirectly, from Ibn Idrīs.Google Scholar

61 This is underscored in a letter from Ibn Idrīs' sons to al-Rashīd, dated Shawwāl 1273/May–June 1857, expressing their support for him in his time of troubles, i.e., the heresy charges; al-Ja‘farī, A‘tār, pp. 65–66.

62 The name is given thus in an autograph sanad issued by al-Rashīd in 1272/1855–56; Bergen collection, KH327. 15/34.

63 Châtelier, Confréries, pp. 94–95.

64 Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods, pp. 177–201. “Al-Shaykh” was his name and not a title, as most sources state. On another student of al-Rashīd, Muhammad al-Dandarāwī and his order, see Karrar, Sufi Brotherhoods, pp. 122–24. The extent of Ibn Idrīs' influence in northeast Africa has yet to be fully charted; on the Sālihiyya, Ahmadiyya, and Dandarāwiyya in Somalia and East Africa, see Cerulli, E., Somalia (Rome, 1957), vol. 1, pp. 189–95; I.Google ScholarLewis, M., “Sufism in Somaliland: a Study in Tribal Islam,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 17 (1955), 581–602 and 18 (1956), 145–60,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Nimtz, A. H. Jr, Islam and Politics in East Africa (Minneapolis, 1980), pp. 61–62.Google Scholar

65 Rinn, Marabouts, p. 46.

66 The most recent study of the Padri movement, but based largely on Dutch sources, is Dobbin, C., Islamic Revivalism in a Changing Peasant Economy: Central Sumatra, 1784–1847 (London, 1983)Google Scholar. Professor Anthony Johns of the Australian National University points out (personal communication) that no study of the religious writings generated by the movement has yet been made; this he hopes to undertake.

67 Delanoue, Moralistes et politiques, p. 128, n. 64a.

68 Karrar, personal observation, 1982; see also, Karrār, Athar al-ta'ālīm, pp. 67–69.

69 Salīm, Muhammad Ibrāhīm Abū, ed., Manshūrāt al-Mahdiyya (Beirut, 1969), p. 25.Google Scholar See also, Holt, Mahdist State, pp. 105–6 for an analysis of the proclamation. On al-Dufār–21. There is a Mahdist thread to the Ibn Idrīs story, although he himself denied any claims to be the Mahdi; see Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods, p. 116. Both al-Sanūsī and al-Mīrghanī were preoccupied with the Mahdist idea; for the former, see Martin, op. cit., pp. 116–18, and for the latter, al-Nasayh, Ibn, Kitāb al-ibāna, ms., ff. 55 and 71–76.Google Scholar

70 Trimingham, Sufi Orders, pp. 106–7. A major question to be answered is the relationship, if any, between al-Tijāni and lbn Idrīs; al-Nabhānī, for example, describes the former as a khalīfa of the latter, see al-Nabhānī, Yūsuf, Jāmi' karāmāt al-awliyā' (Cairo, n.d.), vol. 1, p. 349.Google Scholar

71 Trimingham, Sufi Orders, pp. 115, who in the question of Pan-Islamism cites a brief biography by a grandson, al-Muta'āl, Shams al-Dīn b. 'Abd, Kanz al-sa'āda wa ‘l-rashād (Khartoum, 1939), pp. 9–18.Google Scholar By the 20th century, the Idrīsī family in both the Yemen and the Sudan were involved in both secular and religious politics; see, Reissner, “lie Idrīsiden,” passim, and Karrār, Athar al-ta'ālīm, pp. 121–42.

72 De Jong, Turuq and Turuq-Linked Institutions, p. 151, n. 120.

73 The Mahdi used the Prophetic vision (hadra) to justify the overthrow of an entire political order.

74 See further, Karrar, Sufi Brorherhoods, pp. 133–73. Nor is it true to say that these orders were less concerned with silsilas (Trimingham, Sufi Orders, pp. 106–7). The literature abounds with them; one example is al-Sanūsī, , al-Salsabīl al-ma'īn fī ‘l-tarā'iq al-arba'īn (there are several editions; one may be found on the margins of the same author's al-Masā'il al-'ashar, Cairo, 1353/1953).Google Scholar

75 See Dobbin, Islamic Revivalism, passim; for Sinnār, see Spaulding, Jay, The Heroic Age of Sinnār (East Lansing, 1985).Google Scholar