Kundi Subculture in the Islamic Scholarship of Ilorin Emirate: A Historical Perspective.
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Date
2025
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Kwara State University Press, Ilorin
Abstract
The production, preservation and transmission of knowledge and practices relating to such phenomena as the production of “medicines” and provision of health services are universal cultural traditions. Among Muslims, such phenomena dated back to the early period of Islam and have survived up to recent times. Among Nigerian Muslims, Kundi culture relates to aspect of knowledge production and preservation, and provision of remedies to health and other conditions. It specifically relates to the production and transmission of Arabic/Ajami manuscripts dealing with information on various aspects of the Muslim’s everyday life including solutions to various human problems. Thus, Kundi represents an individual Muslim’s or family manuscript repository for both the widely acknowledged ‘efficacious Muslim charms’, ‘amulets’, ‘magical therapeutic recipes’, and ‘medicinal prescriptions’, and prayer texts for supplications. Popularly known as “Nakali” or “Asiri” among the Ilorins, Kundi is also an important source of traditional African herbal/medicinal solutions preserved in Islamic/Arabic modes. This paper examines the Kundi culture in Ilorin—a Muslim community which dynamic tradition of Islamic scholarship derived from various Islamic traditions and its multi-ethnic configuration. As a widely acknowledged regional centre of Islamic learning and Arabic manuscripts production in Nigeria, Ilorin’s Kundi reflects the important role, which Ilorin played in indigenous knowledge production, transmission and preservation. As parts of its Arabic/Ajami manuscripts production, Kundi also reflects both Islamic/Muslim and indigenous herbal medicines and solutions and thus provides a veritable source for a study of the documentation of knowledge on both the Islamic/Muslim and traditional African herbal remedies to problems.
Keywords: Kundi, Nakali, Manuscripts, Culture, Knowledge Production, Documentation
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19. Salihu, I.O. Kundi Subculture in the Islamic Scholarship of Ilorin Emirate: A Historical Perspective. In Arikewuyo, A. I., Bello, K. I., Fawenu, B. O. and Salihu, I. O. (Eds.), Religion, Politics and Culture in Contemporary Nigeria: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Sulaiman Muhammad Jamiu (pp. 122-144).