The Religious Men in Jebel Marra

The study investigates how Muslim religious specialists (fuqarâ, sing. fakî) acquire Qur'anic knowledge in the context of the "communities of practice". It contextualises the Qur'anic schools of Jebel Marra in the Sudan arguing that the fuqarâ increase their access to knowledge of the Qur’an by socially interacting with each other. The book is grounded in a ethnographic study of Qur’anic memorisation and activities that the fuqarâ perform after graduation from Qur’anic schools. It thus provides a fresh perspective to Islamic learning and epistemology.
"The great value of the study lies in the author's reconstruction of the practices and techniques, cognitive a nd corporeal, which are systematically employed to memorise the whole of the Qur'an.”
Kurt Beck, University of Bayreuth

Bakheit M. Nur Mohammed is currently a junior researcher at the Institute of African Studies of the University of Bayreuth