Regardless of the level of these Islamic works and their authors, it was the class of scholars that West African students sought. This was the class that produced the best representatives of that era in spirit and culture, the era of the Sultanates and Islamic Emirates that we discussed in a previous chapter.

The Sufi Sheikhs enriched the Sudanese library with many works in that religious field which dominated Islamic life in Sudan, unlike other countries. The final years of the Munj Kingdom and the Funj Sultanate, and the first decades of the Turco-Egyptian era, witnessed an increase in the influence of some Sufi orders and a renewal in their teachings, reflected in the appearance of many works that enriched the Sudanese library, written by the Sheikhs of these Sufi orders, and a renewal in their teachings reflected in the appearance of these works.

Sudan in that era witnessed the birth of another type of leadership that was worthy of unifying Sudan and bringing it together after the multiple Islamic Sultanates had weakened and collapsed. Religious leadership emerged, the leadership of the jurists and Sufi men, where it was possible for these religious leaders to restore balance to Sudanese society, provide the nation with Islamic cultural stability and scientific or Sufi production, and for these juristic and Sufi leaders, with their miracles and glorious deeds, to preserve the balance between Sheikhs and Sultans. But on the contrary, these religious, juristic, and Sufi leaders became scattered, just as the political leaders became scattered. Indeed, good spiritual and religious relations were absent even among the jurists themselves. Moreover, they worked to spread an atmosphere of fanaticism and rivalry.

From here, Islamic cultural, scientific, and juristic life was dominated by emotion and superstition, the two characteristics that overshadowed the thinking of the Sufi men, so that the common people began to attribute many miracles to the jurists that the human mind, nor religious thought operating by the Book of God and the Sunnah of His Messenger, peace be upon him, could not believe.

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