The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [189]
Hadhramis had a particularly large role on the Swahili coast.160 The career of Sayyid Ahmad bin Sumeyt is typical. His father, Abubakr, was a Hadhrami sharif, born in Shiban, who was a trader and scholar. His son, Ahmad, grew up to be a trader and scholar too. He interrupted his trading to study religion in Grand Comoro under the supervision of his father, who had retired there, and another scholar. Then Ahmad studied in Zanzibar under an Iraqi scholar, and was made a qadi in the 1880s. Even so he visited the Hadhramaut three times later to study some more under famous scholars and get their ijaza, that is a certification, licence or permit. While away between 1883 and 1886 he spent time in Istanbul and studied with Sayyid Fadhi Basha bin Alwi bin Sahi, a famous Hadhrami scholar. Through his influence he received an Ottoman Order from sultan Abdul Hamid. In 1887 he studied in Al-Azhar, and Mecca, and in 1888 returned to Zanzibar. From then until his death in 1925 he was a very famous scholar and teacher. Students came from all over the coast. Indeed he had an international reputation, for he was asked by the mufti of Mecca himself to settle a quarrel between two Zanzibari ulama. Even prestigious scholars in Egypt sometimes sought his opinion, such was his reputation.
Just as these scholars and merchants, and their lineages, were cosmopolitan in the extreme, so also were the Sufi tariqas, arguably the most vibrant and important part of Islam in the nineteenth century, if only because it impacted much more on the common Swahili than did the esoteric work of the scholars. However, there is normally no gap between the scholars, the ulama, and those who belong to a particular tariqa: most scholars were also members. For example, Sayyid Fadl, the important Mapillah scholar, was a member of the Alawi tariqa. However, heuristically it is useful to separate out the two strands. We turn now to Sufis.
The most influential brotherhood on the coast was the Alawi order, a very austere one whose main shrine was at Inat. Late in the nineteenth century a branch of the main Alawi order, the Shadhiliya, won much support on the coast, even as far south as Mozambique. The founder of this branch, Sheikh Ma'ruf, was from the Comoro islands. He did the hajj, and was a sharif. Again showing widespread connections, one of the areas where he was most influential was southern Somalia. He died in 1905 and his tomb in the Comoros is a place of pilgrimage for all the Shadhilis of East Africa.
The Qadiri brotherhood, followers of Abdul Qadir Gilani, were at least as farflung across the ocean as were the Alawi. The legends of the founder have been translated into Swahili as well as Malay and Javanese. During the colonial period the Qadiri network reached from Mecca and southern Arabia along the Somali coast past Brava, Kisimaiu and Lamu to Mombasa, and then via Voi, Nairobi and Kampala into the Belgian Congo. Other lines went to German East Africa, others west through the Sudan to Nigeria and Mali. Their teachings spread from the Hadhramaut ports to Indonesia. Not surprisingly then, some textbooks found in the Belgian Congo were identical to those in use in Indonesia. This was a very rich and important network.
Pan Islam, promoted by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II after 1880, had a wide impact on the Muslim world, and frequently was tied in with anti-colonial movements. Notions of Islamic unity, and the centrality of the khalif in Istanbul, were widely dispersed in our area. These ideas were given greater currency