Ep. 19 | Portrait of a Moroccan ʿĀlim: Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī’s Life, Works, and World | Dr. Armaan Siddiqi

Episode 19

Release date: August 15, 2025

Hosts: Harry Bastermajian and Meryum Kazmi

Recording location: Media Production Center, Harvard University

Sound engineer: Jeffrey Valade

Audio editing: Meryum Kazmi

Audio elements (used with permission of the artist): The Burda of Imam Busiri performed by the Fez Singers, featuring Bennis Abdelfattah (Sandala Ltd.)

Photo: Inner courtyard of the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco / photo credit: JHVEPhoto via Alamy

Transcription: Otter (modified for readability)

Harry Bastermajian  00:21

Welcome to the Harvard Islamic Podcast. I'm Harry Bastermajian,

Meryum Kazmi  00:26

and I'm Meryum Kazmi. We're excited to be joined today by Dr. Armaan Siddiqi, winner of the 2024 Alwaleed bin Talal Dissertation Prize in Islamic Studies for her dissertation, "Portrait of a Moroccan 'Alim: Muhammad bin Ja'far al-Kattani, Life, Works, and World (1858-1927." Armaan earned her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 2024. Welcome, Armaan.

Armaan Siddiqi  00:53

Thank you so much, Harry and Meryum for having me on the podcast. I'm delighted to be here.

Harry Bastermajian  00:59

Great to have you here.

Meryum Kazmi  01:00

So can you start by telling us a bit about your academic background and what brought you to the study of Islamic intellectual history in Morocco?

Armaan Siddiqi  01:10

Yeah, so my academic background in the study of Islam stems from my personal background. I grew up in a Pakistani American Muslim household where Islam was inculcated in my life, though mainly in two specific contexts, either on a personal, familial level or in community, through religious holidays and festivities observed socially. But it stayed pretty contained within these two facets of relatively private life between family and my tight knit suburban Muslim community. It wasn't until I studied abroad in Morocco as an anthropology major during college that I really observed how profoundly Islam permeated every sphere of a society, from the subtlest day-to-day cultural interactions to the highest levels of government and politics, Islam was omnipresent in a way that is just so different in like Muslim diasporic communities, where Islam as a lived tradition, is often just contained to private or community experiences. So I became fascinated by the omnipresence and multifaceted nature of Islam in Muslim societies, and in particular within the political framework of the government. So I began asking questions like, How does Islam and statecraft play out practically? How do different religious actors negotiate their place and their authority within an Islamic state? And I was really fortunate to be able to actually return to Morocco for a year after graduating from college through a Fulbright fellowship that allowed me to continue exploring and really grappling with these questions. My specific project for Fulbright was a study of women's participation in a contemporary Sufi order that was very active politically, with kind of overt partnerships with and endorsements by the Royal monarchy today. It's the Qadiri Boutchichiya Sufi tariqa, which has been the subject of a number of important studies by now, and as fascinating as it was to observe a kind of live example of Sufism's relationship with the Royal monarchy in the present moment, what actually stuck with me most in Morocco while I was conducting my kind of mini ethnography, was that this is not new. There is so much more to this story, and that's where the Islamic intellectual history interest really stems. I left Morocco wanting to trace the genealogies of this phenomena of Sufism, presence in politics and of certain Sufi orders being endorsed by the monarchy and directly involved in shaping policy and in foreign diplomacy and collaborating with the state in different capacities. And throughout my research, I had already closely read and referred back to Professor Malika Zeghal's book, Islamism in Morocco, and it had been such a formative study for me that I was determined to reach out and work with her on my own research, and so that's how I, very fortunately, ended up here at Harvard for my NELC PhD, where I continued to focus on Islam and politics in the Maghrib, but adopted a more long-term approach to the subject, so much more historical and genealogical, which, in the end, only enriches our understanding of contemporary society.

Harry Bastermajian  04:45

So to dive into your dissertation, can you tell us a little bit more about who was Muhammad ibn Ja'far al-Kattani, and why did you choose to study him?

Armaan Siddiqi  04:59

Sure, Muhammad ibn Ja'far al-Kattani was one of the most influential Moroccan scholars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in 1858, in Fez into a very prominent family, the Kattani family, whose prestige arose from three closely connected aspects. Their identity, firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the Kattanis trace their lineage directly back to the Prophet Muhammad, which makes them part of this important social group in Morocco known as the shurafa'. And historically, the shurafa' in Morocco have held significant religious, cultural, and political prestige, and we can get into this a little bit later as well, and the importance of being a sharif for Kattani. But the Kattanis are also famous as a family of religious scholars, especially in the field of Hadith, although their expertise as 'ulama is really wide ranging. The Kattani family member central to my study, Muhammad ibn Ja'far was himself a towering figure in Islamic scholarship during the modern period. I sort of immediately came across him back in Morocco during my Fulbright through just an initial scan of major primary texts, you know, on the history of Sufism in Morocco, he really embodies the highest ideals of traditional-- of being a traditional 'alim, so somebody who's rigorously trained in the sacred sciences by the leading scholars of his time at both the preeminent institutions of Fez, like the Qarawiyyin, and the Bou'inaniya madrasa, as well as smaller, more localized centers of learning, like the zawiyas, mosques, the shrines and tombs of saints, both in Fez as well as, you know, the more peripheral kind of suburban towns such as Zerhoun, Meknes, Wazan and Tetouan. So he really travels extensively to take knowledge from wherever he can, and he eventually becomes a leading and gifted shaykh himself, who wrote prolifically across multiple genres, hadith, theology, law, Sufism, tafsir, hadith, grammar, biography, a range of texts in devotional literature. Kattani was also, in a real sense, a historian, especially through his biographical works such as, for example, Salwat al-anfas, a colossal compendium of Moroccan saints and scholars from Fez, that's, until today, one of the richest repositories of social and intellectual life in 19th century Morocco, and it really is a model of his signature, interdisciplinarity. You know, it's not just a biographical dictionary. It contains a theological defense of shrine visitation, a legal manual on how to perform shrine visitation, and, you know, even a map of where exactly to find the nearly 2000 saintly individuals his work memorializes. And I'll return to this point of interdisciplinarity in just a minute. But in light of his far-ranging expertise, Kattani was also regularly consulted by Moroccan sultans, in fact, three successive sultans throughout his lifetime, and even during his years in the Mashriq and Hijaz, he was recognized by prominent leaders as an authority on Islamic law and various spiritual matters. So he's a fascinating person in terms of his intellectual output, the novelty you know of his writing, craft and ideas, but what also drew me to him is actually the time period that his life spanned. We often associate the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the rise of Islamic modernism and reformist thinkers like Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammed Abduh Rashid Rida, who sought to reinterpret Islamic law in institutions in response to colonial pressure and to the challenges of modernity. And these reformists have really dominated the academic study of Islamic intellectual history for decades. Albert Hourani's seminal Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, first published in 1962, set the tone for this trend, though even Hourani himself admitted two decades later that perhaps too much attention had been paid indeed to reformism, to the neglect of more conservative and traditional voices. And to me, Kattani really represents that conservative, traditional voice, not as a mere gatekeeper of tradition and the status quo, but rather as embodying a whole different reaction and response to the challenges of his period that doesn't seek to reform or reinterpret Islamic law and institutions, but instead insists on the enduring power of tradition and of religion as a means of safeguarding Muslim sovereignty. So Kattani's conservatism, which I kind of define as like his steadfast upholding of traditional Islamic norms and institutions, was deep. In tune with the political crises that defined his era, namely, colonial encroachments, dynastic instability, major shifts socially in conceptions of Islamic authority, Kattani consistently leveraged Islamic scholarship and literature as a site of critique and of mobilizing Muslims to spiritually and morally rectify themselves. And notably, he does this not exclusively through the domain of Islamic law, which is often focused on as a major mechanism of change in Islam, but through that really wide-ranging list of genres in which he wrote that I alluded to earlier. There's this remarkable coherence to his thought that you can begin to pick up on across different disciplines and genres. And so, for example, to me, his lyrical hagiography of the saints of Fez is no different than his scathing work of admonition and call to jihad on the eve of colonization. It's really like the same message in two different textual traditions. So choosing to study Kattani was also a methodological choice in this respect. Rather than focus narrowly on legal texts or political treatises or Sufi works, I opted for the genre of intellectual biography, and this approach allowed me to explore the multiple facets of the scholar's thought, how he viewed law, history, politics and spirituality, not as separate domains, but as part of a unified vision for the Muslim community. So biography allowed me the analytic space to really delve into several major works of Kattani's written across different genres. I specifically look at biographical and autobiographical works, his travel writings, his fatwas and sermons, advice, an advice manual, and a theological work. And I devoted each chapter of the dissertation to like one to two major works written from a period spanning the late pre-colonial to the early colonial period of Morocco. And what is even more remarkable to me is that Kattani was hardly alone in doing this. He's really part of a network of conservative, traditionally-trained 'ulama who are reacting and responding to the world around them, but through the realm of religious literature and practice and through traditional religious institutions like lineage and genealogy, so like ijazas and silsilas, or chains of initiation into Sufi orders. And so a study of Kattani's life truly opens up bigger questions about how authority is constructed and exercised in Islam, and from a social-historical perspective, how a whole segment of society that's been often eclipsed by the more dramatic reformist currents of Islamic thought really grappled with the political climate and what solutions they offered for both the rulers and the lay Muslim community during a time of turmoil.

Harry Bastermajian  13:40

Thank you.

Meryum Kazmi  13:41

Thank you. So to get into Chapter One of your dissertation, you talk more about al-Kattani's familial, intellectual, and spiritual genealogy. So can you tell us more about his lineage and what is the significance of prophetic lineage, in particular, in the religious, intellectual, and political history of Morocco?

Armaan Siddiqi  14:07

Yeah, so as I briefly alluded to earlier, Kattani's identity in his entire life world is composed of these three interlinked genealogies. So biologically, he is a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad through the important figure of Moulay Idris the First who I'll return to in just a moment. The second tier of his lineage is his intellectual genealogy, or his silsila, the chain of teachers and students tracing back to earlier generations, ideally back to the Prophet Muhammad himself. So authority, you know, didn't just come from what you knew, but from who you studied under, and who they studied under. And in cities like Fez and other religious centers throughout the Muslim world, scholars from institutions like the Qarawiyyin really built their reputations on these scholarly lineages, which guaranteed the reliability and authenticity of the knowledge that they transmitted. Again, in the case of Kattani, a large number of his teachers are his own family members, notably his father, who, at the time of Kattani's birth, is already known as the shaykh al-jama'a. You know, this an honorific title as, literally, the master of the community of Fez. And as Kattani travels eastward to the Mashriq and Hijaz, he continues a tradition of keenly obtaining ever more chains of transmission from the various scholars who he meets and studies with. And of course, he himself passes on his own chains. And so his intellectual genealogy is comprised of this constant reception and transmission of Hadith and sacred knowledge. And then finally, in very much the same fashion, is his spiritual genealogy, which is comprised of his multiple chains of initiation and authorization into Sufi orders. And these are also called silsilas that trace the transmission of esoteric knowledge and baraka, or spiritual blessings, from shaykh to disciple, ultimately back to the Prophet Muhammad as well. These are not viewed as symbolic genealogies, but as very real kind of living conduits of baraka and authority. So in both rural and urban Morocco, these Sufi networks became central to religious life and education and even local governance. You know, especially in the zawiyas, which often functioned as centers of authority regionally. And this Sufi component of Kattani identity begins in his family as well. So he's born into the Kattani Sufi order, which profoundly shapes his world and his spiritual practice. But Kattani continues to, like thicken or densify his spiritual genealogy by extensive initiations into other Sufi orders as well. So in his own words, Kattani was initiated into 40 different Sufi orders, you know, at least, and the mere fact that he is relentlessly continuing this tradition of multiple initiations into different Sufi orders and of relentlessly collecting chains of hadith transmission up until the early 20th century is a clear sign of his attachment to tradition, and in particular, to traditional knowledge and institutions. Both of these practices, this kind of fervent collection of hadith and Sufi chains, are kind of dying practices around this time, and that's of course, related to the rise of so-called reformist and modernist epistemological currents of Islam that view these practices as excessive and completely illogical. And so that's a little bit about Kattani's genealogy. And to now delve into the second part of the question, which concerns the significance of prophetic lineage to the history of Morocco. In Morocco, being a sharif, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, what is referred to as a sayyid in other parts of the Muslim world, has historically carried immense prestige and influence, and this idea dates back to the very foundation of the Moroccan state, the first Moroccan Muslim dynasty. The Idrisids emerged in the late eighth century, founded by Idris ibn Abdullah, mentioned earlier, Kattani's ancestor, who was a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad through his grandson, Hassan. And Idris ended up in the far Maghrib because he was fleeing political turmoil in the Abbasid east with violent clashes and persecution of fellow 'Alids, or, you know, the prophet's descendants and partisans of Ali. So once Idris arrived in the Maghrib, he aligned himself with the leading tribal confederation and promoted both Islam as a state religion-- so he's often kind of memorialized in Morocco as the kind of institute, institute, you know, the one who institutionalized Islam in Morocco itself-- as well as this whole system of sharifan rule. And you know this system of basing legitimacy on noble prophetic lineage, as opposed to tribal conquest or dominance, which had marked the political dynasties in the far Maghrib prior to Islam, and this came to be regarded as, you know, as I said, sharifian rule in scholarship on the Maghrib. In practice, it had ebbs and flows throughout Morocco's dynastic history, but the ideology was really revived and institutionalized by the Saadians in the 16th century, followed by the 'Alawi dynasty in the 17th century, who still rule Morocco today. So Morocco is ruled by the 'Alawis, and it's the 'Alawis who really transform sharifan descent in, you know, not only from, you know, being a pillar of statecraft, but as an official, legal and bureaucratic category for all Moroccans. So official registries were created to document sharifan families. Social privileges, like tax exemptions were granted special offices like, you know, the naqib al-ashraf were tasked with maintaining and updating genealogies and generally overseeing the affairs of the shurafa'. Now, what's really important to just note here as a subtext, you know, to all of this documentation activity, is that the 'Alawis are certainly not the only sharifan family in Morocco. There is a constant vigilance of the other families, including the Kattanis, who actually have a different lineage to the Prophet than the 'Alawis, which makes their relationship even trickier at times as these families wielded, you know, their own local and religious influence. And so sharifan status was highly regulated and at times really contained through this bureaucratic apparatus and diplomacy, you know, between and among the families. And so the major takeaway, you know, from this is that having prophetic lineage in Morocco translated into very real social capital and legal standing and even political legitimacy for the rulers who, by virtue of biologically carrying the prophet's baraka, assumed the title of Amir al-Mu'minin, Commander of the Faithful. So there's this cementing of political religious power in the person of the sultan through that. But much more generally, genealogy in Morocco is ultimately multidimensional. It can be prophetic, intellectual, and spiritual, and an individual of authority. So a ruler, a religious scholar, Sufi master, their legitimacy is often mediated through their genealogy. It becomes a marker of their status. And of course, these were kind of overlapping genealogies, and individuals had genealogies stacked through these different facets of authority.

Meryum Kazmi  22:41

So I'm just wondering the Kattanis and 'Alawis, are they both going back to Moulay Idris?

Armaan Siddiqi  22:48

No. So the Kattanis are Idrisids, and the 'Alawi dynasty is a separate lineage that grows through another descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. They both do ultimately end up going through Hassan, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. But the Kattanis as Idrisids, is very significant in that, you know, it's also associated with the Idrisid dynasty as the first kind of dynasty in Morocco. And so that becomes a point of competition and kind of creative tension between these two families throughout the history of their relationship.

Meryum Kazmi  23:32

Okay, interesting. Thank you. So then in Chapter Two, you talk about al-Kattani's views on authority. How did he view authority, and what did he believe to be the role of the Muslim ruler vis a vis the ‘ulama, and under what conditions the ruler should or should not be obeyed?

Armaan Siddiqi  23:55

Yeah, so when we talk about Kattani's views of authority, we're really delving into the core of this multi-layered conception of religious authority that we've, you know, kind of begun to discuss as either inherited through noble dissent, learned through rigorous study, or achieved through spiritual proximity to God, through the prophet, and precisely because Kattani's own authority as both self-conceptualized and as recognized by others, was derived from all three of these channels, his view of authority was not entirely centralized in the Makhzan, which is the kind of government apparatus of Morocco, but rather distributed among the shurafa’, 'ulama and awliya’, such that there's ideally an equilibrium of power and stability maintained at all times. And this framework of balanced power for social stability, is key in Kattani's thought, and it actually stems from broader theories of classical Sunni thought, where, on the one hand, the Muslim ruler is traditionally seen as both a political and a religious leader, as God's shadow on earth, to quote the well-known hadith or saying of the Prophet Muhammad, but on the other hand, there's another hadith or tradition of the Prophet that casts the religious scholars as the inheritors of the Prophet when it comes to religious authority, so the 'ulama and the ruler end up sort of becoming religious, political co-partners. And while that could have theoretically led to clashes and rivalry, what often ended up happening instead was this very careful balancing act where power was shared and negotiated, and precisely it's this pattern that we observe in its final breaths in late pre-colonial Morocco, and that Kattani is thus very committed to preserving amid the political upheavals of the early 20th century that really threaten this entire system of shared power among different figures of religious authority. So to give an example, the Makhzan, in increasingly losing its grip to European influence, both politically and economically, started making concessions that many 'ulama just saw as squarely between Islamic norms and ethics, scholars like Kattani began speaking out more boldly than they may have previously. One of the major issues that Kattani relentlessly spoke out-- spoke out against was foreign protection on Moroccan soil, the protege system in which Moroccan Muslims and Jews claim European consular protection to evade Moroccan law. So it's like having European law apply to you, but still being based in Morocco, so there's enormous pressure to directly intervene as members of the 'ulama class. Now, crucially, Kattani never argues, even at the height of his distress over these issues, for outright disobeying the sultan, even on the brink of colonization, let alone of overthrowing him. In my discussion of this, in Chapter Two, I examine a work of nasiha or frank counsel or advice. This is a classic Islamic literary genre that Kattani authors for the sultan, although the title is Nasiha ahl al-Islam, advice to all Muslims. This is a decidedly political text in that it is firmly rooted in his contemporary context. It's written in 1907 and it's a scathing critique of Muslims' inability to ward off European aggression and just accelerate their moral decay. The steering language of the text, however, masks the incredible nuance and even a sense of compromise hidden between the lines. So Kattani tried very carefully to uphold the traditional theological and juridical stance that obedience to the ruler is a religious obligation. Once again, this view reflects both normative Sunni orthodoxy as well as a specifically Moroccan tradition of political power and political order in which there is also, you know, a long kind of intellectual genealogy that Kattani is kind of fixing himself to. So Kattani's stance to obey the ruler is in intellectual continuity with earlier Moroccan thinkers who also wrote under similar circumstances, such as the famous 15th century Sufi master and jurist Ahmad Zarruq, who also insisted on obedience to the ruler during times of internal strife and foreign threat. Unlike, you know, this was in content-- in contrast to Zarruq's contemporaries like the charismatic Sulayman al-Jazuli, who called for armed struggle and jihad without the sultan's approval. For both Zarruq in the 15th century as well as Kattani in the 20th century, unauthorized jihad threatens to undermine public order, thus making society even more susceptible to colonization. So Kattani is firm in his obedience to the sultan, in spirit now the way in which he still delivers his critique to the sultan, for example, his critique that Sultan Abdul-Aziz has not yet officially called for jihad, even though all the circumstances of the time call for it, is through very delicate legal maneuvering, is kind of how I put it in the chapter. In a passage where he asserts the obligation to obey the ruler, even if he's unjust, for example, Kattani follows up by invoking carefully curated opinions of classical jurists who cite exceptions to that rule. So for example, Ibn Rushd's ruling that obedience remains incumbent unless the ruler commands a sin, and that forbidding jihad, if it's a fard 'ayn, meaning an individual obligation, would be considered a sin. So theoretically, you could go against the sultan if he is not allowing you to fulfill jihad, if it's been declared by the 'ulama in that situation. But very quickly, Kattani clarifies, you know, in the next passage, that physical jihad in most cases, is fard kifaya, a communal obligation, which generally does require the ruler's authorization. But he puts it out there, hoping perhaps that Sultan Abdul-Aziz, to whom he presents this Nasiha to in his court, will perhaps read it and reflect on it. So the Nasiha as a text allows Kattani to indirectly address the sultan on a matter that he feels he has lapsed in, in this case, calling for jihad against the colonizer. And this entire exercise of legal reasoning and rhetorical strategy really underscores his agency and an interpretive authority. He writes elsewhere that if God wants good for a ruler, he gives him a trustworthy advisor who reminds him when he forgets and helps him when he remembers. So again, underscoring the partnership, but really the indispensable position of the 'ulama within the state, which is a solid reason to obey the Sultan because it reinforces, in a kind of circular, you know, circular fashion, the authority of the 'ulama without one the other, you know, kind of ceases to exist in the political framework. And so this model of obedience to the Sultan is not, you know, simply as an unconditional political doctrine per se, but part of a broader religious and social framework in which the 'ulama have a key function as well. And he writes in the Nasiha that true authority begins with moral and religious responsibility, not simply inheriting a position. And so there's this very verbal kind of active sense of authority in Kattani's thought, and you know that's reflected very carefully and in the way that he critiques underhandedly the sultan through this genre.

Harry Bastermajian  32:44

So in your third chapter, you continue to analyze Kattani's legal and political maneuvers in a fatwa he issued at the request of the sultan on whether Moroccans are obligated to perform Hajj. How did al-Kattani respond to this request?

Armaan Siddiqi  33:03

Yeah, this Hajj fatwa for the Sultan is another really vivid example of the delicate balance of power and authority between the ruler and scholar, this time through a different genre of Islamic scholarship, that of the fatwa or legal opinion. So before giving Kattani's answer, I'll start by giving a little bit of background as to why the sultan even solicited a fatwa from Kattani concerning the permissibility of Moroccans to perform Hajj. As Jocelyn Hendrickson's important study shows, there was, in fact, a centuries-long tradition within Maghribi Maliki jurisprudence of issuing fatwas that discouraged or at times outright prohibited Moroccans in the region from undertaking the Hajj pilgrimage. These fatwas, which span from the 11th to the 19th centuries, were mainly solicited by rulers, and while they often cited the physical dangers of travel, Hendrickson argues that their underlying motivations were frequently political. Specifically, she suggests that rulers sought to retain able bodied subjects capable, you know, to engage potentially in jihad and as well as to protect local resources and wealth by dissuading travel to Mecca, particularly during times of political instability or threaten-- these are typically the frontier states of the Maghrib that do this, and she uncovers that. She uncovers this through an analysis of jurists literary techniques to frame the ban on Hajj as very pious and practical, while subtly masking their alignment with state interests to ban it for the reasons just mentioned, this tradition of Hajj prohibition is the crucial backdrop to the fatwa solicited by Sultan Abdul-Aziz in 1887 to Kattani concerning the permissibility of Hajj for Moroccan subjects. As we've discussed, by the end of the 19th century, Morocco's sovereignty was under mounting pressure, and it's very likely that the sultan sought to restrict the pilgrimage as a means of conserving national resources and wealth, as well as individuals. This is also a time during which Moroccans are contemplating hijra, which is, you know, this kind of escaping colonial encroachment by fleeing to a land where Islam is not under threat. So going from Dar al-harb, where Islam is under threat, to Dar al-Islam, where, you know, Islam can be practiced freely without the threat of colonization. And so there's this palpable anxiety of, you know, wealthy subjects of the state fleeing the Maghrib amid mounting instability, and of course, there's, you know, often pressure for the Sultan to engage in these Hajj caravans and to sponsor Hajj caravans as well. So that might also be a reason to kind of get a ban on this, to kind of evade the many requests to sponsor the Hajj or to engage in these Hajj caravans. And now, while Hendrickson's work highlights how jurists historically complied with rulers in issuing total bans or discouragement, Kattani's fatwa is quite interesting in that he slightly breaks from this tradition and offers us more insights into the kind of shifting scholar-ruler dynamic, arguably because of the era in which he lived. As you know, there's kind of major reconfigurations of this historical relationship. So rather than issuing a categorical prohibition, Kattani really deftly constructed a legal argument that upheld the sanctity of Hajj while allowing for its temporary suspension under very specific conditions. So Kattani understands the assignment, and because he is such a master of the legal sciences as a Maliki jurist, he also knows of this tradition. He knows that sultans have been asking for these fatwas to prohibit the Hajj and so he recognizes immediately what the Sultan is doing and seeking. So what he does in response is he presents these highly conditional exceptions, but throughout the fatwa still manages to maintain the integrity and the obligatory nature of the Hajj. And so he doesn't let go of it as freely as has been the precedent in the previous fatwas where Hajj was discouraged or outright banned. As an interesting anecdote, his own father, Ja'far al-Kattani, issued a ban on Hajj. So he did issue a ban. But Muhammad ibn Ja'far, the Kattani of interest here, provides a much, much more nuanced fatwa for the Sultan that doesn't quite ban it as easily. So in this chapter and in a forthcoming article, I take a closer look at the sophisticated strategies that Kattani is using to craft his argument and underline how he not only contributes to a long standing legal tradition, but also definitely draws on it to advance his own vision. Kattani's stake in allowing the Hajj season to continue is linked to his vision of Muslims engaging in religious acts and practices and upholding tradition as a way of fortifying them religiously and spiritually, which he believes will then result in kind of politically fortifying themselves and protecting Moroccan sovereignty. So there was a direct relationship between sound religious belief and practices and political stability and sovereignty. And so this adds further nuance to our understanding of authority and of how the 'ulama may engage with the rulers in ways that ultimately serve their own interests. And so it was a very symbiotic relationship.

Harry Bastermajian  39:40

Sounds like a very practical person in terms of his approach. In your in the following chapter, you talk about al-Kattani's journey to the Mashriq for the Hajj. What are some of the themes you find in his writings on the travel, on his travels in the Islamic East?

Armaan Siddiqi  40:02

Yeah, this chapter is really where I started to understand just how embedded Kattani was in a much broader trans-regional network of classically-trained 'ulama. His first journey to the east to the Mashriq for Hajj in 1904-1905 was a spiritual milestone, to be sure, but was also very formative, intellectually, and arguably politically significant for him as well. What struck me most while researching this period of his life was how the Hajj journey becomes a window into a world that is both in transition but also relatively a stable force in a scholar's life. It's obviously a moment of tremendous flux across the Islamic world, large parts of it, from Morocco to India, are colonized or facing imminent colonization, as the great Muslim empires are themselves crumbling, and yet the tradition of pilgrimage and of scholarly exchange throughout that long journey to the Hijaz remained incredibly vibrant and ongoing despite the new obstacles. So for example, British steamships, travel restrictions, quarantines, the work of scholarship and of religious training and transmission and initiations into orders, continues in a very serious and sustained way. You know, despite all that's going on politically, and this is why travelogues like Kattani's are just, you know, on a kind of methodological note, are such rich primary sources. They offer vivid, almost ethnographic accounts of not just the journey itself, but of the people, the institutions and intellectual life that Kattani encounters along the route to Hajj. And there's, of course, a long-standing tradition of travel writing in the Islamic world. Morocco's own, Ibn Battuta, you know, is perhaps the most famous of, you know, among the most famous of travel writers. And Kattani is very much writing within that same genre. He follows its literary conventions, but also infuses the literary form with his own distinctive, again, interdisciplinary style. The text, the key text that I focus on in this chapter is his Rihla, his travelogue, in which he recounts his journey from the moment he sets off from Fez and travels north to the port of Tangier, and then boards a British steamship headed east towards the Hijaz. And along the way, as is convention, he stops sometimes for extended stays in Cairo, in Jerusalem, Damascus, and other key intellectual centers. And sometimes he even just docks, as you know, at a city, and, you know, doesn't get off. But he also records, you know, what is significant about the place where the ship is resting and who he would have loved to go meet in those places, had he, you know, been able to get off. And so this was, you know, as I mentioned, it was a common practice before the advent of air travel. The Hajj journey could take months or even years, and it was deeply tied to this tradition of scholarly exchange. So one major theme in the travelogue is precisely this intellectual and spiritual exchange. Kattani is constantly meeting scholars, visiting mosques, shrines, zawiyas, and libraries, meeting both the living and the deceased saints and scholars of a particular place. He gives and attends lessons, issues, legal opinions on the move, on the spot, and participates in scholarly gatherings that resemble what we might think of today as almost academic workshops. In one striking scene, he's sitting in the home of a learned shaykh in Damascus reading aloud a draft of a work in progress to a group of scholars, and it's a beautiful example of how knowledge was shared and refined, and perhaps even co-produced across this vast network of 'ulama globally. And so what that anecdote shows us is what transmission of knowledge looks like in practice. Another theme that runs throughout his travelogue is his commitment to tradition. Kattani is writing is, as I've said, holistic and interdisciplinary. He's not just documenting his travels, but he's also recording legal opinions, theological reflections, he records his dreams and the many ijazas and initiations that he receives along the way, and we've spoken about the keen collecting of hadith and Sufi chains, even at a time when these practices are beginning to be dismissed as very outdated. But for Kattani, these practices, like the very practice of performing Hajj are safeguards. He sees the preservation of tradition, both in the sense of sound religious knowledge as well as sound religious practice, as essential to fortifying Muslims and resisting colonization and thereby maintaining Muslim sovereignty through this kind of moral and religious fortitude. He's also especially critical of what he sees as reformist overreach or interventions, particularly in places like Egypt. He strongly opposes rulings that, in his view, dilute the boundaries of Muslim identity and so kind of remembering that, you know, issue that was of, you know, extreme stress for Kattani of the proteges of Moroccans and Muslims being protected by foreign, European powers and non-Muslims. For him, you know, one of the main issues of contention was that it blurred the boundary of religious identity. It's the same kind of feeling in this context as well. In the travelogue, for example, he happens upon a group of 'ulama discussing Muhammad Abduh's famous Transvaal Fatwa, which permits Muslims to eat meat slaughtered by the People of the Book, which traditionally means meat that's slaughtered by Christian and Jews, and there's opinions to include other religious communities as well. Kattani rejects this ruling outright, and he fervently, you know, argues that it again blurs the lines of religious identity and compromises the core principles of Islamic law. And this concern about the erosion of legal and theological clarity as markers of identity is, you know, as I alluded to, is a recurring theme in his writings. We see it again and again, this fixation on identity as sharply delineated through sound belief and through sound practice and so, alongside this deeply gratifying spiritual immersion and this journey of seeking knowledge, Kattani and his peers are also grappling with new and unsettling realities, including the rise of colonial control over Muslim spaces. He writes about quarantines in Suez, the increasing bureaucratization of pilgrimage and the way that traditional routes are being disrupted by colonial infrastructure and what he calls as the kind of meddling of the colonists in Muslim affairs. And these aren't just inconveniences for Kattani. They represent the real, again, erosion of Muslim autonomy. He's witnessing the transformation of the Hajj from a sacred journey into something increasingly regulated by non-Muslim powers, and he finds that deeply troubling. Nile Green has referred to this somewhat paradoxical phenomena as the Hajj own undoing, as no longer a purely pristine, you know, and pious journey to pilgrimages, but you know, as one that's constantly contaminated by these interactions and these obstacles set up by colonial authorities. In Kattani's travelogue, I do see some of that conveyed, but he also nuances that experience a little. His response is not purely one of despair. Ultimately, you know, even when he boards that British steamboat in Tanger and notices that the pilot is a Christian European, he and his group of pilgrims view that as an opportunity for da'wa, or, you know, an invitation to Islam. And they share food with him and with the crew members, and they have a surprisingly positive interaction that he recounts. And so the Rihla as a text is a very powerful record of an 'alim trying to navigate these shifting waters, like much of his scholarship, it's a layered piece. It's devotional, it's scholarly, it's political, and it's also very raw emotionally as a diary as well, you can palpably feel all of his anxiety and stress just dissipate the moment Kattani arrives in Medina and visits the Prophet at his tomb, for whom he is alive. And it's very moving that he refers to him as his grandfather. And so there's this deep and enduring bond and familiarity in Medina that transcends space and geography and time itself. And of course, we know by now the significance of his lineage in really cultivating that strong devotion to the Prophet.

Harry Bastermajian  50:19

Thank you.

Meryum Kazmi  50:21

Thank you. So I just wanted to ask as a follow up in this chapter, you also talked about Malikism as a marker of Maghribi identity. So I was wondering if you can just comment a bit on how al-Kattani holds onto his Malikism in his travels in the Mashriq, and how Malikism is associated with certain things like reverence for the Sunnah and the family of the Prophet.

Armaan Siddiqi  50:49

Yeah, this is, this is such a fascinating part of his reflections in the travelogue. So Malikism really comes to be a marker of the Maghrib geographically, because it kind of develops very distinctly in that region. And as we, you know, as we discuss, I think, in the previous chapter, in the previous question, this local current of Maliki fiqh, in which there's this long standing tradition of prohibiting the Hajj because of certain fears of the frontier states and safeguarding the Muslim territories. And so there is a great deal of local custom that has been a part historically, of the Maliki madhhab of 'amal literature, which is, you know, again, local custom. And when Kattani travels to the Mashriq, he-- one other point about the kind of association of Malikism with, with the Maghrib is that there's, it's sort of the dominant school of thought in the Maghrib. And so you don't have as much variety in terms of schools of thought available as you do, perhaps elsewhere in the Muslim world. And so really, everyone you know is Maliki. Your teachers are Maliki. It's, you know, a standard part of your curriculum, and in your religious training. When he goes to the Mashriq, he's obviously exposed to, you know, the many other approaches to law. And it's a very kind of, you know, he's, of course, as a scholar, he studied this, so it's not completely disorienting, you know, as somebody trained in the legal sciences, because you study the other madhhabs, but he's very kind of taken aback by, you know, the differences in practice, the kind of subtleties of prayer times and whatnot. And so there's this feeling of, you know, this commonality on the one hand, but then also of this kind of feeling of being different, and of being very Moroccan, and of having this kind of regional affinity, underlined and sharpened in that communal experience by virtue of being in a space in which there are, there's a there's a kind of extreme plurality of opinion, legally, theologically, you know, in terms of you know, across the board. And the Maghrib is, of course, very uniform, relatively, in its theology and its fiqh, and so that's a kind of eye-opening moment for him in the Hijaz, as you know, as both a marker of his identity as a Moroccan, but also a kind of, yeah, a very kind of culturally eye-opening experience.

Meryum Kazmi  54:06

So can you talk a bit about the debate over the scope of the Prophet's knowledge, and which I believe was especially important in the late 19th, early 20th century, and what were al-Kattani's views on the topic that you discussed in Chapter Five?

Armaan Siddiqi  54:26

Yeah, so in Chapter Five, the final chapter, we remain geographically in the Hijaz, and I explore, through a different text, how debates over the Prophet Muhammad's metaphysical status, especially this debate on the scope of the Prophet's knowledge became a critical site for negotiating identity and tradition in the early 20th century for Kattani and his peers, and these debates were, of course, not new. Muslim scholars have discussed, you know, the nature of Prophet's knowledge, his physical and spiritual reality, his uniqueness for centuries, but in the modern period, these questions become charged with new valences. SherAli Tareen's really compelling study, Defending Muhammad in Modernity, documents this broader intellectual terrain at length, in particular, as it played out in South Asia between the competing Barelwi and Deobandi movements, who had sharply contrasting theological visions of the Prophet. So for the Barelwis, the Prophet is no ordinary man. He possesses unique miraculous qualities, including expansive knowledge of the Unseen. The Deobandis, on the other hand, emphasize the Prophet's humanity. For them, he is morally perfect, you know, as an individual chosen by God to receive revelation. But there's, you know, he's not somebody whose metaphysical reality sets him apart, ontologically, in a very radical way. And so this captures the very debate that Kattani himself encounters in Mecca around 1905, 1906. Ahmad Raza Khan Barelwi, founder of the so-called Barelwi school, just mentioned, has just written his fiery polemic in Mecca, declaring Deobandis infidels on account of their not having proper veneration of Muhammad. Now, Kattani is also moved to write a theological tract during this trip because he overhears firsthand in Mecca what he refers to as a group of exoteric-minded Muslims. Ahl al-Zahir, speak of the Prophet in ways that he found deeply offensive, so in his own theological work that I ground this chapter in, Jala' al-qulub, that's inspired by this experience, Kattani takes a position comparable to the Barelwis, that sets the Prophet Muhammad apart metaphysically from humanity, and argues that not only is it possible to affirm the Prophet's knowledge of the Unseen, it's actually essential to a proper understanding of Islam itself to really understand and believe this reality of the Prophet Muhammad as knowledgeable of every single thing, as unlike anything metaphysically that we, you know, we could possibly conceive of in humanity. So to remedy this, you know, this kind of debate that he sees play out, and the specific experience of overhearing individuals speaking in that way about the Prophet that he views as unbecoming, Kattani lays out a theological framework for recovering sound knowledge of the Prophet and cultivating reverence and closeness to him as a spiritual practice. So the stakes are really high for Kattani. For him, internal disunity, both from kind of spiritual ignorance, is a greater threat to the Muslim community than colonial encroachment. So he really, you know, even, kind of going back to our discussion of the Nasiha, it's really an inward critique of Muslims that you know, if only you were to rectify yourselves morally and kind of spiritually, rectify yourselves religiously in terms of your practice, you would be in a position to fight successfully the colonizers. And so it's, you know, it's a similar, and this is what I mean when I say there's this kind of coherence to his vision that comes up again and again in his texts. In this theological tract, he says that, you know, there's this type of spiritual ignorance is precisely what will kind of open the floodgates of colonization and of sort of terrible, catastrophic events for the Muslim community. So his writing reflects a worldview in which the Prophet is not only a moral guide, but the very key to understanding the entire universe, and where safeguarding his metaphysical reality is essential, you know, as I said, for preserving the unity and spiritual health of the Muslim community. So it's also a very inward facing approach, and it's very vivid, if dense, you know, as a work and in which the centrality of Kattani's prophetic descent and spiritual proximity to the Prophet really comes through. And this brings us full circle to how the Prophet Muhammad is really the center of Kattani's universe, and how every single lineage of his, you know, biological, scholarly, and spiritual, all lead back to the Prophet Muhammad. In his work, Tareen frames these debates as not, you know, simply reformist versus traditionalist bickering, you know, and argumentation, but as expressions of what he calls competing theological or competing political theologies, disagreements about how divine authority, prophetic charisma, and religious identity function under colonial conditions. And I think that that's a really useful analytical grounding to these types of writings that appear during a time of both internal and external threats to traditional ways of knowing and being in the world.

Harry Bastermajian  1:01:00

Thank you very much for sharing your excellent dissertation with us to wrap us up. What's next in your research? What are you working on next?

Armaan Siddiqi  1:01:15

First and foremost on the research agenda is working on my book project, which is a natural outgrowth of the dissertation and still true to the biographical approach, but also expands to actually include a few of Kattani's peers and colleagues to tell what I hope will be a richer and more textured history of conservative Muslim thought in the modern era, and I want to still focus on the Maghrib, which I think deserves more attention geographically. I'm also working on publishing a couple of peer-reviewed articles and continuing to contribute to this large ongoing digital humanities project with Professor Malika Zeghal and a few colleagues of mine to digitally map the Islamic periodical al-Manar, which was published in Cairo during the 20th century and had a tremendous global reach. And so we're currently working on the website, which we hope will be a useful tool for teaching, for students, scholars and really, anyone interested in the modern Middle East.