Creed, Belief, and the Common Folk: Disputes in the Early Modern Maghrib (9th/15th-11th/17th c.)

Abstract

This dissertation examines the attitudes and arguments of Muslim scholars in the early modern Maghrib toward the creedal convictions of the broader, non-elite populace. Its particular focus is the career and legacy of a major Ashʿarī theologian in Tlemcen, Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī (d. 895/1490). A hallmark of al-Sanūsī’s thought was his insistence that each and every Muslim must learn the logical proofs that undergird the main points of creed in order to be of sound standing in the afterlife. By analyzing both published and unpublished sources, ranging from theological treatises to short creeds to fatwas to ethical exhortations, the dissertation excavates the historical background of al-Sanūsī’s creedal program, its contested reception in his own time, and the variety of ways that it was invoked by scholars in the 10th/16th and 11th/17th centuries to bolster their own stances and activities. This contextualization of al-Sanūsī challenges previous portrayals of him as a Great Man figure whose theological writings were so influential as to homogenize all later theological production in the Maghrib. Moreover, the dissertation’s focus on discussions of īmān al-ʿawāmm (the belief of the common folk) exposes a hitherto underappreciated but significant dimension of Ashʿarī theology: the way that scholars debated the nature of religious belief for people beyond their small, highly educated circles.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of Ashʿarī stances on īmān al-ʿawāmm prior to the mid-9th/15th century that informed writings by al-Sanūsī and other later scholars. Chapter 2 situates al-Sanūsī alongside a rival theologian, Aḥmad Ibn Zakrī (d. 899/1495), in order to identify and analyze which specific aspects of al-Sanūsī’s ideas were controversial in his own moment. Chapter 3 shows how scholars in the 10th/16th century curated al-Sanūsī’s writings to adduce him in support of both lenient and strict approaches toward the creedal convictions of non-elite Muslims. It focuses on the stricter creedal program promoted by members of the Jazūliyya Sufi order in rural northern Morocco. Chapter 4 uses a set of manuscript writings by the young scholar Muḥammad Ibn ʿUmar Ibn Abī Maḥallī (fl. 1084/1673) to examine his efforts to teach, test, and discipline people’s creedal convictions in the oasis city of Sijilmāsa in southeastern Morocco. The chapter shows how he positioned these efforts as consistent with al-Sanūsī’s program and complementary to it. Chapter 5 analyzes the rebuttals of Ibn ʿUmar’s ideas and activities by contemporaries, especially by two towering figures of 11th/17th-century Morocco, al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī (d. 1102/1691) and Abū Sālim ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAyyāshī (d. 1090/1679), and by a little-known scholar of Sijilmāsa, Mubārak al-ʿAnbarī (fl. 1084/1673).