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Her article examines a set of practices described by a Sufi Muslim scholar named SÄ«di Muḥammad al-KuntÄ« in an Arabic manuscript text entitled the FawÄ�ʾid NÅ«rÄ�niyya. SÄ«di Muḥammad was the leader of a family network called "the Kunta," which controlled extensive trade routes, and asserted social and religious authority within the Sahara Desert in the late 18th and early 19th century.  

The FawÄ�ʾid NÅ«rÄ�niyya provides instructions on how to use the letters of the Arabic alphabet, the names of God, and in particular the greatest name of God, to perform a variety of practices intended to produce material results in the world—from healing the sick, to protecting a house, to exerting total control over the universe. Marcus-Sells then turns to another text by the same author to show that SÄ«di Muḥammad acknowledged that other Muslim scholars might consider these practices to be acts of sorcery (siḥr); however, he argues against this classification, and instead positions the sciences of secrets as a form of legitimate Muslim devotional practice and refers to them as "the sciences of the unseen." 

Ultimately, Marcus-Sells argues that SiÌ„di MuhÌ£ammad atttempts to limit access to the sciences of the unseen even as he presents explicit instructions for their use. His arguments for the legitimacy of the sciences establishe them as not only Muslim, but specifically Sufi, devotional practices, and thus place them under the control of Sufi leaders, including the leaders of his own family. In this fashion, by limiting and directing access to “the sciences of the unseen,” SÄ«di Muḥammad attempted to shape the Saharan society in which he lived by establishing his authority over the devotional lives of other Muslims.

This study thus adds to scholarship on sorcery and other contested practices in Islamic history while also highlighting the role of African Muslims in contributing to these debates. 

Ariela Marcus-Sells, assistant professor of religious studies and Distinguished Emerging Scholar at Elon, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965 to provide funding to support projects across the Humanities. Proposals are evaluated by panels of independent, external reviewers and funds go to a wide range of individuals, groups, and institutions through the United States. 

The NEH has announced the receipients for 253 new awards for 2019, representing 8 percent of the total applications received. Of the NEH Fellowships offered this year, only six went to recipients in North Carolina, one of which was to Marcus-Sells.  

The Fellowship will provide seven months of funding for June through December 2019 to support full-time work by Marcus-Sells on a book manuscript titled, “What is Magic? Debating Science, Sorcery, and Secrets in West African Sufi Texts.”

Marcus-Sells’ paper, entitled “Technologies of Devotion in the works of Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti,” analyzed the supplicatory prayers attributed to a Sufi Muslim scholar from the Southern Saharan desert whose work in the late-eighteenth century greatly influenced the development of Muslim and Sufi intellectual traditions in the greater region.

Marcus-Sells’ paper argued that close attention to historic manuscript texts intended as devotional aids to ritual practice allows historians to reconstruct the relationship between devotional practice, cosmological and metaphysical thought, and Arabic manuscript production among pre-modern Muslim communities.

Ultimately, her paper demonstrated that Sidi al-Mukhtar drew on devotional aids circulating in the region during the eighteenth century, but reshaped these traditions in response to his own specific, Saharan context. 

Sponsored by the Department for Religious Studies and the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society.