Dyula People - Islamic Tradition

Islamic Tradition

The dyula have been predominantly Muslim since the 13th century. Many in rural areas combine Islamic beliefs with certain pre-Islamic animistic traditions, such as the presence of spirits and use of amulets. Dyula communities have a reputation for historically maintaining a high standard of Muslim education. The dyula family enterprise based on the lu could afford to provide some of its younger men an Islamic education. Thus, an ulema (clerical) class known as karamogo emerged, who were educated in the Quran and commentary (tafsir), hadith (prophetic narrations), and the life of the Prophet Muhammad. According to the dyula clerical tradition, a student received instruction under a single sheikh for a duration varying from five to thirty years, and earned his living as a part-time farmer working his teacher's lands. After completed his studies, a karamogo obtained a turban and an isnad (teaching license), and either sought further instruction or to start his own school in a remote village. A highly educated karamogo could become a professional imam or qadi (judge).

Certain families gained a reputation for providing multiple generations of scholars. For example, the Saghanughu clan was a dyula lineage living in the northern and western Ivory Coast and parts of the Upper Volta. This lineage may be traced by to Timbuktu, but its principal figure was Sheikh Muhammad al-Mustafa Saghanughu (d. 1776), the imam of Bobo-Dyulasso. He produced an educational system based on three canonical texts of Quranic commentary (tafsir) and hadith. His sons continued spreading their father’s teachings and expanded through towns in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, founding Islamic schools, or madaris, and acting as imams and qadis.

These madaris were probably a positive by-product of the long history of Muslims’ interest in literary work. In "The Islamic Literary Tradition in Ghana", author Thomas Hodgkin enumerates the large literary contribution that was made by Dyula-Wangara Muslims to the history of not only the regions they found themselves in but also of West Africa as a whole. He cites al-Hajj Osmanu Eshaka Boyo of Kintampo as an “alim with a wide range of Muslim connexions and an excellent grasp of local Islamic history” whose efforts brought together a great many Arabic manuscripts from around Ghana. These manuscripts, the Isnad al-shuyukh wa’l-ulama, or Kitab Ghunja, compiled by al-Hajj ‘Umar ibn Abi Bakr ibn ‘Uthman al-Kabbawi al-Kanawi al-Salaghawi of Kete-Krachi who Hodgkin describes as “the most interesting, and historically significant of the poets,” may now be found in the library of the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana.