Study Day: ‘Shaykh Akansūs and his era. Spirituality and the milestones of the Reformation’
One-day seminar organised by Francesco Chiabotti (INALCO/CERMOM), Sophie Tyser (University of Turin/CERMOM) and Michele Petrone (LUISS, Rome)
As part of the project “MAG-Renew. Spiritual Renewals and Artistic Expressions in 19th-century Morocco. Islamological, literary and aesthetic approaches”, a recipient of the Institut Français d’islamologie’s Excellence in Research Awards
Project proposal
The 19th century represents a major turning point in the history of Morocco, marked by a reconfiguration of the political, religious and intellectual spheres, often associated with what historiography refers to as the ‘era of the nahḍa ’. However, alongside the nahḍa, another dynamic was at work: that of a major spiritual revival, led by new Sufi orders (ṭuruq) which emerged and spread throughout the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa from Morocco. Among these, the ṭarīqa tijāniyya occupies a prominent position. It is within this context that the figure of the scholar Muḥammad Akansūs (d. 1294/1877), who is renowned for his political career, first as secretary (kātib) to Sultan Moulay Sulaymān (r. 1792–1822), and subsequently as vizier during the last three years of his reign. He is also known as the historiographer of the Alawite dynasty, as well as a distinguished man of letters of his time and a linguist, responsible for an edition of the Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ. A remarkable poet, he was also the author of a maqāma (‘literary gathering’). Above all, he was a leading scholar of religious sciences of his time, as well as a respected master within the Tijāniyya order, to which he affiliated himself a few years after the death of the order’s founder, Shaykh Aḥmad al-Tijānī (d. 1230/1815).
Through an examination of Akansūs’s work and life, this one-day symposium aims to explore the role of the key figures who fuelled the spiritual and intellectual revival on the eve of colonial intervention. Far from being confined to his political role as an adviser to the sultans, Akansūs was a key figure in this revival. As a scholar and spiritual guide within the Tijāniyya, he founded the first zāwiya of this order in Marrakesh, from which it spread to the Atlas Mountains, the Souss region and beyond. He was also deeply involved in the spiritual (particularly concerning the legitimacy of the Tijāniyya) and religious debates of his time. Akansūs was likewise a notable figure in the intellectual revival of his era. His interest in sciences such as mathematics, astronomy and medicine reflects an intellectual curiosity that also led him to explore the advances in Western science of the time by overseeing the translation of scientific works – on mathematics and astronomy – from French and English, which are preserved in the Royal Library of Rabat.
This one-day seminar therefore aims to delve deeper into the study of Akansūs’s unique life journey and to explore his multifaceted legacy: as a historiographer of the Alawite dynasty and a witness to the conflicts between Morocco and the Western powers, but also as a man of letters, a scholar and a spiritual master; his work bears valuable witness to the political, intellectual and spiritual transformations that took place during what is known as the era of reform (zamān al-iṣlāḥ). Akansūs also played a role in the circulation of knowledge between the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa (and even beyond), where the Tijāniyya experienced significant expansion. This conference will also provide an opportunity to take stock of academic research on the Tijāniyya, which is sometimes still studied in isolation from its Maghrebi roots. By highlighting the richness of Shaykh Akansūs’s legacy and his role in the evolution of Sufism at both local and international levels, this conference ultimately aims to restore the spiritual and intellectual revival experienced by Morocco in the 19th century to its rightful place.
∴
The 19th century represents a major turning point in the history of Morocco, marked by a reconfiguration of the political, religious and intellectual spheres, often associated with what historiography refers to as the ‘era of the nahḍa’. Yet, alongside the nahḍa, another dynamic was at work: that of a major spiritual renewal, led by new Sufi orders (ṭuruq) that emerged from Morocco and spread throughout the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Among them, the ṭarīqa tijāniyya occupies a prominent place. It is within this context that the figure of the scholar Muḥammad Akansūs (d. 1294/1877) belongs. He is celebrated for his political activity, first as secretary (kātib) to Sultan Moulay Sulaymān (r. 1792–1822), and then as vizier during the final three years of his reign. He is also known as a historian of the Alawite dynasty, a distinguished man of letters of his time, and a linguist responsible for an edition of the Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ. A remarkable poet, he was also the author of a maqāma (“literary session”). Above all, he was a leading scholar in religious sciences and a respected master within the Tijāniyya, which he joined a few years after the death of its founder, Shaykh Aḥmad al-Tijānī (d. 1230/1815).
Through the study of Akansūs’s work and career, this colloquium aims to explore the role of the key channels that fuelled the spiritual and intellectual renewal on the eve of the colonial incursion. Far from being limited to his political role as an adviser to sultans, Akansūs was a key figure in this renewal. As a scholar and spiritual guide within the tijāniyya, he founded the first zāwiya of this order in Marrakesh, which served as a starting point for its spread towards the Atlas Mountains, the Souss region, and beyond. He was furthermore heavily involved in the spiritual (concerning the legitimacy of the Tijani ) and religious (polemics with the Salafi ) debates of his era.
Akansūs was also a notable figure in the intellectual renewal of the period. His interest in sciences such as mathematics, astronomy and medicine reflects an intellectual curiosity that led him to explore Western scientific advancements by overseeing the translation of French and English works—now preserved in the Royal Library in Rabat.
This colloquium aims to deepen the study of Akansūs’s unique career and explore the multifaceted nature of his legacy. As a historian of the Alawite dynasty and a witness to conflicts between Morocco and Western powers, but also as a man of letters, scholar and spiritual master, his work provides valuable insight into the political, intellectual and spiritual transformations taking place during the ‘era of reform’ (zamān al-iṣlāḥ). Furthermore, Akansūs played a role in the circulation of knowledge between the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the Tijānīyya underwent major expansion.
Finally, this colloquium will provide an opportunity to take stock of academic research on the tijāniyya, which is sometimes still studied in isolation from its Maghrebi roots. By highlighting the richness of Shaykh Akansūs’s legacy and his role in local and international Sufi developments, this event ultimately aims to restore the spiritual and intellectual renewal experienced by 19th-century Morocco to its rightful place.
Programme
9.00–10.00:
- Sophie Tyser (INALCO/CERMOM), From ikhtilāf al-madhāhib to ikhtilāf al-ṭuruq: law, Sufism and pluralism according to Muḥammad Akansūs.
- Natalie Kraneiß (University of Münster), From Commentary Back to Collation? Philological Practices around al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ in 19th-century Morocco.
- Yaseen Christian Andrewsen (University of Oxford, Faculty of Theology and Religion), Revisiting the Intellectual Basis of a Sufi Dispute: Aḥmad al-Bakkāy al-Kuntī, Muḥammad Akansūs, and the Epistemological Stakes of the Qādirī–Tijānī Exchange.
10.00–10.20: questions and discussion
Coffee break
10.30–11.30:&
- Pierre Ageron (University of Caen), Two publishing ventures in the exact sciences in 19th-century Morocco.
- Michele Petrone (LUISS, Rome), The zāwiya Saʻīdiyya in Ethiopia. Sukayrijī kunnāsh
- Francesco Chiabotti (INALCO/CERMOM),&Notes on the founding poem of the Kansūsiyya zāwiya in Marrakesh.
11.30 am–12 noon: questions and discussion
12.30 pm: Conclusion (Francesco Chiabotti, Michele Petrone and Sophie Tyser)
Lunch break for participants
2.00–3.30 pm: Meeting with Jaafar Kansoussi and Mohamed Mehdi Kansoussi (discussant: Antoine Perrier, CNRS, CHS).
3.30 pm: Coffee break
4.00–5.00 pm: Working meeting at CERMOM
Summaries of presentations
Pierre Ageron (University of Caen), “Two publishing ventures in the exact sciences in 19th-century Morocco”
This paper will highlight the efforts towards scientific renewal in 19th-century Morocco through two ambitious initiatives by the Cherifian authorities: the translation from French into Arabic of Lalande’s highly comprehensive Astronomie (completed in 1852) and the lithographic printing of a commentary (Taḥrīr) of Euclid’s Elements, which was (erroneously) attributed to Naṣīr al‐dīn al‐Ṭūsī (completed in 1876).
I shall outline the context, purpose and outcomes of these undertakings, and focus on the key figures involved – including Akansūs – and their material aspects. I shall bring the 1876 lithograph out of its isolation by presenting, for the first time, two Moroccan manuscripts containing the same text: a royal ceremonial copy and a study copy discovered in Taroudant.
Finally, I shall examine in greater depth the specific legitimisation strategies employed by each of the two projects. The translation of the Astronomy, a work by an infidel, was declared lawful on the basis of the opinions of influential jurists within Sufi brotherhoods in the medieval Maghreb. The publication of the Taḥrīr of Euclid’s Elements did not require translation, but posed a difficulty, as it was in fact copied from a work printed in Arabic script in Rome in 1594, although it did correct the typographical errors therein. To conceal this embarrassing origin, its promoters preferred to attribute the errors to alleged faulty translations from Turkish into Arabic.
The 19th century represents a major turning point in the history of Morocco, marked by a reconfiguration of the political, religious and intellectual spheres, often associated with what historiography refers to as the “era of the nahḍa.” Yet, alongside the nahḍa, another dynamic was at work: that of a major spiritual renewal, led by new Sufi orders (ṭuruq) that emerged and spread from Morocco throughout the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa.
Yaseen Christian Andrewsen (University of Oxford, Faculty of Theology and Religion), “Revisiting the Intellectual Basis of a Sufi Dispute: Aḥmad al-Bakkāy al-Kuntī, Muḥammad Akansūs, and the Epistemological Stakes of the Qādirī–Tijānī Exchange”
Socio-political dimensions of the mid-nineteenth-century dispute between Aḥmad al-Bakkāy al-Kuntī (d. 1281/1865), the foremost guide of the Qādirī path in the Sahara and Sahel, and Muḥammad Akansūs (d. 1294/1877), a prominent guide of the Tijānī path in the Maghreb, has received some attention in existing scholarship. Yet the intellectual substance of their exchange—preserved in al-Bakkāy’s *Fatḥ al-Quddūs fī’l-radd ʿalá Akansūs* and the latter’s *Jawāb al-muskit*—remains under-examined. This paper offers a preliminary exploration of the intellectual issues underlying their exchange. Building on my work concerning al-Bakkāy’s grandfather, al-Mukhtār ibn Aḥmad al-Kuntī (d. 1226/1811), I examine the epistemological and theological grounds on which the Kunta objected to their Tijānī counterparts. I argue that the dispute cannot be adequately understood without taking those grounds seriously on their own terms. The paper thus contributes to a broader reassessment of Sahelian and Maghrebi intellectual culture in the nineteenth century, paying close attention to the paradigmatic commitments that shaped Sufi discourses and disagreements across the region.
Francesco Chiabotti (INALCO/CERMOM), “Notes on the founding poem of the Kansūsiyya zāwiya in Marrakesh”
The nineteenth century in Morocco was a period rich in epigraphic sources from Sufi circles, of which the Kansūsiyya zāwiya offers a remarkable example. It houses a frieze painted on wood reproducing the poem composed by Shaykh Akansūs upon the building’s foundation in 1847, in the Mouassine quarter. This presentation will showcase images of this frieze, provide an edition and a translation of the text, and address the challenges of conserving the medina of Marrakesh, particularly in the wake of the 2023 earthquake.
Natalie Kraneiß (University of Münster), “From Commentary Back to Collation? Philological Practices around al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ in 19th-Century Morocco”
Why did Muḥammad Akansūs (d. 1294/1877) undertake a new collation—described in
modern scholarship as taḥqīq—of al-Fīrūzābādī’s al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ in the mid-nineteenth century, despite the existence of extensive commentaries, most notably al-Zabīdī’s Tāj al-ʿarūs? This paper presents preliminary findings from an ongoing investigation into the philological practices surrounding the Qāmūs and explores how Akansūs’ work may be situated within a longer Moroccan tradition of textual scholarship. Rather than examining Akansūs’ collation in isolation, the paper first examines selected passages from the commentaries of Ibn al-Ṭayyib al-Fāsī (d. 1170/1756) and his student al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1791). These reveal a highly developed philological practice, in which lexical explanation is closely intertwined with the comparison of manuscripts, the evaluation of variant readings, the identification of scribal errors (taṣḥīf), and explicit discussions of textual authority. Against this background, Akansūs’ decision to prepare a collation of the Qāmūs—reportedly based on more than fifty manuscripts—raises the question of why, after centuries of extensive commentary on the text, a renewed effort was devoted to establishing its textual basis. Building on these observations, this paper offers an initial exploration of Akansūs’ annotated manuscript of the Qāmūs. As the manuscript evidence is still under investigation, it examines what precisely Akansūs’ collation (taṣḥīḥ) consisted of, how it related to the long-standing tradition of commentary surrounding the Qāmūs, and in what ways it might be situated in relation to what later scholarship came to describe as taḥqīq.
Michele Petrone (LUISS, Rome), The zāwiya Saʻīdiyya in Ethiopia. Sukayrijī kunnāsh
The Tijāniyya has been present in Ethiopia since the beginning of the 20th century, gaining particular momentum from the mid-1930s onwards with the arrival of al-Faqīh Aḥmad b. ʻUmar (d. 1953) from Sudan. He was responsible for spreading the order across Western Ethiopia, from Belashangul-Gumuz to Jimma. Several collections belonging to Tijānī zawāya have been identified in the area, preserving manuscripts containing texts by both local and foreign authors. The collection of Abba Jamaal (Jimata, 60 km north of Jimma) contains a number of texts belonging to the Maghreb tradition. Among them is a previously unidentified collection of arājīz by Aḥmad Sukayrij (d. 1944) have been copied into a kunnāsh by the local Tijānī master. Two of these—one dealing with al-Jawāb al-muskit and the other with the resumption of activities at the Saʻīdiyya zāwiya in Marrakesh, are the only ones marked with specific annotations. This paper will focus specifically on the second urjūza which, apparently, has very little to do with the ṭarīqa in Ethiopia. It will argue that Sukayrij’s discussion of the paradigmatic attitude of the members of the ṭarīqa in Marrakesh, in the face of the political and administrative upheavals of 1915, may have served as a model for what was happening in Ethiopia under Italian occupation (1936–42). By examining the text alongside its marginal notes, scribal glosses and historical context, this paper demonstrates how the urjūza served not merely as a devotional account, but as an operative paradigm for Sufi resilience. The Zāwiya Saʻīdiyya in Marrakesh represented a historic precedent for preserving spiritual authority and institutional integrity amidst state interference and political crisis. Sukayrij’s account of how the Marrakesh Tijānīs navigated the administrative disruptions of 1915 offered a timely guide for the Tijānī leadership in Western Ethiopia as they faced the violence of the Italian occupation (1936–1942). This presentation argues that the deliberate selection of this specific poem in the *Jimata kunnāsh* reflects an active appropriation of Akansūsian institutional memory. Rather than a passive reception of North African history, the Ethiopian copyist weaponised the Marrakesh precedent to legitimise local strategies for survival.
Sophie Tyser (INALCO/CERMOM), “From ikhtilāf al-madhāhib to ikhtilāf al-ṭuruq: law, Sufism and pluralism according to Muḥammad Akansūs”
This paper aims to highlight the convergence between legal pluralism and spiritual pluralism in the thought of Muḥammad Akansūs (d. 1877). Drawing on the tradition of ‘legal Sufism’ ’ exemplified by great masters such as Aḥmad Zarrūq and ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī, Akansūs sets out a vision in which jurisprudence and Sufism appear to be inseparable. Drawing on an analysis of two works in particular – the Muqaddima of the Ḥulal al-zanjafūriyya and, above all, his risāla—as yet unpublished—on theikhtilāf al-madhāhib and the ikhtilāf al-ṭuruq – we shall attempt to show how he transposes the legal principle kull mujtahid muṣīb (‘every mujtahid is correct’) to the spiritual realm, in order to legitimise the diversity of Sufi paths (ikhtilāf al-ṭuruq) as a manifestation of Divine Mercy. This study thus aims to explore the intersections between Sufism and legal reasoning, by showing how, in Akansūs’s work, legal pluralism becomes a model for conceiving the diversity of spiritual paths.
Contact: View e-mail
