The Walking Qur’an and its Contribution to Historical Perspectives and History of Islam in Africa

Abstract

This paper explores the contribution of the Walking Qur’an…^[1] by Rudolf Ware III to historical perspectives and studies of the history of Islam in Africa as drawn of wisdom from an intellectual, historical, and religious perspective as his methodology beautifully tries to explain the religion and its roots and differences. The author, through an ethnographic approach, reaches the bottom of what it means to be studying in Qur'an schools in West Africa and how these taalibes (students of knowledge) were an embodiment of Islamic knowledge and were propelled into becoming Walking Qur'an. The author primarily examined the Qur’an schools in Senegambia, a region in present day Mali in West Africa, to assert the importance of the rituals associated with the process of acquiring knowledge of the Qur’an. He also showed how the schools became a driving force to resist European enslavement of Muslim clerics and their students in the region and beyond. As a result, this paper argues that the book epitomizes both cultural and postcolonial historical perspectives in helping us understand the historiography of Islam in West Africa.

^[1]. R. T. Ware III. The Walking Qur'an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa. UNC Press Books, 2014.