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Muslim Politics and Resistance to Colonial Rule: Shaykh Uways B. Muḥammad Al-Barāwī and the Qādirīya Brotherhood in East Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

B. G. Martin
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Shaykh Uways b. Muḥammad al-Barāwī (1847–1909) was an important leader of the Qādirīya brotherhood in southern Somalia, on Zanzibar, and along the East African coast from Kenya to Mozambique, and founded his own branch of Qādirīya, the Uwaysīya. Before his death in 1909 when he was assassinated by representatives of the rival Sālihīya brotherhood (under the leadership of Muḥammȧd 'Ȧbdallah Hasan, the ‘Mad Mullah’), Uways missionary activities were very considerable.

Uways' branch of the Qādiriya was probably behind certain episodes of Muslim resistance to European penetration into Buganda in the late 1880's, at the behest of Sayyid Barghash of Zanzibar. Indeed the relations between Shaykh Uways and successive rulers of Zanzibar, Barghash, Khalīfa, and Ḥamid b. Thuwaynī were very close. In 90's, certain Muslim elements in Tanganyika, in conjunction with the ṭarīqa, made trouble for the Germans in SE Tanganyika during the ‘Mecca Letters affair’ at Lindi in 1908. This episode revealed a division in the Tanganyika Muslim community.

The Uwaysīya was responsible for massive conversions to Islam in the coastal region, in inner Tanganyika, and on the Eastern fringes of the Congo at the end of the 19th and the beginning decades of the 20th centuries.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 1969 , pp. 471 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

1 For instance, there was a split in the North and West African branches of the Tijānīya ṭarīqa over this point. See Abun-Nasr, J. M., The Tijānīyya, a Sufi order in the Modern World (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar, introduction and chapter iv. For the resistance of the Amir 'Abd al-Qādir and some of the Algerian Qādirīya, see the same source, pp. 65 ff. More details about the attitudes of other ṭarīqas may be found in Chatelier, A. Le, Les Confréries musulmanes du Hedjaz (Paris, 1887).Google Scholar The Sudanese Mahdī had connexions with the Sammānīya, a branch of the Khalwatlya brotherhood (see Trimingham, J. S., Islam in the Sudan (London, 1965), 93 ff.)Google Scholar. For the neo-Sūfī organization of the Sanūsīya of North Africa and its resistance to the French and Italians, see Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Sanusi of Cyrenaica (Oxford, 1954).Google Scholar For Muḥammad 'Abdallāh Ḥasan (‘The Mad Mullah’), the leader of the Sālihīya of Somalia, cf. Lewis, I. M., The Modern History of Somaliland (London, 1965), chap. iv.Google Scholar

2 For the life of Shaykh Uways, see 'Abd al-Raḥmān b. Shaykh 'Umar al-'Alī al- Qādirl, Jala' al-'Aynayn fī manāqib al-Shaykhayn, al-Shaykh al-Walī Ḥājj Uways al-Qādirī wa'l-Shaykh al-Kāmil… 'Abd al-Raḥmān al-Zayla'l (Mashhad al-Husaynī Press, Cairo, n.d. (ca. 1954)) Compiled by Shaykh 'Abd al-Raḥmān b. 'Umar, this collective work is in two sections, the first about Shaykh Uways (pp. 2–85), the second about another great Qādirī leader of Somaliland, Shaykh 'Abd al-Raḥmān al-Zayla 'I (pp. 2–102). A second source, also written by Shaykh 'Abd al-Raḥmān b. 'Umar, Al-Jawhar al-Nafīs fī khawāss al-Shaykh Uways, was corrected and published after his death by his student, Maḥmūd al-Kalamāḥl (Cairo: Mashhad al-Ḥusaynī Press, 1383 H/1964). As its third chapter, the Jawhar al-Nafīs contains a short independent work by another follower of Shaykh Uways, Shaykh Qāsim al-Barāwī, Ta'nis al-jalīs fī manāqib al-Shaykh Uways, 111–54. The chapter has considerable biographical material about Uways; some can also be gleaned from Ibn Muḥyl al-Dīn Qāsim al-Barāwī's Majmū'a qaşā'id… (Cairo: Muṣṭafa al-Bābī al Ḥalabī, 1374 H/1955).

3 Jawhar, 8–9, 115; Jalā', 3 ff.

4 Jalā', 7.

5 For a short biography of Salmān al-Kaylānī, see ‘Abd al-Karīm 'Allāf, Baghdād al- Qadīma (Baghdād, 1380 H/1960), 198–200. For the Kaylānī family in the late nineteenth century, their ties to the Ottomans, their waqfs and social connexions, see Ibrāhīm al-Durūbi, Al-Baghdādīyūn, akhbāruhum wa majālisuhum (Baghdad, 1377 H/1958), 5–23.

06 Jalā', 10.

07 For these polemics, see Uways's qaṣīda attacking the Ṣāliḥīya in Majmū'a qaṣā'id…, 60–70. More of the same can be found in Shaykh 'Abdallāh b. Mu'allim Yūsuf al-Quṭbī al-Qolonqolī's Al-Majmū'at al-mubāraka (Cairo: Mashhad al-Ḥusaynl Press, n.d.). See Jalā', 51, for a line from one of Uways's Somali poems.

8 Jalā', 52–6.

09 Cerulli, E., Somalia (Rome, 1957), 1, 187.Google Scholar

10 Jawhar, 15–24.

11 Ibid. 11–12.

12 Jalā', 21–30.

13 Ibid. 3, 27, 30.

14 Ibid. 24.

15 See Abdalla Saleh Abdalla al-Farsy, Tarehe ya Imam Skafi, na wanavyuoni wakubwa wa mashiriki ya Afrika (Zanzibar, 1944), 25–6, for an incident between Barghash and an Ibāḍī (one of the Barwānī family), who abandoned his sect and became a Sunni; and page 67 for Barghash's activities in printing Ibāḍī religious books. My thanks are due to J. W. T. Allen for making an English translation of this source.

16 Information from Shaykh Ḥasan b. 'Umayr al-Shirāzī al-Qādirī, Shāfi'i qāḍl of Dares- Salaam, a prominent Qādirī leader and author, 3 Apr. 1968. For the biography of Shaykh Ḥasan, see al-Farsy, Tarehe, 89. and A. Abel, Les Musulmans noirs du Maniéma (Brussels, 1960), 24–5 ff.

17 According to al-Farsy, Tarehe, 35, the most widespread ṭarīqa in Zanzibar before 1850 was the Shādhilīya; in the second half of the nineteenth century it was revived there and in the Comoro Islands by Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Abī Bakr al-Hanzāwanl of Moroni (1850–1904). This man was also a Khalīfa of Shaykh Uways (cf. Jawhar, 21). Other Khalīfas of Shaykh Uways included the prominent Bravanese intellectual Shaykh 'Abd al-'Azīz al-Amawī (1832–96) and Sayyid 'Umar b. Qullatayn al-Nuḍayrī, a popular preacher (see Jalā', 22–3). A prominent Rifā'ī leader of this region was Shaykh Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Khamīs (Aḥmad Fundi) of Anjouan, of Ḥaḍraml descent and the author Al-Durrat al-Sāmīya fī ma'rifat faḍā'il sulūk alṭarīqat al-Rifā'īya (Cairo, 1357 H/1937). More information about the disputes and Pan-Islamic ties of these brotherhoods may be had from C. Snouck Hurgronje, ‘Eenige arabische Strijdschriften besproken’, in Verspreide Geschriften, iii (Leipzig, 1923), 151–88, and the same author's ‘Les confréries religieuses de la Mecque et le Panislamisme’, 189–206, in the same volume.

18 National Archives of Tanzania, Dar-es-Salaam(NAT), Akta des kaiserlichen Gouvernementes von Deutsch-Ostafrika betreffend religiöse Bewegungen (Islamische Bewegungen), series G9, vol. 46, Band 1, 1908–10, Bezirksamtmann Wendt, Lindi, to Government, Dares- Salaam, J. no. 133, 12 Jan. 1909. In this letter, Wendt states ‘according to the Liwali of Lindi, and Qadi Omari, a local Muslim leader, an Islamic movement, a kind of zikri was taking place here about twenty years ago (1888), which died down in the von Wissmann period and then became popular again in 1901 and 1902…spread by shaykhs from Zanzibar’. Wendt also noted its appearance at Saadani about 1903.

19 See Jawhar, 51 ff., for a number of qaṣīdas by Shaykh Uways.

20 Coupland, R., The Exploitation of East Africa, 1856–1890 (London, 1939), 15–17.Google Scholar

21 Bennett, N. R., The Arab Power of Tanganyika in the Nineteenth Century (Ph.D. thesis, Boston University, 1961) 13Google Scholar; Tib, Tippu, Maisha, ed. Whiteley, (Nairobi, 1966), 11.Google Scholar

22 Tippu Tib, Maisha, 23, 91, 113 ff.

23 Ibid. 29. The name of this lady was Bint Sālim b. ‘Abdallāh al-Barwānīya.

24 See note 21 above.

25 Oliver, R., ‘Some factors in the British occupation of East Africa, 1884–1894’, Uganda Journal, xv, no. 1 (1951), 49–64.Google Scholar The quotation is from page 52; Oliver, R., The Missionary Factor in East Africa (London, 1952)Google Scholar, see chap, iii and especially pp. 94–116.

26 Oliver, R., Missionary Factor, 107–8.Google Scholar

27 Tippu Tib, Maisha, 23; that Sulaymān b. Zāhir al-Jabrī al-Barāwī was a member of the Qādirīya was confirmed by Shaykh Ḥasan b. 'Umayr al-Shīrāzī, interview, 10 Apr. 1968. He was also a distant relative of Abū Bakr b. Ṭaha al-Jabrī al-Barāwī of Bagamoyo, according to Shaykh Ḥasan.

28 R. Oliver, Missionary Factor, 108, and especially footnotes 1 and 2.

29 Jawhar, 24.

30 Oliver, R., Missionary Factor, 108.Google Scholar

31 N. R. Bennett, Arab Power, 218–19. After the execution of Bushiri at Pangani in December 1889 the German Major Hermann von Wissmann informed the British representative, Euan-Smith, that’ Bushiri had made certain revelations regarding the Sultan and other Arab notables…he had received from him a box containing a large number of papers, letters and other documents which were believed to contain certain treasonable matter'. The Arab Governor of Pangani later informed the sultan that Bushiri had ‘implicated him [Sayyid Khalifa] in the recent disturbances'.

32 NAT, Bezirksamtmann Wendt, Lindi, to von Rechenberg, Dar-es-Salaam, telegrams of 26 and 27 July 1908.

33 NAT, Wendt to von Rechenberg, 3 Aug. 1908; Bezirksamtmann Schön, Kilwa, to von Schleinitz (telegrams) and Wendt to von Rechenberg (letter), 19 Aug. 1908.

34 See a new translation of the Mecca Letter, from Arabic to English, from the Islamische Bewegungen file, vol. xlvi, on page 59 of my translation of C. H. Becker, ‘Materials for the understanding of Islam in German East Africa’, Tanzania Notes and Records, lxviii (Feb. 1968), 31–61. Sayyid Aḥmad or Shaykh Aḥmad may be tentatively identified as Sayyid Aḥmad As'ad al-Rifā'I, of a prominent family of Madina (and hereditary guardians of the Prophet's Tomb), and a close ally of Shaykh Abū'l-Huda al-Sayyādl of Aleppo in the Rifā'īya ṭarīqa. Cf. C. Snouck Hurgronje,‘Eenige arabische Strijdschriften…’, 154–9.

35 NAT, Letter of Wendt, Lindi, to von Rechenberg, 3 Aug. 1908.

36 NAT, Dispatch of von Rechenberg to Reichskolonialamt, Berlin, J. 15469, 12 Aug. 1908.

37 NAT, Draft report of Herrmann, Tabora, for H. Zache, Dar-es-Salaam, 5 Dec. 1908.

38 Ibid.

39 Jawhar, 24, lists Zāhir b. Muḥammad al-Barāwi as a khalīfa of Shaykh Uways.

40 NAT, Von Rechenberg, Runderlass, J. 2799, 15 Feb. 1909.

41 NAT, Von Rechenberg to Reichskolonialamt, J. 15469, 12 Aug. 1908.

42 I am grateful to my former colleague, Dr John Iliffe, for this material from his ‘information’ files. The informant here is the grand-nephew of Rumaliza, Khalfani b. Nāsir b. Khalfān al-Barwānī, a resident of Mingoyo.

43 Chittick, H. N., in Annual Report for 1958, Department of Antiquities, Tanganyika Government (Dar-es-Salaam 1959), 28–9.Google Scholar

44 Hore, E. C., Tanganyika (London, 1892), 86–7.Google Scholar (I owe this and many of the following references about Rumaliza to my former colleague Dr Andrew Roberts.)

45 Ceulemans, P., La Question arabe et le Congo, 1883–1892, Mémoires de l'Academie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer (Brussels, 1959), 52, footnote 1.Google Scholar

46 Towards the middle of 1886, Rumaliza was obtaining help from Tippu Tib for his activities in Uvinza. See Tippu Tib, Maisha, 119; E. C. Hore, Tanganyika, 273.

47 Tippu Tib, Maisha, 131.

48 Ibid. 119–21; Rochus Schmidt, Geschichte des Araberaufstand.es in Ost-Afrika (Frankfurt/Oder, 1892), 184, 217.

49 Rochus Schmidt, Geschichte, 184.

50 Cf. Deutsches Kolonial-Blatt (1894), 6; Brode, H., Tippoo Tib, the Story of his Career in Central Africa (London, 1907), 238.Google Scholar

51 Brode, H., Tippoo Tib, 239Google Scholar; Deutsches Kolonial-Blatt (1894), 6–14.

52 Slade, Ruth, King Leopold's Congo (London, 1960), 113.Google Scholar

53 Grant and Bagenal (1929) in Kigoma District Book, III.

54 von Prince, T., Gegen Araber und Wahehe (Berlin, 1914), 293.Google Scholar

55 Deutsches Kolonial-Blatt (1895), 382; H. Brode, Tippo Tib, 249. For more information on Mkwawa and his fort, see A. Redmayne, ‘Mkwawa and the Hehe wars’, J. Afr. Hist, ix, no. 3 (1968), 409–36.

56 For the texts of some of these manifestoes sent to Northern Nigeria, see Al-Khiṭābātal-mutabādila bayn al-lmām al-Mahāl wa'l-Shaykh Ḥayātū(Khartum 1381 H/1962), 8–13.

57 See C. Snouck Hurgronje, ‘De laatste Vermaning van Mohammed an zijne Gemeente, uigevaardigt in het Jaar 1880 n.c.’, Verspreide Geschriften, i (1923), 125 ff. Shaykh Aḥmad is by no means dead: in March and April 1968 leaflets were circulated in his name in Zanzibar, saying that he had had another vision about Muslims who were committing offences against Islam. In reply, Mr Obeid Karume, addressing a mass rally, warned the islanders of the dangers of ‘pseudo-religious sects’ wanting to ‘ferment internal strife in independent countries’; see Sunday News, Dar-es-Salaam, 12 May 1968, front page.

58 For this subject, see C. H. Becker,’ Materials…’, 34–7; the ethnic blend in Zanzibar was similar. For conditions there, see Jamāl Zakariyā Qāsim, Dawlat Bū Sa'īd fī ‘Umānwa sharq Ifrīqīyā, 1741–1861 (Cairo, 1967), 217–21.

59 Salaḥ al Bakrī, Fī janūb al-jazīrat al-'Arabīya (Cairo, 1368 H/1949), 192.

60 Some Baluchīs at least were members of the Qādirīya ṭarīqa. At the village of Kaole just outside Bagamoyo, a khalīfa of the order named Shaykh ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Jalāl Khān al-Balūshī (d. 1351 H/1932) is buried near the entrance to the village mosque.

61 NAT, H. Brode, German Consul, Zanzibar, to Government, Dar-es-Salaam, J. 275, 8 Apr. 1909. This letter contains the only mention made of Shaykh Uways in the Islamische Bewegungen files. Brode, who was also a friend of Tippu Tib, described Uways as ‘having special influence at Brava and maintaining connections here’.

62 It is worth noting that some of the Baghdad Qādirīs of the Kaylānī family, such as the naqīb al-ashrāf Salmān b. ‘Ali (1843–95), father of Uways's teacher, Mustafa b. al-Sayyid Salmān, were on very close terms with ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd II. Salmān visited the Sultan at least twice in Istanbul to be decorated with the Mejīdī Order, first class, and other medals. Near the end of his life Salmān was made kaziasker of Anatolia, then of Rumelia (cf. ‘Abd al-Karlm ‘Allaf, Baghdād al-Qādima, 199). Thus it is just conceivable that the Sultan might have tried to use the ṭarīqa for Pan-Islamic purposes.

63 NAT, von Rechenberg to Reichskolonialamt, J. 15469, 13 Aug. 1908. In the final paragraphs of this dispatch von Rechenberg suggested that the ‘ favourable position of the [German] administration might be essentially strengthened if German East Africa were recognized by the Caliph in Constantinople as Dār al-Islām. Possibly this could be accomplished by the German Embassy there…’ Marschall von Bieberstein, German Ambassador to the Porte, made inquiries about the matter, and reported to Reichskanzler von Biilow (NAT, Auswärtiges Amt A. 20986.08, J. 315, Pera, 10 Dec. 1908). After conversations between von Bieberstein, the Ḥanafī Shaykh al-Islām and the Fetva Emini (an Ottoman official who issued decrees on religious questions) in Istanbul, it was decided that a region might be called Dār al-Islām if there were no restrictions on the exercise of their religion by the Muslims, and as long as the Caliph (‘Abd al-Ḥamīd II) was mentioned in the khuṭba or Friday bidding prayer. Von Rechenberg later dropped the idea, because of the coup of the Young Turks, and because the mention of the name ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd II might encroach on German rights of sovereignty. However, the name ‘Abd-al-Ḥamīd II and that of Sayyid Barghash had been mentioned in the khuṭba at Bagamoyo until just before 1900 (cf. C. H. Becker, ‘Materials…’, 35 and note 18).

64 Bezirksamtmann Dinckelacker, Bagamoyo, to Goverment, Dar-es-Salaam, 21 Aug. 1908, and letter from A. Lorenz, a German teacher in Bagamoyo to Government, Dar-es-Salaam, 9 Mar. 1909.

65 A. Lorenz to Government, 9 Mar. 1909.

66 Jawhar, 24; for Zāhir's rain-making and other activities, see Herrmann, Draft Report, 5 Dec. 1908.

67 Von Rechenberg, Dar-es-Salaam, to Bezirksamtmann Dinckelacker, Bagamoyo, 8 Mar. 1909.

68 German Consul Brode, Zanzibar, to Government, Dar-es-Salaam, J. 275, 8 Apr. 1909.

69 Wendt, Lindi, to Government, Dar-es-Salaam, J. 770, 2 Aug. 1910; von Rechenberg to Wendt, 11 Oct. 1910, etc., etc. The trial of the defendants was concluded by Nov. 1910, as von Rechenberg believed that the matter had been allowed to drag on for far too long. The trial material, in section 1 D/8b of the German archives, has not been recovered, and may have been destroyed during the peregrinations of the German colonial administration after 1915.

70 A. Abel, Les Musulmans noirs, 23, note 1, and 151 ff., give part of the texts of these documents. I am grateful to Father F. Schildknecht, W. F., of Dar-es-Salaam, for letting me see his copies of the Arabic texts, in which these silsilas (not published by Abel) are given in full. I would also like to thank Herr Peter Geissler of the National Archives, Dar-es-Salaam, for his help.