Popular Portraits of Sheikh Ahmad Tijani - Another Little (Procrastination) Gem

Once again I have been procrastinating for few minutes to get over a temporary writing blog and what did I find? Look, the iconography of the Sheikh Ahmad Tijani poster I have collected in Kano has been more influential in West Africa than I originally would have thought. Granted, this is again an image from Senegal, a country with a strong tradition of Sufi Islam and adaptation of imported religious prints into new media, behind glass painting, followed by the subsequent extension of this artistic practice to include a variety of other religious and profane subject matter … anyway, its related to my research so I’m excited about it! So here you go, this is what I found:

I guess, the choice of this image speaks of its ubiquity and iconic power in Senegal at least – iconic, here, in the sense of the image’s potential to symbolise not only the depicted person but also the ideas and philosophy associated with his name. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out when the book was actually published, hence, cannot assess to which extent the image’s use here benefited from and/or contributed to the iconisation of this particular version of Sheikh Ahmad Tijani’s portrait.

By the way of reference (yes, I almost forgot that) this is where I found the image: Islam in Mijn Dagelijks Leven. And the closest I (yet) got to a date for the publication of the book is a tentative estimate I found in its entry in the Library of Congress’s website: “198-?”.

On Procrastination and the Occasional Online Illustration Gem

I’m still writing on my chapter about the religious chromolithographs I collected in Kano in 2008 – yes, no further comment pls. I already now that I’m being terribly slow here and horribly behind schedule. Let’s just hope the results will make up for the embarrassment I’m feeling about this … But hey, I’m actually writing because I wanted to post a link here that might be of interest to those of you out there who share my excitement about popular religious prints:

I haven’t yet checked out that site in any detail but looks like somebody at Bergen University is actually conducting research into popular Muslim iconography … at first sight, I’d think with particular regard to Shiite iconography. There is a little online exhibition you might want to check out ...

And then, just for reference, there is a beautiful glass painting depicting Sheikh Ahmad Tijani (and bearing a close resemblance to the print I have collected in Kano, thus, probably going back to some shared prototype), Sheikh Ibrahim Niasse and the Prophet Muhammad documented on the site of Joseph Hill of the American University in Cairo.

Alright, for me its now: do I write another page or better go to bed and get some rest …