Religious Excerpts in West African Arabic Literature

Abstract

The study focused on religious excepts and its significance in West African Arabic Poetry, seeking to showcase not only the extent of occurrence of these excerpts, but also its artistic value. The study was carried out on pieces of poems curled from collection of individual poets from the dawn of the twentieth century to date. The essence of the study was to highlight the central role of excerpts technically defined in Arabic Rhetoric as "al-iqtibas" in consolidating the thoughts expressed in West African Arabic poems. The study adopted an inductive and descriptive analytical approaches, whereby the researcher identified, described, and analysed religious excerpts, mainly from Quran and Hadith, that have been featured in the sampled poems. Generally Muslim scholars consider the Quran and Hadith as linguistic masterpieces and standard work worthy of emulation. This primarily explains why Muslim novelists and poets, frequently feature in their works, excerpts from Quran and Hadith. They seek to offer their piece of work, both the requisite linguistic value and authoritative voice. This phenomenon has not been duly explored as far as West African poetry is concerned. This is what necessitated this study. Among others, the study made the following observations: 1. It was established that West African Arabic poets used religious excerpts mainly in exhortation and advice, seeking to influence their audience. 2. The study revealed that religious excepts occurred mostly in descriptive poems, and the poets display a depth of creativity in terms of situating the excerpts in proper context. 3. In the same way, the poet used religious excerpts in poems of complaints and intersession, whereby they featured quotes from Quran and Hadith relating to supplications. 4. It came to light that two main forms of religious excerpts were predominantly used in these poems; direct quotes and indirect quotes. In the latter, the poets reproduced the meaning contained in specific quotes, while in the former they used same words to convey same thoughts. 5. It emerged that the goal for replicating religious excepts in most of the poems, was to inculcate sound morals in the audience