Over a long career, Professor Charles C. Stewart (D.Phil. Oxford 1970) made many contributions to our understanding of Muslim West African history. Professor Stewart was a member of the University of Illinois History Department between 1971 and 2006. He served as chair of the History Department, director of the Center for African Studies, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Interim Provost for International Affairs. For five decades Stewart has worked with colleagues around the world to map the region’s intellectual culture on the basis of the extant contents of Arabic manuscript libraries. He has also been a committed graduate advisor and mentor to many younger scholars. This conference brings together an international group of scholars whose papers are offered in appreciation of his many contributions to African history made by Professor Stewart. Conference organizers plan to publish the papers in a two-volume book in honor of Professor Stewart.
September 19th
9:00-9:15am – Introduction by Teresa Barnes (UIUC); Mauro Nobili (UIUC); Bruce Hall (University of California, Berkeley)
9:15-11:00am - Panel 1 – Core Curriculums in Context; Chair: Rebecca Shereikis (Northwestern University)
Britta Frede (University of Bayreuth): The Core Curriculum and the Archive: Gender, Teaching and Script
Yacine Daddi Addoun (Center for Studies and Research on Ibadism - Ibadica): The Core Curriculum in the Maghrebi Ibadi Tradition
Zekeria Ahmed Salem (Northwestern Univ.): A Tradition on the Move: Performing the West African Core Curriculum in the Heartland of Islam
11:00-11:15am - Coffee Break
11:15-12:45am - Panel 2 – Learning Arabic Grammar in West Africa; Chair: Ousmane Sawadogo (Central Illinois Mosque and Islamic Center)
Amir Syed: Studying Arabic Grammar in Nineteenth-Century Futa Toro: An Analysis of the Manuscript of ʿUmar Tall’s al-Farīda
Clay Lemar (University of California, Berkeley): Bayna al-‘Ajurrimiyya wa-l-‘Alfiyya: Generalizing Grammar in Bilād al-Shinqīṭ
Sabrina Amrane (University of California, Berkeley): A Spiral Education: Learning Syntax in the Sahara
2:00-3:30pm – Panel 3 – Mapping Jurisprudence; Chair: Ken Cuno (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Ismaeil Warscheid (IRHT – CNRS): The Geographics of Jurisprudential Reasoning: Zwāyā Jurists and the Egyptian Turn in Postclassical Malikism (1650-1850)
Matthew Steele (Yale University): When Good Texts Go Bad: The Mukhtaṣar Khalīl and its Discontents
Ismael Montana (Northern Illinois University): Aḥmad b. al-Qādī al-Timbuktāwī’s Critique of Wahhabi Discourse on Bid`ah in Early Nineteenth-Century Tunisia: A West African Perspective
3:30-3:45pm – Coffee Break
3:45-5:30 - Panel 4 – Charles Stewart and West African History: Chair: Bruce Hall (University of California, Berkeley)
Murray Last (University College, London): Living with West African History
Ann McDougall (University of Alberta): Shifting Sands, Moving Dunes: Tracking Legacies of Islam and Social Order in Mauritanian Research
Sundiata Djata (Northern Illinois University): Reflections
Baba ould Haroun (Cheikh Sidiya Library, Boutilimit): La Bibliothèque de la famille Cheikh Sidiya à Boutilimit
Andrew Stewart (Son of Charles): Boutilimit reflections
Friday, September 20th
9:00-10:45am - Panel 5 – Logic, Belief, and Qur’anic Exegesis; Chair: Mauro Nobili (UIUC)
Ali Diakite and Paul Naylor (Hill Museum and Manuscript Library): After al-Sanūsī: ʻAqīdah in the Core Curriculum
David Owen (Georgetown University): Science to Scale: Canons of Logic in African Curricula and First Results
Caitlyn Olson (Bucknell University): Exhorting People Toward Creed: The Writings of Muḥammad b. ʿUmar b. Abī Maḥallī (fl. 1084/1673)
Abubakar Abdulkadir (University of Alberta): Mauritania’s Exegetical Breeze in Muḥammad al-Yadālī’s al-Dhahab al-Ibrīz
10:45-11:00am - Coffee Break
11:00am-12:30pm - Panel 6 – History and Prosopography; James Brennan (UIUC)
Mohamed Diagayete (IHERI-ABT, Mali): Une Chronique du vingtième siècle: le cas du Sa‘ada al-abadiyya de Aḥmad Baber.
Khaled Esseissah (University of Wisconsin): Making a Subaltern Intellectual Community in Muslim West Africa, from 1800 to Recent Times
Bernard Salvaing (Université de Nantes): The Historical documents of Futa Jallon
2:30-4:00pm – Panel 7 Devotion, Sufism, and Esoteric Sciences; Chair: Carol Symes (UIUC)
Susana Molins Lliteras (University of Cape Town): Devotional texts in West Africa’s Core Curriculum: al-Jazūlī’s Dalāʼil al-khayrāt as an exemplar of localised textual and visual sensibilities
Ariela Marcus-Sells (Elon University): Sufis, Secrets, and the Hidden Curriculum of Islamic West Africa
Said Bousbina (Université Internationale de Rabat) - Circulating writings as a source of doctrinal argumentation and defense in West Africa (19th century): The case of ‘Umar al-Ḥawsī and Yerkoy Ṭalfi’s responses to Aḥmad al-Bakkāy’s anti-Tijani pamphlets (paper delivered in French)