The History of Islam in Africa

The tradition by which sickness is attributed to spirit causation is widely accepted. From Steve Feierman’s discussion of the social roots of health and healing in modern Africa, to the collection of essays in African Therapeutic Systems, edited by Z. A. Ademuwagun and others, the medical tradition in which the spiritual world is believed to be source for the endangerment of mental and physical health is articulated.³ To be sick, therefore, is to be in the hold of a spirit-causing agent and, hence, it is the ultimate purpose of healing to restore normal health.

Using case interviews conducted with trainees at the Akonnedi Shrine in Ghana, Brookman-Amissah investigated the vocation of the call to the priesthood as it was understood in Ghanaian societies. Several of the interviewees were being trained to become attendants at family shrines, but it was also noted that many had become possessed by spirit sources with which they had no previous contacts—a condition that illustrates access to sacred knowledge as being a privilege bestowed by the spirit world. The critical value of the priesthood profession then is to serve both the spirit and the profane worlds—that is, to mediate between the visible and the invisible domains and to protect society from spirit pollution. It was on this important priestly function that Brookman-Amissah focused.

Brookman-Amissah researched how trainees at the shrine were prepared to communicate with the spirit world. The priests were instructed to become highly disciplined so as to receive clear and accurate prognostications from the gods—the logic being that, the better disciplined and well trained the specialist was, the more reliable would be the diagnosis and treatments. It was not uncommon for persons seeking cures to travel from specialist to specialist in search of the most effective practitioners.⁷ Waite says there was a time when all health concerns in the Eastern Bantu environment were brought before a single medicine person; over the centuries, however, as social concerns increased, specialization developed. Thus, in Bantu Africa, as in the western regions of sub-Saharan Africa, witch doctors, herbalists, and many categories of local priests emerged. These specialists established medical traditions that treated sickness and also rendered innocuous the effects of witchcraft and offensive magic.

Competition between the systems was unavoidable in some circumstances. In several communities, however, the availability of both modes of redressing imbalances was seen by those who sought medicine as offering additional choices. This pluralistic/pragmatic approach was recorded often in the nineteenth-century history of the non-Muslim Asante of West Africa,⁸ whose contacts with Islamic culture date back to the mid-eighteenth century. Several Muslim residents of the Asante capital of Kumase produced and distributed Islamic prayers and amulets as protective and curative devices.⁹ In fact, Asantehene [King] Osei Tutu Kwame (ruled 1804–23) was said to have shown particular interest in Muslim amulets and prayers; several Muslims at the capital serviced the palace, as was recorded by many European agents who visited Kumase.¹⁰ Both sacrifices and rituals performed by indigenous practitioners and amulets and prayers offered by Muslims were perceived to contribute to Asante national security. Arabic manuscripts collected from nineteenth-century Asante reveal that the Muslims of Kumase possessed esoteric sources from which they made charms thought able to cure leprosy, bed-wetting, smallpox, sexual impotency, and many other diseases common in the region.¹¹ The specific contents of the manuscripts will be discussed later.

Such eclectic practice was not limited to nineteenth-century Asante. Trimingham comments on how indigenous religions of East Africa rapidly became inadequate in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.¹³ New diseases demanded new skills. Hartwig identified a number of diseases that spread in the East African hinterlands as commercial contacts with the Swahili coast expanded. Along the long-distance trade routes, epidemics such as smallpox and cholera that had hitherto been common to Indian Ocean communities were introduced. Furthermore, diseases that had been confined to certain interior regions of East Africa were transmitted for the first time to other districts.¹⁴ The frequent devastation caused by old and new diseases resulted in increased accusations being made about sorcery and witchcraft in some East African communities, and the situation lent itself to the eclectic approach. Muslim prayers and amulets were among the most commonly prescribed treatments.

In discussions about the history of medicine in Egypt and the Arab world, both natural and supernatural procedures are present. In the earlier decades of the eleventh century, for example, Ibn Sina empirically discussed such medical topics as gynecology, cardiac drugs, tuberculosis, and medical plants. In operations for cataract and in castrations of slaves intended as eunuchs, surgery was performed by Muslim specialists. In many rural communities of Africa, circumcision continues to be performed by Muslim specialists. In fact, as Humphrey Fisher observed in his “Islamic healing in Black Africa,” there is considerable literature in Arabic manuscripts to demonstrate that Muslim specialists in Africa had knowledge on “vaccination or inoculation against smallpox, the treatment of guinea-worm, dealing with gun wounds, the medical care of horses, and diagnosis and treatment of hemorrhoids.”¹⁵ Such information on secular remedies notwithstanding, it is the efficacy of prayers and amulets that immediately comes to mind when the subject of Islamic healing is addressed.

In this regard it is interesting to note that it has been demonstrated by medical research that a treatment in which both patient and doctor believe can work miracles.¹⁹ Again, we return to the idea of hidden knowledge and detailed training. The holy men who produced prayers and amulets ascribed the efficacy of their medicine to sacred sources, and while aspects of this Muslim perception about the relationship between the sacred and the profane is a legacy from the pre-Islamic jahiliyya era, the historian Neil McHugh has pointed to sufficient evidence supporting the observation that Islamic mysticism and the spiritual interpretation of holistic medicine were reenforced in the rise of sufism.²⁰ Through asceticism, abstinence, meditation, and good works, sufis became closer to God; such proximity to the Supreme Being bestowed beneficent power (baraka) that brought blessing to devotees and even onto the communities in which the sufi resided. However, even though Muslim clerics or holy men may not be practicing sufis, it is important to note that they, like the ascetic sufis, have been perceived as having supernatural perception (batin)—specialized and hidden knowledge that is acquired from years of training. Similar to the conclusions arrived by Brookman-Amissah in his assessment of indigenous medical practices, Brenner identified the activities that bestowed baraka and batin on holy men as fundamentally essential to the efficacy of their prayers and amulets.²¹

The specialized and esoteric knowledge of the holy man (ilm al-batin), is quite different from the zahir category (including the basic reading and writing of Arabic, the primary study of the Quran and the prophetic hadith), which is carried out in public. As specialized information, batin knowledge was protected. For example, Pouwels has observed that Swahili Muslims place so much value on the books from which they derive such materials that often those sources are inherited as patrimony in an artisan family. Since many of the scripts adopted for Muslim spiritual healing are esoteric, and therefore private, the availability of similar documents from early nineteenth-century Asante presents unique opportunities for analysis. And we do have more than nine hundred folios of Arabic manuscripts that were assembled on behalf of Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame (ruled 1804–23) by Muslim functionaries serving the Kumase palace.

Historians agree that the corpus is part of an Asante military paraphernalia lost in an 1826 expedition against Danes, other Europeans, and their local coastal allies. Detailed history of the Kumase manuscripts can be found elsewhere.22 In this chapter, it is sufficient to mention that some of the documents were correspondence exchanged between writers of the manuscripts and their coreligionists in Kumase. Also included are instructions that were solely intended for the making of prayer and amulets to secure magical protection for soldiers on the battlefield, and others (mentioned in the preceding section) that give instructions on the use of amulets to treat smallpox, bed-wetting, sexual impotency, leprosy, headaches, and difficult childbirth. Samples from the corpus are presented below as examples of instructions that were to fill the content of amulets for healing. Because of the poor quality of the manuscripts, as well as the invariable hands in which they were written, literal translation was often impossible. In my paraphrased translation, however, the reader is made aware of the contents and purposes of the amulets.

(a) Instructed amulets to afford easy childbirth conditions:

1. A special magical seal (khatim) was required;

—write 3 times the prayer “O God! The God of Jibril, Mikhaʿil and the Prophet Musa and the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon them) and of Harun;”

—write 3 times the incantation “cause it to come out from the mother’s stomach ‘Musaisa, Musaisa;”

—it was instructed that the written statements be washed into a solution and given to the expecting mother to drink.²³

2. To protect a difficult pregnancy, the Quranic passages (Q. 2:55; 17:111, and 18:1) were to be combined with the ground-up root of a tree.

—the medicine was to be drunk or inserted.²⁴

(b) Instruction for the making of amulets that assured multiple health benefits—guaranteeing great strength, relieving headaches, and increasing favors with women. Described as the talisman of Prophet Muhammad’s cousin Ali, the content instructed:

• write the duʿ aʾ (incantation) “God, He is not a father and He is not a son. There is no power without God. O! You who permits. You are the One. There is no god but Him. The living. You who created the skies and the earth. The infallible.”

—the above was to combined with a khatim and made into a talisman.

—this same prayer, if written 6 times, washed into a solution and mixed with water for bathing, the user will never be harmed.²⁵

1. To find a wife and secure marriage,

—on Wednesday, write Surat al-Yusuf (Q.12). Wash the material that has been written into a solution.

—on Thursday, before sunrise, wash the previously written material, sit on a stone and wash yourself with it.

—after washing with it, continue sitting on the stone till sunrise.

—the result will be prosperity during the year.

—this amulet is also useful in the recovery of lost slaves; and therefore in ensuring the permanency of marriages.

—to make the amulet, write the recommended passages on your right foot, rub some meat on the leg and give it to either the slave or wife to eat. By this process, the amulet is internalized and therefore made effective.26

d) Charms constructed to cure smallpox or protect against the spread of diseases counseled the following:

1. For curing judari (smallpox), the construction of a seal khatim was the sole content suggested;

—the seal was to be washed and solution used to cook food. When eaten, the afflicted would be cure if God willed it.²⁷

2. Another khatim was instructed as protection against epidemic.

—the prescribed material was to be used for bathing.²⁸

This small, but typical, sample of the manuscripts dealing with the making of amulets included, as will be noted, identifiable Quranic chapters and verses, the invocation of certain asmaʾ, or names, and khawatim, or what are generally referred to as seals or magical squares. As is evident in the above paraphrased translations, it was also typical to instruct that amulet contents be rubbed into objects or be used for soaking, washing, or bathing. It was equally common to find amulets folded, suspended, inserted, or buried at specified locations.²⁹

The application of prophetic hadith and Quranic verses as sources for spiritual protection (ruqya) is understood by Muslims. In fact, the whole Quran is sometimes seen as a protection for the believer—“We send down, of the Quran, that which is a remedy and mercy to the believer (Q. 17:44).” But here, too, as it was observed in traditional African cosmology, the relationship between the sacred and the profane is underscored. That is, even though the holy book identified itself as only a spiritual remedy to those who believe, it is perceived by Muslims to have the ability to heal physical ailments as well. It is not surprising to find these Quranic verses prescribed for healing. This obvious source notwithstanding, the practice was still a specialized profession. To be sure, Islamic medicine was a religious science that required knowledge in astrology and numerology (especially for the construction of khawatim). By its nature, therefore, the practice involved ritual performances and spiritual retreat (khalwa). Sometimes this required several days of fasting and contemplation.

The selection of Quranic verses for amulet making was not arbitrary. The ability to know which chapter or verse, or combination of passages, to use, at what time and for what purpose, required batin knowledge. Occasionally, as implied in Cod. Arab, CCCII., vol. 2, fo. 49a, knowledge of medical plants was necessary. Examples of the mixing of medical herbs and Arabic texts for healing are reported in the respective writings of Ryan and Pouwels.³⁰ Thus, the Muslim holy man applied a multiplicity of spiritual sources in preparing amulets and prayers to treat not only physical but also psychological and spiritual ailments.

The efficacy of the prayers and amulets was not in doubt “because the result [was] foreordained by God.”31 The issue of greater theological debate, however, was about the appropriateness for Muslims to rely on these objects. In the Muqaddima, Ibn Khaldun called on Muslims to avoid reliance on practices that were characteristically magical. He argued that the use of charms, irrespective of the purpose for which they were applied, corrupted the believer because the created object, rather than God himself, became the focus of adoration. Further, he reasoned that since the Quran attests to limits in human knowledge, it was logical that the educated batin scholar could lack clear understanding of things spiritual; thus, makers and users of amulets could go astray. The fifteenth-century North African jurist al-Maghili saw amulet making as a heretical activity that was to be severely punished. His absolute opposition is evidenced in his counseling of Askia Muhammad of the western Sudanese empire of Songhay. The wrongfulness of the practice, Maghili argued, was in the manipulation of the Quran. Even worse was the application of astrology and divination to the art. It was, therefore, the responsibility of Muslim rulers, Askia Muhammad was advised, to put an end to all such practices. Practitioners who disobeyed the royal injunction were to be denied Muslim burial upon death.³²

In contrast, other scholars looked upon the practice with some favor. Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani, a tenth-century Maliki jurist, expressed such a position in his Risala. To the extent that their medical value was proven, the celebrated fourteenth-century mufti of Tunis, Imam Ibn Arafa, was said to have favored the use of amulets. Ibn Arafa argued that both unbelievers and menstruating women could wear Quranic passages as talisman as long as the contents were protected from direct contact with their bodies.³³

Despite controversy on the medical application of amulets, manuscripts from the nineteenth-century Asante and examples of talismans found elsewhere in Africa indicate that Muslim prayers and amulets were in widespread and great demand. Several sources useful to amulet makers are known to have circulated, among them the Dalaʿil al-Khayrat of the fifteenth-century Moroccan scholar Abu ʿAbd Allah Muhammad al-Jazuli and treatises on folk medicine and magic by al-Suyuti. A discussion on the favorable conjunctures of the stars and how they influence the efficacy of amulets was explained in al-Durr al-Manzuʿ wa Khulasat al-Sirr al-Maktum fi ʿIlm al-Talasam wd’l-Nujum, which was completed about 1733 by Shaykh Muhammad al-Katsinawi al-Fulani. The Shumus al-Anwar wa Kunuz al-Asrar al-Kubra of Ibn al-Hajj al-Tilimsani al-Maghribi returns to a discussion of the exclusive production of prayers and amulets from certain asmaʾ and Quranic passages.

Whether their healing objects were constructed from magical squares, Quranic passages, or astrological signs, the practitioners who made them believed in their efficacy, God Willing. The case of the Islamization of Malal was cited above to illustrate that conflict could have resulted from competition between indigenous practitioners and Muslim holy men. History, however, supplies ample evidence to support the view that there was pluralistic application of Islamic prayers and amulets.³⁴

7. Janzen 1978 remains among the best works on pluralism in African therapeutic practices. The flexibility of choice inherent in this pluralistic therapeutic practice also accounts for the African reactions to Western and Islamic cures.

8. Fisher 1973a discusses the issue of “mixing” Islamic practices with traditional African ones. For further discussion on religious eclecticism, see chapter 3 or Levtzion 1968.

9. For a Maliki discussion on Muslim residency among non-Muslim communities in West Africa, see chapter 4.

15. See Gran 1979, 339–48; Shilosh 1968, 235–48; Fisher 1973b, 23–47. In endnotes 13 through 18, Fisher presents a detailed examination of the cases of inoculations and vaccinations that took place in Muslim societies in West Africa.

22. For the detailed story and analysis of the “Arabic Manuscripts from the Guinea Coast,” classified at the Royal Library of Copenhagen as “Cod. Arab. CCCII,” see Levtzion 1965; see also Kea 1984; Wilks, Levtzion, and Haight 1986.

30. See summary of the Arabic text in the translations identified in endnotes 23 and 24. Scholarly discussions on the subject are in Ryan 1978; and Pouwels 1987, 84–93.

31. Tritton 1972, 128–33. See also the works of Abu Muhammad Ibn Hazm (Hazm 1911/12).

32. Ibn Khaldun 1967, vol. 3, 150–59. For more references to the views of al-Maghili, see Hunwick 1985, 89, 89n, 91n.

33. Zayd 1945, 318; for commentary on the position of Imam ʿArafa, see Nafrawi 1464, 442.

34. Fisher 1973a. For further discussion on religious eclecticism, see chapter 3.