Journal of Islamic Studies Advance Access originally published online on August 8, 2008
Journal of Islamic Studies 2009 20(1):21-45; doi:10.1093/jis/etn031
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Islamic Mystical Readings of Cheikh Hamidou Kane's Ambiguous Adventure
School of Oriental and African Studies
E-mail: kaidara{at}hotmail.com
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Abstract |
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Cheikh Hamidou Kane was born in 1928 into a noble, scholarly family from the north of Senegal. His father was educated in the Islamic sciences and familiar with the theological and philosophical thought of both the Islamic and European traditions. Cheikh Hamidou Kane later left Senegal to study philosophy at the Sorbonne.
Ambiguous Adventure was written in the early 1950s, but was not published until 1961. It has often been seen as a philosophical novel that deals with the social and intellectual dilemmas of an African Muslim society having to submit to secular cultural norms imported with French rule; but the story is actually about something much more fundamental.
This article tries to demonstrate that Ambiguous Adventure is about the devastating effect upon the protagonist, Samba Diallo, of losing the precious esoteric knowledge transmitted to him within the Islamic mystical tradition, which is erased with the imposition of the French educational system.
Ambiguous Adventure has also been called a ‘tale of initiation’, much like the ris
la from the Ishrq
School. Examining the work in this light, the paper shows that Samba Diallo's journey is actually a tragic inversion of the classical model featured in tales of initiation. He moves from an environment in which he is able to experience knowledge to one in which he is only able to discuss knowledge—a state of ‘rootless intellectualism’ devoid of real meaning.