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vor in the wake of the 1919 Revolution and the granting of pro-forma
independence to Egypt in 1922.
Thus, Lethem arrived in Cairo with a hearty appetite to meet
both the high and the low, and a set of notions about Nigerians that
helped form his opinion of their lives and futures. This article will portray the Takarir community as Lethem saw it and try to provide background that he may not have known or couldnt see.
Takrur-Takarir-Takarna
Nigerians living in Egypt were usually given the nisba Takruri
(plural Takarir, but more commonly Takarna, Takruriyyin), often corrupted to Dakruri (with plurals Dakarna, Dikarna), a usage also found in
Sudan where large numbers of Nigerians had planted roots in the course
of making the pilgrimage to Mecca. Richard Burton and other western
travelers visiting Arabia in the nineteenth century mention the
Takruris living in Mecca and Medina, among many pilgrims who had
stayed on after fulfilling the pilgrimage obligation. Many thousands
more made their way eastward at the end of the nineteenth century trying to avoid colonial rule under either the British or the French, forming
the core Takarir communities in the Sudan.4 The descendants of those
who settled in Egypt took the easier-sounding nisba al-Dakruri.
Takrur referred to an ancient black African kingdom known
to early medieval Arab geographers. The term was adopted by the
Egyptians since medieval times to identify Muslimized black Africans
from West Africa in general. Al-Maqrizi, for example, speaks of
Madrasa Ibn Rashiq, founded in 1242, as being frequented by
Takruris when passing through Cairo en route to the Hijaz (the
school was actually located in Fustat, the commercial hub of Cairo in
medieval days, though it lay outside its walls). Takruris recorded in
the medieval biographical dictionaries and the pilgrimages of sultans
of Takrur, who passed through Cairo en route to the Hijaz, were
famous in the contemporary annals of Egypt.5
Modern Egyptian connotations of African geography remained
vague, and by the eighteenth century, Takruri/Takarna referred to
all Africans from the kingdom of Darfur to Senegal, with little precision. Scribes at the Sharia courts prior to the nineteenth century occasionally distinguished between the various African nationalities, identifying men or women from Bornu (al-Burnawi, al-Burnawiyya), Dar
Fur (al-Furi, al-Tajuwi), or Wadai (al-Dar Sulayhi or al-Sulayhi) or
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The riwaq al-Takarna that Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda refurbished in 1753 was probably meant to accommodate students from all
of western AfricaDarfur, Wadai (also known as Dar Sulayh and
Borgo), Bornu, other kingdoms of modern northern Nigeria, and states
further west. Under the terms of the waqf, the students were given
daily rations, special foods during the holy days, and mats. In addition
to the allotment provided under the Yashbak bin Mahdi al-Dawadar
endowment, which amounted to 30 loaves of bread per day, Abd alRahmans waqf provided 100 loaves (each loaf to weigh 2 uqiyyas),
a yearly sum for oil, funds for a daily provision of shurba (soup made
with meat and water), and fresh bedding (mifrash). Moreover, the
waqf provided a salary of 720 nisf fidda for the naqib of the riwaq and
1,000 nisf for the cook (in addition to what they already received under
the terms of other waqfs). Finally, it allowed one riyal for each pilgrim, male or female, who returned to Cairo after having completed
the hajj and was staying at al-Azhar.13
Charitable good wishes could never override political realities, and when tensions led to the Darfur invasion of Wadai in
1835, quarreling students at al-Azhar had to be separated. This
probably resulted in the creation of a new riwaq for students from
Dar Sulayh (Wadai), since it appears on Nafis list of riwaqs in
1832. Perhaps ten years earlier, a riwaq for Bornu students had
been established (it is noted in an estate inventory document dated
1824 recording the death of its shaykh.) Thus by Ali Mubaraks
time (1865), there were three lodges for the Takruri students. The
old Riwaq al-Takarna was largely inhabited by students from
Darfur, the Riwaq al-Sulayh by students from Wadai, and the
Riwaq al-Burnawiyya by students from Bornu and points further
west. The latter riwaq was the one Lethem visited when tracking
down Nigerians in Cairo. 14
For a listing of the foreign riwaqs and their student populations
1832-1925, see Appendix 1.
The Quarters: Rooms, a Library, Eating Hall
Most of the riwaks have rooms, Lethem reported, one or
several, assigned to them, in which there is generally a small library of
books belonging to the mosque, and where students may keep their
own books, hold conferences, or small lectures, and even live, sleep
and eat. 15 This description could well have applied to earlier times.
Students tended to sleep in the rooms during the winter and out on the
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Nigeria, the seat of the powerful sultanate of Sokoto, which presumably was ripe for religious agitation.
The Maruwa man attracted Lethems attention, but for other
reasons. He was Muhammad Zubair, a Fulani who had gone to Tunis
as a boy and could no longer speak any Nigerian language. Lethem
found him extremely dangerous. His private notes allude to a highplaced patron in Alexandria (where Zubair lived for a while)suspected to be Prince Umar Tusunwho informants said got him registered
at the Bornu riwaq as a student (presumably, to stir up anti-British sentiment). But Zubair had an extra source of income and lived well,
according to Lethem. He is one of the leaders of a small coterie of
Takarir who are fond of talking anti-British sedition and take part of
the political manifestations of the students of al-Azhar. The Sudan
Agency was following himinformation provided by Khalil Effendi,
who also gave him snippets of conversations he had had with
Muhammadand had him classed as an agitator, one who took a
lively and intelligent interest in every political upheaval throughout
the Islamic world. 27
But in interviews in Cairo fifty years later, Muhammad Zubair was
remembered quite differentlya man who had made a home in Cairo and
had led a principled religious life. With an Egyptian woman he fathered
13 children, and was said to have risen to the position of khatib at alAzhar. He had even aspired to become shaykh al-Islam when that position was vacated in Istanbul in the 1920s, and later became an imam at
the Um Ghulam mosque, near Husayn Mosque in Cairo.28
The Zawiya of Surur Agha
The second center of the Nigerian community was the zawiya in
the Mugharbalin section of Cairo named after Surur Agha. It was probably funded from 1894 onward by the waqf of Surur Agha, and when
he visited the mosque, Lethem found six Nigerians there.
He asked for more information about Surur and heard several
stories. He was told that Surur had been a Bornu man of Birni
[Ngazargamu, the capital of Bornu ca. 1450-1808] origin, who had
made money and left the mosque as a pious foundation for the use of
Takarir. He was also told that Surur Agha had been a nubai [in a
note: a non-Arab Muslim] of unknown race, who had had westerners
in his service only, to whom as a class he wished to show his gratitude.
Fifty years later when I asked the son of a Nigerian who came to Cairo
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ca 1910 who he was, I was told that Surur was actually from Maiduguri,
and had been in service in the household of Abbas Pasha, and that
when the mother of Abbas became sick, he prepared a special cure for
her, made from Nigerian wood. She survived and, in gratitude, she gave
money and land which was used to support his waqf. Whatever his origins, neither Lethems informants nor my sources many years later suggested he was a former slavemuch less a eunuchwhich was clear
from the terminology used in the waqf documents.29
The waqf drew its revenues from a property of 80 feddans in the
Damanhur district in the Egyptian Delta and from two houses in Dali
Husayn Alley in Mugharbalin, near the zawiya. Lethems talk with the
Nigerians yielded information that the revenues from the waqf and the
two houses had not been received from the Egyptian administrator of
the waqf for some time. They laid the blame on the naqib of the Bornu
riwaq, Umar Muhammad Nawwar.
Neither Lethems report nor the diary he kept in Cairo mention the zawiya in connection with the Tijaniyya, an odd oversight
since it was then one of the most important Sufi brotherhoods in
West Africa, with adepts in Senegal, Mali, Niger, and northern
Nigeria. In the nineteenth century membership in the order had been
spearheaded by al-Hajj Umar Tal, the Fulbe jihadist who was initiated into the order during his time in Mecca 1828-31 (with a short
stay at al-Azhar, it is believed), and whose long period of teaching
and military campaigning 1840-1860 brought about many converts.
The two houses on Dali Husayn that Surur Agha had given to the
Takruris were certainly being used as the Tijaniyya Cairo headquarters at the time of Lethems visit. According to the head of the
lodge in 1971, Muhammad al-Hafiz Abd al-Latif Salim al-Tijani,
the lodge was founded in 1288/1871 in the quarter of Cairo known
as Judriya. Later it moved to Khushqadam Street, and then to a
variety of addresses, including Dali Husayn Street before settling
back into Dali Husayn Street in 1937, which was still its address in
1971. The connection between the westerners and the Tijaniyya
clearly made the zawiya the Sufi orders center. By the 1920s the
quarter in which it lay, the Mugharbalin, had become a favorite residential areas for Nigerians in Cairo. When I visited the zawiya in
1971, the Friday services were packed, and it had in the recent past
received gifts from well-to-do Nigerians, including the Sardauna of
Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, and the Emir of Kano, who visited it himself during a trip to Cairo. 30
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Other Nigerians
Slavery and Pilgrimage
Outside the Al-Azhar and the Zawiya Surur Agha, Lethems
guides led him to those places and sources in Cairo that colonial officers usually had access tothe streets, the police, the Intelligence
departments and their reports, embassy officialsbut not to Egyptian
society and its private domains, at least not when the nature of the
inquiry concerned the lowly Nigerians. He heard, for example, that
there were also many ex-slaves of Nigerian origin or birthbut he
rarely came in contact with them. Several generations earlier, when
Gustav Nachtigal traveled to Kukawa in 1866, then the capital of the
kingdom of Bornu, he reported that as many as one-third of the slaves
exported north went to Egypt. In 1888, the Cairo Gazette reported
freed slaves coming in from the western desert. During the period
between 1877 (when slavery was officially abolished), and 1889,
about 18,000 slaves had been manumitted by special manumission
bureaux set up in all parts of the country.31
The barest glimpse of the life they made in Cairo is caught in
Sharia court documents, sometimes in the saddest circumstances.
Fatima al-Samra al-Burnawiyya (d. 1871), who had been freed by
Bashir Agha al-Asmara eunuch who had served in the household of
Sitt Shama Nur Qadin, who in turn had served in the household of
Muhammad Ali Pashamarried a student attached to the Riwaq alJabart named Shaykh Muhammad Abdallah Ibrahim. She died in
1871, and the inventory of her estate, valued at only LE 10, was witnessed by two students from the Bornu riwaq. Another of the Shaykhs
wives may have been a Bornu-born ex-slave named Zainab al-Samra
al-Burnawiyya, who also died that year. Zainab had worked in the
household of Usta Saida, a cook in the household of Said Pasha. Her
estate was worth LE 8.32
Before slavery was abolished, Muslim Takarna coming to Cairo
faced uncertainties and, sometimes, unusual fates. Takruri pilgrims
accompanying the great pilgrimage caravan from the Maghreb in 1802
were drafted into the army by the Ottoman governor, Muhammad
Khusraw Pasha, who housed them at the al-Zahiri mosque in
Husayniyya, where some engaged in a fight with Albanian troops and
were killed. At about this time, a court document reveals the story of one
of them, a man named Abdallah Adam al-Takruri al-Dar-Sulayhi, a soldier originally from a village of Fara in Wadai, who found his sister
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18
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African riwaqs would join them. Abdallah died in 1921 and his son
Mahmud was much more cautious than his father. He withdrew from
his fathers wide African contacts. This saved Lethem from viewing
him suspiciously, though he salaciously noted in his diary that he
gives news of the west to Giptis for money. He also called him a
bab al-gharb, adding in a footnote to Jaghabub, meaning that alKahhal was in constant communication with the Sanusis. Nor did he
much appreciate Mahmuds speaking admiringly of Kamal Mustafa,
Imam Yahya, and other great Muslim leaders.48
One Egyptian shaykh who worried Lethem was [Muhammad]
Mahmud Khattab al-Sibki [al-Subki], whom he called a violent hotgospeller denouncing not only European influence but also modernism
in any form. Al-Subki had a number of Takruri followers, including,
it was said, a Mallam Kiyari of Maiduguri, and was so influential he
was said to have formed his own tariqa.49
Nor was the power of books and publishing overlooked in his
report on nationalist and Islamic propaganda emanating from Cairo.
Missionaries such as Zwemer had noted,
In Cairo, tourists seldom wander to what we call
Pasternoster Row, the booksellers quarters. Here, near
the Azhar University, piled high, you may see huge
parcels of Arabic books addressed to Kordofan,
Timbuktu, Cape Town, Zanzibar, Sierra Leone,
Mombasa, Madagascar. Islam pours out literature and
extends the area of Arabic literates every year . . . In the
Lake Chad region of Africa, many books are imported
from Cairo.50
Zwemer was principally alluding to the firm of Mustafa and Isa alBabi al-Halabi, whose establishment near al-Azhar was well known
to Takruris and other non-Egyptian Muslims. They published many
manuscripts of Maliki works that were sent to central Africa.
Lethem noted in his diary that Mustafa was very rich and interested in politics of Lagos, but then could not help adding, he also
asked for aphrodisiacs.
The firm was established in 1858 by Ahmad al-Babi al-Halabi
(d. 1898). He had studied at al-Azhar, and when he saw that books
were being published in Turkish by the Bulaq press, he decided to
bring out Arabic editions of popular classic textsthe al-Durr al-
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Appendix 1
STUDENTS ENROLLED IN FOREIGN RIWAQS AT AL-AZHAR,
NINETEENTH - EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
Nationality
1850
1872
1902
1925
Turkish
Syrian (inc. Lebanon, Palestine)
Mughariba
Tunisia
Libya
Morocco
Algeria
Jawan (Indonesia, inc. Malaya, China)
Haramayn
Baghdad
Yemen
Kurd
Sulaymania (Afghanistan, Khorasan)
India
11
98
35
59
231
85
180
300
200
4
12
17
5
23
3
2
80
16
5
4
104
264
120
20
51
22
27
7
7
2
Barabira (Nubians)
Sennar
Jabart
Bornu
Sulayh (Sulaik, Dar Sila,
Wadai, Chad)
Darfur (Ardofor)
Baqqara (Sudanese)
9
20
few
10
12
8
15
26
5
5
8
2
3
Total Students
1833
9
5
3
150
40
3
20
15
7
20
37
19
257
65
45
28
6
13
30
21
20
17
6
6
14
12
5
4
9,668
10,403
Sources:
1833: Abd al-Hamid bey Nafi, Dhayl al-Maqrizi, MS in al-Azhar Library,
[#412] Abaza 6702 [Tarikh], dated 1248, 40-45.
1850: Ibrahim Salama, Bibliographie analytique et critique touchant la ques tion de lenseignment en Egypte depuis la periode des mamluks jusqu nos
jours (Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1938) 277. Total number: 1,162 including lamplights and servants of the students.
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Burniyyah (Burnawiyya)
Dakarnah (Takrur, Darfur)
Jabartiyya
Sinnariyyah
Barabirah
Dakarna Sulayh (Wadai)
1833
1865
1925
12_
16_
25
40
6
10
12
17
25_
80
5_
8_
12
33 loaves/day
25_ /day
80/day
5_ /day 40 students
8 5/8 loaves/day
In contrast, the students attached to the Riwaq Saaidah received 2 loaves per
student per day; Dodge says that at the beginning of the twentieth century
needy students were given 4 loaves a day, two of which they could sell.
Sources:
1833: Nafi, Dhayl al-Maqrizi, 40-45.
1865: Mubarak, Al-Khitat (New Edition), 4:52-57.
1900: Dodge, 128.
1925: Lethem; Dodge, 202-05. Note: Bread rations were provided on the
basis of one loaf every two days; the chart above is calculated on a daily
ration.
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Appendix 3
OCCUPATIONS OF NIGERIANS IN EGYPT
The Appendix to Lethems report included a name directory of the Nigerians
outside of al-Azharin Cairo (24), Alexandria (8), Zagazig (6), Suez (3), and
Ismailia (2). The occupations listed beside their names in his enumeration
are as follows:
Charm seller (sorcerer)
Beggar
Thief
Messenger
Soldier
Doctor or pharmacy assistant
Murderer
Fortune teller
Sweet seller
Vagrant
Interpreter
Beadseller
Drunkard
Servant
Trader
20
3
3
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Source:
Lethem, Report, Appendix C, 37-39.
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Notes
1 History of Islamic Propaganda in Nigeria (London: Waterlow & Sons Ltd,
1927?). The main body of this book contains the Reports by Tomlinson
and Lethem, to which are appended several appendices, of which
Appendix C is to Lethems Report. All references are to the Report section
unless otherwise noted. The Lethem Papers are housed in the Bodleian
Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, Oxford,
and permission to quote from them is gratefully acknowledged. Lethems
obituary was published in the Times of London, August 16, 1962; see also
the letter by J. D. H. in The Times on August 20, 1962.
Archive
Rhodes House, Oxford
Sir Gordon James Lethem, correspondence and papers.
MSS Brit Emp S 276.
Report:
Report on a Journey from Bornu, Nigeria, to the Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan, Jeddah and Cairo, by Mr. G. J. Lethem, pp. 16-87, in G. J. F.
Tomlinson and G.J. Lethem, History of Islamic Propaganda in
Nigeria, Reports by and Appendices to Mr. G. L. Lethems report,
Appendix C: West Africans in Cairo: The Bornu riwak in the alAzhar University, pp. 25-41.
Lethem had visited Sudan before coming to Cairo, and had full knowledge of the Sudan Intelligence reports. The tour took place July 9-July
21, 1925, and he stayed in Cairo 9 days (note in the Lethem Papers,
and also Lethem Report, p. 87).
Note on the Mosque of Surur Agha Box 11, file 3, f.29.
Cairo Diary, Box 9, file 15, ff. 1-47.
H. R. Palmer, Report on Mahdism in Northern Provinces, enclosed
in Report by Hugh Clifford, Lethem Papers, Box 10, file 6, ff. 63-64.
Al-Azhar Library, Cairo
Nafi, Abd al-Hamid, Dhayl al-Maqrizi, MSS [#412] Abaza 6702
[Tarikh].
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28
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29
30
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31
32
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49 Lethem Papers, Lethem to Palmer, August 4, 1925, in Lethem Box 11, file
1, ff. 74-75.
50 Zwemer, 194-95.
51 Lethem: Appendix C, 34; on the Halabis renown in Nigeria: Hunwick, The
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