Companion Texts

Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, the concise fifteenth-century Egyptian tafsīr completed jointly by Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī (d. 864/1459), a Shāfiʿī jurist and Quranic scholar of Cairo, and his student Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), one of the most prolific scholars of the Islamic tradition and a master of the Quranic sciences, hadith, and jurisprudence, forms the foundational reference for the development of tafsīr practice in West Africa since the sixteenth century. As Ogunnaike has observed, it constitutes “the basis of most West African tafsīrs, both written works and oral performances.”¹

The specific recension of the Jalālayn that Niasse consulted was the edition bearing the marginal notes of Aḥmad al-Ṣāwī (d. 1241/1825), an Egyptian Mālikī scholar, a student of al-Dardir, and a Sufi of the Khalwatiyya order whose commentary integrated the legal and spiritual dimensions of Quranic interpretation. Ustādh Barham Diop (1932–2014), a prominent student of Niasse, confirmed to Ogunnaike that Shaykh Ibrāhīm delivered the 1964 Ramaḍān sessions with a physical copy of the Jalālayn with al-Ṣāwī's marginal notes in his hand.² The compiler's annotations confirm this: from the documentary apparatus of Fī Riyāḍ al-Tafsīr, it is clear that the Jalālayn-Ṣāwī text constituted the primary written reference against which Niasse's oral commentary was delivered.

Ogunnaike characterises the function of this text in Niasse's method with precision: “one can almost hear when Shaykh Ibrāhīm puts down the Tafsīr al-Jalālayn and began to expound on his own.”³ Fī Riyāḍ al-Tafsīr adheres relatively closely to al-Ṣāwī's commentary before departing into independent spiritual instruction. In this sense, the Jalālayn-Ṣāwī serves as a maṭlaʿ — a point of departure, from which Niasse launches into metaphysical exposition, practical spiritual guidance, and his own distinctive reading of the Qurʾānic text.

The relationship between Fī Riyāḍ al-Tafsīr and the Rūḥ al-Bayān of Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī al-Burūsawī (d. 1127/1715), Ottoman scholar, Sufi shaykh of the Khalwatiyya order, and one of the foremost synthesisers of Sufi Quranic hermeneutics in the post-Akbarian tradition, marks one of the most significant findings of recent scholarship on Niasse's tafsīr. In his 2024 study, Wright argues that Niasse's commentary “exhibits a clear preference for an early eighteenth-century Ottoman multivolume work, Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī's ‘Spirit of Explanation’ (Rūḥ al-Bayān), one of the most comprehensive summaries of Sufi understandings of the Qurʾān.”⁴

Wright's thesis represents a revision of prior scholarly assumptions. Earlier scholarship located the Jalālayn as the dominant influence on West African tafsīr. Wright demonstrates, however, that close reading of Fī Riyāḍ al-Tafsīrreveals “a sustained dialectic, not only with the Tafsīr al-Jalālayn but also with a seminal Ottoman Sufi tafsīr, the Rūḥ al-Bayān, in crafting a notable contribution to the classical tafsīr genre.”⁵ Niasse's preference for the Rūḥ al-Bayān distinguishes his work from the broader West African tafsīr tradition and situates it within the Ottoman Sufi exegetical inheritance.

This scholarly preference is corroborated by personal testimony. Ustādh Barham Diop reported to Ogunnaike that Niasse “insisted that the top shelves of his library be stocked with books of tafsīr, and that he had a special fondness for theRūḥ al-Bayān.”⁶ The Rūḥ al-Bayān is a ten-volume work drawing extensively on the metaphysical school of Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) and the subsequent Sufi interpretive tradition. Its prominence inFī Riyāḍ al-Tafsīr is a direct expression of Niasse's engagement with the Akbarian tradition and his situating of Qurʾānic exegesis within the cosmological and anthropological framework of waḥdat al-wujūd and its West African Tijānī reception.