Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Institute of African Research and Studies - Department of History

This research is a study of the transformations in the tradition of Islamic scholarship in contemporary northwestern Nigerian society. It investigates into the aspects of continuity and change in the Islamic intellectual history of the region with focus on the period between 1945 and 1990 within the outlines of intellectual history. It{u2019}s a branch of history which is concerned with the study of human thought, culture, expression and intellectual movements. In this discipline, intellectual issues and ideas are considered as events in time and as possessed of meaning, thus human ideas and thoughts are reflected as other historical phenomena. Besides, the work looks into the aspects of Islamic engagements with modernity, with emphasis on intellectualism. The main target of the study is reconstructing the history of transition from a declined traditional system of Islamic scholarship towards a modern system; a trend which gave birth to intellectual dualism and religious modernity in northwestern Nigeria. Significantly, the change had allowed the revival of Islamic intellectual heritage and the unfolding of other intellectual issues. It equally explains the beginning and the extent of modern religious fragmentation and contestation of religious authority in Nigerian society, without delving into the theological aspects of the divide. The array of the topics covered in the research has denied developing a single working theory for analyzing the thesis. Rather, pragmatic perspective was maintained throughout the study. The research is thematically and chronologically organized into seven chapters apart from the general introduction and concluding chapters. In chapter one, a background history was provided in a snapshot manner of the development and decline of Islamic tradition learning up to 1945, the era in which new developments began influencing its changing nature

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