Abstract

The European scholars, especially in the early colonial period, denigrated the intellectual achievements of the African continent. The existence of the Islamic scholarship and the indigenous knowledge systems in the pre-colonial period was ignored in order to justify the colonial conquest. African scholars in the late colonial and post-colonial periods have written extensively on a plethora of topics to condemn the Eurocentric views and present various histories that would vindicate the fact that Africa shared the long history of intellectual achievements with other parts of the world. This chapter explores the life and peculiar style of knowledge production among the Islamic scholars in Kano with a particular reference of Shaykh Tijani Usman Zangon Bare-Bari who is credited with unprecedented innovation in the pattern of knowledge dissemination in the public sphere among the Islamic scholars of Kano. The chapter argues that the activities of Shaykh Tijani Usman had created a legacy in knowledge production in Kano and beyond which radically transformed pedagogical tradition among the Islamic scholars in northern Nigeria. Similarly, the case study demonstrates that traditional pedagogical traditions are never static; they transform in line with the realities of their times.