AFRICAN SCHOLARS AND SAINTS: THEIR LIVES AND TIMES

Tuesday, 21 February 2017

MUHAMMAD SHITTA-BEY (LAGOS)

INAUGURATION OF
SHITTA-BEY 'AFRO-BRAZILIAN ' MOSQUE IN NIGERIA, 1894: AFRO-BRAZILIAN ARCHITECTURE IN WEST AFRICA

{Built by Oloye Muĥammad Shitta-Bey, a wealthy Sierra Leonean-born Nigerian Merchant and Philanthropist}

In the late nineteenth century, Oloye Muĥammad Shitta, a wealthy Sierra Leonean-born Nigerian merchant and philanthropist, built the Shitta Bey Mosque in Lagos, Nigeria. He was of Yoruba descent and was later awarded the title ‘Bey’ by the Ottoman Caliph as an honour and in recognition of his rank as leader of the Muslim community in Lagos. He was later known as Muĥammad Shitta-Bey. 

He commissioned a mosque to be built according to the design of the Brazilian Joao Baptista da Costa and in 1892 it was constructed by a Nigerian builder called Sanusi Aka. Shitta-Bey financed the construction of the mosque, which was officially. inaugurated by the Governor of Lagos in 1894. Shitta-Bey was joined by Oyekan I (Oba 'Ruler' of Lagos) and Edward Wilmot Blyden (Pan-Africanist) at the inauguration of the mosque. The Shitta-Bey mosque is one of several examples of Afro-Brazilian religious architecture in Nigeria and Benin that were built by former slaves who returned to West Africa from Brazil in the late nineteenth century. The magnificent architectural design of the Brazilian baroque mosques in West Africa is a part of the great Afro-Brazilian legacy in West Africa. 

#LeaveALegacy 

#IlluminatingTheBlackness 

~ Habeeb Akande 

MUHAMMAD SHITTA-BEY 

(Shaykh Daniyal's Ancestor) 

nigerianwiki.com/wiki/Mohammed_Shitta_Bey 

Mohammed Shitta Bey was a Nigerian philanthropist and businessman who was involved in commerce in Lagos and the Delta during the latter part of the nineteenth century and was one of the most successful immigrants during the period. LIfe He was born in 1824 in Sierra Leone to Liberated Africans from Yoruba land. His father named Salu was a Muslim leader in Sierra Leone. 

He came to Lagos with his parents in 1844 along with some Aku or Yoruba Muslims from Sierra Leone. They originally settled in Badagry. At Badagry, Shitta Bey's father was the Imam of the Badagry Muslim community. After his father's death in 1847 in Badagry, Shitta Bey and a few other Muslims moved to Lagos, he then started commerce in the Lagos colony around 1861 but in a few years moved to the Delta where he was an agent for Miller Bros. 

He was very successful in the area and was able to continue doing business on his own account, later having his brother as an agent for the Delta. He returned to Lagos in 1885 and later built a mosque which was opened in 1894, the opening ceremony had notable guests such as Edward Blyden. 

Earlier in 1873, he had contributed financially to the erection of the Lagos Central Mosque. Later in his life, he was conferred with the tile of Seriki Musululmi (head of Muslims) of Lagos and was a prominent political leader of the Lagos Muslim community. He also had a good relationship with Oba Akintoye and Dosunmu and supported various Islamic causes including the erection of mosques beyond Lagos specifically at Otta, the use of Sharia as a guiding law for Muslims and the establishment of a Muslim school in Lagos. 

Further reading 

MOHAMMAD SHITTA BEY AND THE LAGOS MUSLIM COMMUNITY,. 1850-. 1895. (Parts I and 11). Titilola Euba. Nigerian Journal of - Islam, Ife References (1) Jean Kopytoff. A Preface to Modern Nigeria. p 299.

SHEIKH DANIYAL SHITTA-BEY (KADUNA)

via: allafrica.com/stories/201504281364.html

~Daily Trust

Sheikh Daniyalu Shitta Dies at 93

By: Maryam Ahmadu-Suka Kaduna

of Nigeria (MCON), an umbrella body of Yoruba Muslim Organisations, 93 year-old Sheikh Daniyalu Shitta Bey, died yesterday in Kaduna after brief illness. Born in Lagos State in 1922, Sheikh Daniyalu went to Kaduna in 1945 where he married his first wife in 1952 and his second in 1974.

Chief Imam of the Muslim Council

He is survived by wife, children, grand children and great grand children.

AL-HAJJ ABDULLAH NIASSE (1840–1922) & ALHAJJ MALICK SY (1855–1922)

AL-HAJJ ABDULLAH NIASSE (1840–1922) & ALHAJJ MALICK SY (1855–1922)

(The Most Prominent Religious Leaders in Senegal of the Early Twentieth Century)

By: Prof. Rüdiger Seesemann

In: “The Divine Flood: Ibrāhīm Niasse and the Roots of a Twentieth-Century Sufi Revival”

Ibrāhīm Niasse was in his early twenties when ʿAbdallāh Niasse, his great role model, teacher, and initiator passed away on Dhū l-Qaʿda 13, 1340/July 9, 1922, only two weeks after Mālik Sy had died in Tivaouane.

Historically;

ʿAbdallāh Niasse traveled from Gambia to Fez and further to Marseille, accompanied by his eldest son Muḥammad (b. 1299/1881). From there, Muḥammad went to the Ḥijāz to perform the ḥajj, while ʿAbdallāh returned to Morocco where he waited for his son. However, contrary to the claim of most studies, it seems unlikely that they undertook this journey during the early years of the exile. Primary sources suggest that the trip in question took place in 1910-1911, and rather than returning to Gambia, ʿAbdallāh Niasse went to Senegal where he obtained permission to end his exile and take residence in Kaolack.

The favorable response of the colonial administration to Niasse’s request is usually attributed to the intervention of his friend al-Ḥājj Mālik Sy, the most prominent religious leader in Senegal of the early twentieth century together with Niasse and Aḥmadu Bamba, the founder of the Murīdiyya.

Niasse’s first destination coming from Morocco was Tivaouane, the headquarters of the emerging Sy branch of the Tijāniyya, where he spent several weeks as Mālik Sy’s guest.

According to Klein, the latter advised Niasse to write to the governor of Senegal and ask for permission to settle in Kaolack. As Senegalese sources agree, it was thanks to Mālik Sy’s mediation that Niasse was finally allowed to stay in his home country. Within a short period of time, his zāwiya in Kaolack flourished, and the reputation of his school extended well beyond the region of Saloum. Together with Sy, ʿAbdallāh Niasse was the leading figure within the Tijāniyya of Senegal.

Some later voices from Kaolack would even assert that Niasse’s position in the Tijāniyya was superior to Sy’s, as Niasse was the first Senegalese to receive a so-called unlimited license (ijāza muṭlaqa), the highest available rank authorizing the holder to initiate aspirants, appoint deputies without limitation of the number, and give others permission to recite all litanies (awrād, sing. wird), mandatory as well as optional. According to one version that is popular in Kaolack, ʿAbdallāh Niasse, after having obtained his license, tried to convince the Moroccan leaders of the Tijāniyya to issue one for Mālik Sy as well. They finally agreed, though they initially argued that they would usually not bestow such an honor through correspondence. Thus, when Niasse arrived in Tivaouane he was able to confer the license to Sy, on behalf of the Moroccan issuer. This version, however, is rejected in Tivaouane. From their perspective, it was Sy who acted as Niasse’s mentor, as evidenced in Sy’s successful mediation effort.

Although there is much talk about Niasse’s unlimited license, and there is no reason to doubt that he did indeed accede to this rank, it is not quite clear who issued it. During his stay in Morocco in 1910-1911, he met with a large number of leading personalities of the Tijāniyya, including Muḥammad al-Bashīr b. Muḥammad al-Ḥabīb b. Aḥmad al-Tijānī, the oldest living descendant of the order’s founder at the time, who purportedly gave him the original manuscript of Jawāhir al-maʿānī. Other potential issuers of the license include Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib al-Sufyānī, grandson of a companion of Aḥmad al-Tijānī with the same name and longtime head of the zāwiya in Fez; a deputy called al-Muḥibb b. al-ʿArabī; Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-ʿAbd Lāwī, the son of one of the most eminent disciples of ʿAlī al-Tamāsīnī, al-Tijānī’s first successor; and last not least, Aḥmad b. al-ʿAyyāshi Skīraj (b. 1295/1878; d. 1363/1944), a student of Aḥmad al-ʿAbd Lāwī who was to become the leading scholar of the Tijāniyya in the first half of the twentieth century.

The grandsons of ʿAbdallāh Niasse put much emphasis on the latter connection, although Skīraj, born in 1295/1878, was only in his early thirties and had not risen to his later prominence at the time of his meeting with the Senegalese. Whatever the case, Niasse received licenses from most if not all the personalities mentioned above, and at least one of these was unlimited.

The recognition from the Tijāniyya’s headquarters was a boost to his reputation when he established himself as the foremost scholar of Islam and the Tijāniyya in Saloum and the adjacent regions.

NEW PUBLICATION ALERT!!!

👉🏿 The Adhkar of Shaykh Muhammad Amīn: In the Light of the Tarbiyah of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (Translation & Commentary of Tanbī al-Ibād alā Mulāzamat al-Awrād of Shaykh Muhammad Amīn Abdullah Okene).

Translation & Commentary by Dr. AbdulAzeez Advise Sadeeq Esq.

👉🏿 Al-Faydu-l Ahmadī fī-l Mawlidi-l Muhammadī (The Aḥmadān Outpouring Concerning The Muhammadan Mawlid) & A Compilation of Mawlid Poems.

By Shaykh al-Islām, al-Hajj Ibrahim Niasse

Translated by Dr. AbdulAzeez Advise Sadeeq Esq.

WRITINGS/PUBLICATIONS OF SHAYKH IBRAHIM NIASSE (AVAILABLE, PLACE YOUR ORDER!)

[Contact WhatsApp +2349078376281 or click 👉🏻https://wa.me/c/2349078376281]

✓ Majmū’at ad-Dawāwīn (Collection of Praise Works) by Shaikh Ibrahim Niasse, Arabic text and English translation by Dr. Awwal Baba Taofiq [Contains (8 Dīwans); Dawāwīn as-Sitt (Six Dīwāns) and Two Extra Dīwān (Nūr al-Haqq & Sayr al-Qalb)]

✓ Rihlat Kunakriyyah (A Trip To Conakry). By Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse. Translated by Khalifah Awwal Baba Taofiq

✓ The Icon of Mystics: Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse Al-Kawlakhy [by Dr. Awwal Baba Taofiq[

✓ Who is this Shaikh “Shaikh Ibrahim Niasse Al-Kaolacky [by Dr. Awwal Baba Taofiq

✓ Shariah and Haqeeqah: In the Light of the Qur'an and the Prophetic Traditions [by Dr. Awwal Baba Taofiq]

✓ Spiritual Flood (Alūfu-l Khalqi Ma'lūf), by Shaykh 'Abdul-Quadr ibn 'Ali Al-Nupewy [Annotated Translation from Arabic info English by Dr. Awwal Baba Taofiq

✓ Handbook for every Tijaniyyat [by Shaikh Ahmad Bello As-Suufi Harazimi]

✓ Practical Guide on the Wird(Litany) of the Tariqah Faydah Tijaniyyah (The Adherent Handbook)-(Compiled by Sayyidah Bilqis Grillo)

✓ Al-Yāqūtatu-l Fareeda Fī Tariqatu-t Tijāniyyah (The Unique Ruby in the Tijānīya Spiritual Path) — *Arabic Text, English Translation & Commentary* (Written by Sheikh Abdul-Wāhid Muhammad Nazifi. Translated by Jafaru Ibrahim)

✓ Qasida al-Hamziyya (Panegyric which contains the Biography & History of Prophet Muḥammad) by Shaykh Muhammad Būsayrī [Translation & Commentary by Ibrahim Jafaru] - Arabic & English

.....for the full catalog of Arabic and English Sufi Books...