Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / This dissertation examines the role of local oral and written sources in understanding belief and practice among followers of the Muridiyya Sufi order of Senegal. To date, scholarship on Muridiyya has tended to look to political and economic dimensions of the movement to explain its historical emergence and continuity. Works which have taken into account the movement's pedagogy and values have often focused on their economic and political implications. The present work examines discourses generated by Murid voices, mainly in the local language ofWolof. It addresses several key issues surrounding Murid identities, including how Murids envision their relationship to the founder, Ahmadu Bamba Mba.kke, how they envision their individual roles within society, and how they historicize themselves. Chapter One frames the discussion within a larger context of local Islamic discourses in sub-Saharan Africa. It reviews Ajami literary traditions (African language sources written in modified Arabic script) from Islamized Africa to shed light on important local perspectives. Chapter Two presents the sources used in the study. These include Wolof Ajami texts (Wolofal), oral data, and Arabophone and Europhone sources. The first set includes poetry composed by authors close to the movement's founder, works by contemporary Murid scholars, and published compilations of oral traditions attributed to Ahmadu Bamba. The second set includes oral interviews and recordings of Murid historians, educators, and disciples: The last set of data includes official Murid hagiographies, Bamba's own devotional poetry, and Western scholarly sources. The remaining chapters provide an analysis of these internal sources. They examine prominent themes as they appear through subjects such as history, education, ethics, the role of spiritual guides, and Bamba's sainthood in Murid discourses. The data presented offer a new perspective, grounded in local narratives, of this dynamic West African Sufi movement. The study presents several key fmdings. First, the analysis ties Murid knowledge systems to both local historical and cultural contexts, and to wider traditions of Islamic mysticism. Second, it demonstrates the marginal role assigned to colonial authority in Murid internal narratives. Finally, it uncovers the continuing overt and mystical significance of Bamba's work in the lives of his followers.

This research examines the effects of a daily, ritualistic, intentional practice of Sufi meditation Tamarzok, Sufi Zikr and art making in the life of a female art therapist graduate student, in a transitional professional and developmental stage of life. The general psychology and art therapy literature were examined to look at contemporary understanding in the integration of spirituality and art in mental health. A lack of information in the art therapy literature prompted the interest in the development of this study to respond to this inquiry. This art-centered research informed by a heuristic, phenomenological, dialectical inquiry of self-examination, encompassed the practice of Sufi Zikr and Sufi meditation Tamarkoz as understood from the perspective of the Sufi Order Maktab Tarighat Oveyssi Shahmaghsoudi School of Islamic Sufism, followed by art making as a way of documenting and contextualizing the qualities of the internal and external emotional landscapes to uncover themes and broaden self-knowledge in the support and enhancement of growth and well-being. The data was analyzed by looking at emergent themes. Conclusions drawn aligned the combined practices of art making and spirituality to that of a relational home where the Self and all parts of the psyche can coexist and contextualized for meanings to emerge and healing to take place. The findings of this inquiry were in overall alignment with the reviewed art therapy literature; gaps in the reviewed literature were noted in the exploration of the somatic component of the practice of art making as it relates to healing. Further research is warranted to expand and explore the data and the uncovered areas.

If Italy officially administrates Libya in 1912, it does not succeed in submitting the whole population. The coming to power of B. Mussolini in 1922 has the country enter in a new colonial era. Firmly decided to dominate the Libyan territory, he wages violent campaigns in the north-west region (Tripolitania) and in the south-west (Fezzan). In 1929, he engages the country in a new campaign to submit the last region in resistance: Cyrenaica. Unable to subdue the resistance despite a brutal policy, the Italians decide in 1930 to create concentration camps to confine tens of thousands of the inhabitants of the region (submitted or in resistance) and to succeed in establishing its power. The thesis falls within the post-colonial history movement and resorts to a transimperial approach in order to analyse the French gaze (by which we understand the state’s institutions and public opinion) on those camps. In those years of high tensions in the North African region, but also of European and Franco-French preoccupations, what was the French discourse on the violent colonial policy of the rival Italian power? The French civilizational ideology of the 1930s, and its own concentrational past, are not the only ways to understand the press and state silences. France’s interest is also in maintaining cordial relations with Italy, and in the weakening, if not, the annihilation of its old Saharan enemy: the Sanusiyya. The mystic brotherhood to which the majority of the interned are affiliated, embodies a common enemy for the two empires. Moreover, the migrations that ensue from the implementation of the concentration camps are profitable, even if concerning, for the French colonial power. The press and state archives therefore allow for very few spaces of denunciation and only in the context of the instrumentalization of the Italian policy to the benefit of France. / Si l’Italie prend officiellement la tête de l’administration libyenne en 1912, elle ne parvient pas en réalité à soumettre l’intégralité de la population. L’arrivée au pouvoir de B. Mussolini en 1922 fait entrer l’empire italien dans une nouvelle ère coloniale. Bien décidé à maîtriser le territoire libyen, il engage des campagnes violentes dans les régions du nord-ouest (Tripolitaine) et du sud-ouest (Fezzan). C’est alors qu’en 1929, il engage le pays dans une campagne destinée à soumettre la dernière région encore en résistance : la Cyrénaïque. Incapables de soumettre la résistance malgré une politique violente, les Italiens décident en 1930 de mettre en place des camps de concentration afin d’y entasser les milliers d’habitants de la région (soumis ou résistants) et de parvenir à asseoir leur pouvoir. Ce mémoire de maîtrise s’inscrit dans l’histoire postcoloniale et souhaite analyser dans une approche transimpériale, le regard que les Français - entendus comme les autorités et l’opinion publique - ont pu porter sur l’entreprise concentrationnaire. Dans ces années de fortes tensions franco-italiennes dans la région nord-africaine, mais également de préoccupations à l’échelle européenne ou purement franco-française, quel a été le discours de l’Empire français, à l’égard de la politique coloniale violente de la puissance coloniale rivale italienne ? L’idéologie civilisatrice de la France des années 1930, et son propre passé concentrationnaire ne sont pas les seuls facteurs d’explication du silence des autorités et de la presse. La France trouve en effet son intérêt à maintenir des relations cordiales avec l’Italie, et à l’affaiblissement, voire, à l’anéantissement de sa vieille ennemie saharienne, la Sanusiyya. La confrérie mystique à laquelle sont affiliés une large majorité des nomades et semi nomades internés dans les camps, incarne un ennemi commun des deux empires coloniaux. Par ailleurs, les migrations qu’induisent la mise en place des camps sont profitables, bien qu’alarmantes, pour les pouvoirs publics. Les archives de presse et d’État laissent donc une maigre place à la dénonciation qui n’intervient souvent que dans le cadre d’une instrumentalisation au profit de l’Empire français.

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