A Hidden Qur’an: The Wolof Vernacular Sufi Poetry of Ibou Diouf

During the 1930s, as the Fayḍa Tijāniyya Sufi revival spread throughout Senegal, poetry recitation became an important means of transmitting and cultivating spiritual knowledge of God. While the Arabic poetry of Fayḍa founder Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse has received scholarly attention, Ibou Diouf’s vernacular Wolof poetry became an equally important channel of spiritual knowledge, and it has recently undergone a resurgence through social media. Indeed, many Fayḍa adherents describe Ibou Diouf’s poetry as a kind of hidden Qur’an inspired directly by God, and classically trained scholars cite it in speeches and lessons. This paper takes a decolonial approach to examining how Ibou Diouf’s poetry contributes to cultivating knowledge of God. It untangles the distinctions between oral and written knowledge to recognize interconnected forms of knowledge typically invisible to academic observers. Although Ibou Diouf was illiterate, his poetry weaves together concepts from the Qur’an and diverse Islamic and Sufi literature.