An annotated translation of the manuscript Irshad Al-MuqallidinʾInda Ikhtilaf Al-Mujtahidin (Advice to the laity when the juristconsults differ) by Abu Muhammad Al-Shaykh Sidiya Baba Ibn Al-Shaykh Al-Shinqiti Al-Itisha- I (D. 1921/1342) and a synopsis and commentary of its dominant themes

Abstract

Text in English and Arabic

In pre-colonial Africa, the Southwestern Sahara which includes
 Mauritania, Mali and Senegal belonged to what was then referred to as
 the Sudan and extended from the Atlantic seaboard to the Red Sea. The
 advent of Islam and the Arabic language to West Africa in the 11th
 century heralded an intellectual marathon whose literary output still
 fascinates us today. At a time when Europe was emerging from the dark
 ages and Africa was for most Europeans a terra incognita, indigenous
 African scholars were composing treatises as diverse as mathematics,
 agriculture and the Islamic sciences.
 A twentieth century Mauritanian, Arabic monograph, Irshād al-
 Muqallidīn ʿinda ikhtilāf al-Mujtahidīn1, written circa 1910/1332, by a
 yet unknown Mauritanian jurist of the Mālikī School, Bāba bin al-Shaykh
 Sīdī al- Shinqīṭī al-Ntishā-ī (d.1920/1342), a member of the muchacclaimed
 Shinqīṭī fraternity of scholars, is a fine example of African
 literary accomplishment.
 This manuscript hereinafter referred to as the Irshād, is written within the
 legal framework of Islamic jurisprudence (usūl al-fiqh). A science that
 relies for the most part on the intellectual and interpretive competence of
 the independent jurist, or mujtahid, in the application of the
 methodologies employed in the extraction of legal norms from the
 primary sources of the sharīʿah. The subject matter of the Irshād deals
 with the question of juristic differences. Juristic differences invariably
 arise when a mujtahid exercises his academic freedom to clarify or resolve
 conundrums in the law and to postulate legal norms. Other independent
 jurists (mujtahidūn) may posit different legal norms because of the
 exercise of their individual interpretive skills. These differences, when
 they are deemed juristically irreconcilable, are called ikhtilāfāt (pl. of
 ikhtilāf).
 The author of the Irshād explores a corollary of the ikhtilāf narrative and
 posits the hypothesis that there ought not to be ikhtilāf in the sharīʿah.
 The proposed research will comprise an annotated translation of the
 monograph followed by a synopsis and commentary on its dominant
 themes.

Religious Studies and Arabic

D. Litt. et Phil. (Islamic Studies)