Muslim Scholars of Yoruba Origin in Ghana: A Critical Study of Musah Abdul- Kadir’s Dirge

Abstract

The Yoruba migrant community has been an integral part of the Ghanaian society since the late nineteenth-century. Their vast contribution to the thriving of trade and commerce in Ghana, chiefly in the informal sectors has been extensively examined by H. Polly (1970) and J.S. Eades (1994) among others. Nonetheless, there are dearth of studies on the socio-cultural impact of Yoruba people on the Ghanaian community. This study sheds some insight into the contribution of Ghanaian Muslim scholars of Yoruba origin to the Arabic literary tradition in Ghana. It focuses on the late Sheikh Musah Abdul-Kadir who traces his root to Ilorin. The study upon analyzing a dirge Musah composed to eulogize the late Sheikh Ahmed Yasin of HAMAS, came to the conclusion that it was a critical and an original contribution that provided extra insight into the assassination of Ahmed Yasin, and that Musah’s contribution to the cause of Arabic and Islamic, and those of his ilk’s’ in Accra and Kumasi, signal that Ghanaian Muslims of Yoruba origin contributed substantially towards the blossom of Arabic and Islamic education in Ghana in the twentieth- century.