A nineteenth-century Ottoman Kurdish scholar in South Africa: Abu Bakr Efendi

Abstract

Coming from a region where the three major languages of Islam meet, Kurdish `ulama have often played the role of cultural brokers between the Arabic, Persian and Turkish speaking worlds. Scholars and mystics such as Ibrahim al-Kurani, Mawlana Khalid, Muhammad Amin al-Kurdi and Said-i Nursi played important roles as disseminators of mystical ideas across linguistic boundaries, from India and Iran to the Turkish and Arab worlds and hence to other parts of the world of Islam (van Bruinessen 1998). Perhaps even more remarkable than these well-known mystics is the feat of cultural brokerage performed by the Kurdish scholar Abu Bakr Efendi from southern Kurdistan, who in the 1860’s settled in South Africa and wrote a book on the religious obligations of Islam in the local Dutch dialect for the benefit of the ‘Malay’ Muslim community of South Africa.