Azzawia is a unique, special tradition. Shaykh Seraj and Shaykh Ahmad were the third generation of Hendricks that had trained in Makka at the hands of a family and a tradition that was unique, powerful in knowledge, and distinguished in spiritual prowess. To understand Shaykh Seraj is to understand what produced him — and what produced him was Azzawia, and what produced Azzawia was a seed that dropped from a powerful tree of Makka, embedded deeply into the soil of Cape Town.
The first generation was the grandfather, Shaykh Muhammad Salih Hendricks.
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Muhammad Salih was born in 1871 in the village of Swellendam in the Western Cape. His father was Imam Abdullah Hendricks, also known as Imam Haji Hijji; his mother was Aisha Hendricks, both of whom were the offspring of converts to Islam. Muhammad Salih’s paternal grandparents were Apollis and Cassera Hendricks; his maternal ones were Abdul Basir and Khashiʿa van der Schyff. It is important to remember that Islam at this time was hardly a religion of upward social mobility — on the contrary, particularly in the Cape, it would have been associated more with slavery, as Muslims were generally the descendants of slaves that had been recently, and forcibly, brought to the country.
The conditions in the country were quite interesting. For whatever reason, Cape Town’s Muslim community had not gone the route of other slave-holding societies like Brazil and the United States, where the Islam of the slaves had been obliterated utterly. In speaking specifically of the Cape, Shaykh Seraj once explained that the colonisers had made a mistake in bringing certain saints and scholars to the Cape as prisoners and exiles — men like Shaykh Yusuf of Makassar, Tuan Mahmud, Shaykh Abdurrahman Matebe Shah, Sayed Tuan Alawie, and others. These people kept Islam alive. The Cape is called the Cape of Good Hope, Shaykh Seraj noted, because Henry the Navigator had the ‘Good Hope’ that Islam would be destroyed from there. The name stuck. Very few Muslims are aware of that. But the mistake, as Shaykh Seraj put it, was to bring people of such spiritual rank to a place where the intention was to extinguish the faith. It did not extinguish.
Apollis and Cassera Hendricks had a son, Abdullah, who then became an imam, and would have had a marked influence on his son’s eventual decision to become a scholar.
As Shaykh Dr Yusuf da Costa, a Capetonian historian and Naqshbandī shaykh, reminds us in Pages from Cape Muslim History, Muhammad Salih travelled regularly from his relative isolation in Swellendam to Cape Town in order to learn about Islam. At the age of sixteen, he had been expected by his family to leave South Africa to train as a medical doctor in London — a prized profession then as it is now. But following an encounter with a member of the Mālikī family of Makka, who met him while trading in South Africa, the direction of his life changed. He opted to leave Cape Town and head to Makka, to study, at the very beginning of the twentieth century, when Makka was a very different place, still under Ottoman sovereignty, with normative mainstream Sunnism very much in effect in the holy city.
Muhammad Salih is one of the most famous of that generation of Capetonians that went to study — but he was not the first. There were others who had gone away to study in Makka, including Hisham Niʿamatullah Effendi, Abdal Raqib b. Abdal Qahhar Berdien, and Ismaʿil Muʿawiya Manie — the Manie family would eventually become highly significant in terms of the institution Muhammad Salih would begin in Cape Town.
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Muhammad Salih travelled to stay in Makka for about fifteen years, training at the hands of some of the most famous luminaries of his time. As Shaykh Seraj later recollected, on his arrival Shaykh Muhammad Salih set himself down to a rigorous programme of learning under the constant supervision of Sayyid ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Mālikī, who acted as his guardian in loco parentis. Amongst the prominent scholars of the time from whom he received his tuition were Shaykh Muhammad Saʿīd Bāb Sayl, Shaykh ʿUmar Bā Junayd, Shaykh Bakrī Shaṭṭa, Shaykh ʿUthmān Shaṭṭa, Shaykh Muhammad Sulaymān Ḥasb Allāh, and Sayyid Ḥusayn al-Ḥibshī. Three of these shaykhs became the consecutive Grand Muftis of the Shāfiʿī madhhab in Makka. Shaykh Muhammad Saʿīd was the first, then followed by Sayyid al-Ḥibshī. However, Sayyid al-Ḥibshī only accepted the appointment after Shaykh ʿUmar Bā Junayd agreed to act as his chief assistant. After the death of Sayyid al-Ḥibshī, Shaykh ʿUmar Bā Junayd became the official Grand Mufti. Shaykh Muhammad Sulaymān Ḥasb Allāh himself had been offered the post of Grand Mufti in 1886 but declined.
With Sayyid ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Mālikī, Muhammad Salih entered into a relationship with the Mālikī family which would lead to three generations of Hendricks studying with three generations of the Mālikī family. That began with the dāʿī al-Sayyid ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Mālikī, who first identified the potential of Muhammad Salih Hendricks. Shaykh Muhammad Salih then studied with al-Sayyid ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Mālikī, the muftī and qāḍī of Makka, who was also considered to be the imam and khaṭīb of the Sacred Mosque. He held that position during the Ottoman era, then continued it in the Hashimite times, and proceeded to hold it after the Saudi kingdom was established, by virtue of the respect that all had for him.
Muhammad Salih’s path was not an easy one in those years. His father passed away while visiting his son in Makka; his mother died in 1893, five years after Muhammad Salih had gone; his first wife, Ruqayya, a South African, died, as did their son, Abdullah; and his eldest brother, Abdal Basir, passed away in 1895. All this before Muhammad Salih had reached the age of twenty-four.
Muhammad Salih remarried before he left Makka, this time to a Ḥijāzī Arab lady named Jawāhir. In 1902, they left so that Shaykh Muhammad Salih could return home, but not before he spent about a year in Zanzibar. Anne Bang, in her Sufis and Scholars of the Sea, suggests that the stay would have been at least partially due to Shaykh Muhammad Salih’s relationship with Ḥaḍramīs like Ḥabīb Aḥmad bin Sumayt, who were connected to a wider Ḥaḍramī and Bā ʿAlawī network across East Africa. In Zanzibar, Shaykh Muhammad Salih acted as a judge and reorganised the island’s celebrations of the Mawlid. That period of professional conduct would leave a clear mark on him and how he later organised his community in Cape Town. Almost a century later, his grandson, Shaykh Seraj Hendricks, researched Shaykh Muhammad Salih’s time in Zanzibar with his family and with Bang — the latter published her book with Brill following that collaboration.
Providence would have it that Shaykh Muhammad Salih knew Ḥabīb Aḥmad b. Sumayt, who gifted him at least twenty copies of Tuḥfat al-Labīb, a classical Bā ʿAlawī text. Ḥabīb Aḥmad b. Sumayt was the father of Ḥabīb ʿUmar bin Sumayt — who in turn was one of the main teachers of the twentieth-century reviver of Islam, Ḥabīb Aḥmad Ṭaha Mashhūr al-Ḥaddād, one of the teachers of Shaykh Seraj and Shaykh Ahmad Hendricks many years later, as well as many prominent Western Muslim scholars of today, including Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad and Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah.
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After returning to Cape Town, Shaykh Muhammad Salih’s wife, Jawāhir, did not take to Capetonian life, and so they divorced, allowing her to return to Makka. He then remarried, to his third and final wife, Kubra Toefy, a cousin on his mother’s side, who would become renowned in the community as a saintly, learned woman. Shaykh Muhammad Salih was by now about thirty-four years of age — and from this marriage came fifteen children. From those eight daughters and seven sons, a vast family would take root in Cape Town, leading to a clan of many hundreds over the course of the century.
Shaykh Muhammad Salih spent around seventeen years engaged in the local community, with all the trials and tribulations that local community politics can muster. There were controversies and divisions within the Muslim community for various reasons, including as to whether there should be a single jumuʿa in the city. Shaykh Muhammad Salih played a significant role in trying to organise the imams of the city in coming together, in particular by appealing to his teachers in Makka. It is noted by Bang that Shaykh Muhammad Salih reached out to his shaykh, Shaykh ʿUmar Bā Junayd, who in turn referred to Shaykh bin Sumayt, who then sent his student, Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh Bā Kathīr, to mediate in Cape Town. Bā Kathīr’s intervention led to a resolution of nearly all Shāfiʿī imams of the Cape on the matter — and eventually a madrasa named Madrasa Bā Kathīr.
When Shaykh Muhammad Salih returned to Cape Town, he became reputedly the first teacher to bring the Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn to South Africa and to teach it — though meeting a good deal of opposition in the Cape from different quarters as a result. That is one of the reasons why, eventually, Shaykh Muhammad Salih took steps to construct an institute: as a place of prayer, and a place of education, following his private classes and different classes in various mosques throughout the Cape.
Azzawia was formally founded in 1920, and Shaykh Muhammad Salih constructed therein a programme of teaching which, as da Costa noted, has probably not been equalled by any religious scholar in Cape Town. Therein, he had special classes for imams — many of whom would eventually become prominent leaders themselves in the wider Muslim community; for Arabic-speaking descendants of the Prophet who lived in Cape Town, of which there was a small community already; and many other classes for the general public. There were specific classes dedicated for women, which led to its own controversy, as many in the community did not believe in female education. Shaykh Muhammad Salih persevered anyway.
The educational aspect of Azzawia included teaching fiqh of two of the schools of law, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanafī, tafsīr, ʿaqīda, and taṣawwuf. Shaykh Seraj mentioned al-Risālat al-Jāmiʿa of Imam Aḥmad b. Zayn al-Ḥabshī, a basic Tarīmī text that covers the essentials of fiqh according to the Shāfiʿī school, ʿaqīda in the mode of the Ashāʿira, and taṣawwuf — in other words, a densely summarised version of crucial parts of the Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn. Shaykh Muhammad Salih also taught Matn Abī Shujāʿ, another Shāfiʿī text; a commentary on it by Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Bayjūrī; the Mughnī al-Muḥtāj of Shaykh Muhammad al-Khaṭīb al-Shirbīnī; and the Minhāj al-Ṭālibīn of Imam al-Nawawī — a thorough Shāfiʿī fiqh curriculum.
But Shaykh Muhammad Salih also taught Marāqī al-Falāḥ, a commentary on Nūr al-Īḍāḥ by Imam Shurunbulālī, a Ḥanafī fiqh text — because, as Shaykh Seraj would later say, Shaykh Muhammad Salih was instrumental in trying to defuse intra-Muslim conflict in Cape Town at the time. Azzawia was, in itself, built as a testament to intra-Muslim unity — hence the four miḥrābs of Azzawia’s prayer hall, which were meant to symbolise the four extant schools of law.
As Shaykh Seraj would say in an interview with his long-time friend and confidante, Shafiq Morton, in tafsīr, the famous Tafsīr al-Jalālayn and the famous Tafsīr al-Kabīr of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī were taught. In uṣūl al-fiqh, the Waraqāt by Imam Juwaynī, the Mustaṣfā of Imam al-Ghazālī, and Minhāj al-Wuṣūl ilā ʿIlm al-Uṣūl by Imam al-Bayḍāwī. In grammar, the Ājurrūmiyya and the Alfiyya of Imam Mālik. In theology, the ʿAqīda al-ʿAwwām of Shaykh Aḥmad Marzūqī, Umm al-Barāhīn, and Jawharah al-Tawḥīd. In taṣawwuf, the Tuḥfat al-Labīb by Sayyid Aḥmad bin Sumayt, al-Nasāʾiḥ by Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh bin ʿAlawī al-Ḥaddād — which Shaykh Seraj himself later taught on Thursday nights — and of course, the Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn. Students were also graded depending on their rank and understanding of Arabic. They had the general classes and the more specific classes in which he taught smaller groups.
According to Shaykh Seraj, Shaykh Muhammad Salih also wrote two published works on fiqh — one entitled Kitab Van Hadji op die Mathv,Hab, Sha,Ve,A (The Book of Hajj According to the Madhhab of Shāfiʿī) and another on prayer entitled Deze Ketab es van Salaah op de Madhab van Emaam Shafvia (This is a Book on Ṣalāh, According to the Madhhab of Imam al-Shāfiʿī). A third written work of his exists in manuscript form in Azzawia’s library and is a fairly comprehensive treatment of Islamic inheritance.
But the educational programme also included cultural-religious activities, particularly the Mawlid — the Mawlid of Imam Barzinjī was especially known — and teaching the recitations of litanies, such as Rātib al-ʿAṭṭās, Rātib al-Ḥaddād, the Duriyya, and others. The litanies of the Banī ʿAlawī would have had a pedigree already in the Cape. Shaykh Seraj, in his master’s thesis, argues that mashāyikh connected to the ṭarīqa of the Banī ʿAlawī would have introduced them, probably at least as early as the eighteenth century.
The different odes to the Prophet being recited in the melodies of Azzawia had something compellingly attractive about them. A stirring in one’s heart seemed unavoidable while listening to them, particularly for Westerners, as they sounded eerily similar to Western melodic modes. But those harmonies did not come from the West — they were brought to the Cape by Shaykh Muhammad Salih, who had been inspired by his time in Zanzibar. He had different groups of reciters read various recensions of the poems and litanies, who would then develop and adapt their own approaches. At the same time, the way in which the litanies and odes of the Cape had been sung by Muslims since the time of slavery had always been quite dulcet in nature.
When Shaykh Muhammad Salih passed away in 1945, his students followed his request not to build a monument over his grave — and his simple burial ground remains as such today, surrounded by his family. When Shaykh Seraj was buried, it was there he was laid to rest.
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Of that next generation of Shaykh Muhammad Salih’s sons, we know a good deal. Shaykh Mahdi Hendricks was one of Shaykh Seraj’s teachers — a scholar who had already completed twenty readings of the Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn before his nephew had even left for Makka. Perhaps due to the fact that among those who follow the ṭarīqa of the Sāda Bā ʿAlawī, it is actually a wird to read the Iḥyāʾ twenty times. Shaykh Mahdi became the Life President of the Muslim Judicial Council and was widely regarded as one of the foremost scholars of Islam in southern Africa. Shaykh Seraj had an ancient, Ottoman version of the Iḥyāʾ, which is still kept safely at Azzawia today.
Another of Shaykh Muhammad Salih’s sons was Shaykh Ahmad — he passed away during his first year in Makka and never returned to Cape Town to teach. Shaykh Ebrahim Hendricks and Shaykh Mahdi, however, did — and they carried on the tradition in an exemplary fashion.
Of Azzawia during their time, Shaykh Seraj mentions, with great pride, the stance taken vis-à-vis apartheid — and the interest that the regime of the day took in Azzawia as a result. In 1947, his father Imam Hassan Hendricks, along with Shaykh Ebrahim Hendricks and Shaykh Mahdi, were offered white identity because the regime was trying to garner votes. The voting took place in 1948 and the apartheid state was instituted then. That radicalised Shaykh Ebrahim tremendously. He rejected it completely and went on a campaign of which documents remain as witness at Azzawia. In 1955, he had his passport removed. He had to smuggle people out of the country, like Abu Bakr van der Schyff — someone Shaykh Seraj was pleased to meet in Makka because he never returned to South Africa.
And the security apparatus took notice. Shaykh Seraj himself recalled coming up to class one night and seeing people trying to record what Shaykh Mahdi was saying. They were hidden behind the door and when they saw him coming up the steps — they were skulking in the dark, just scattering. They had their radio equipment with them and they rushed out. They were plants right in the mosque. Shaykh Mahdi was of course aware of that.
Thus, we see: that kind of scholarly heritage, that fusion of learning and moral courage, did not begin with Shaykh Seraj and his esteemed sibling. They benefited from that training themselves, from their father, Imam Hassan Hendricks; and from their uncles, Shaykh Mujahid Hendricks, Shaykh Mahdi Hendricks, and to a lesser extent, due to his age at the time, Shaykh Ebrahim Hendricks. These were all the scions of the founder of Azzawia, the ʿAllāma, Shaykh Muhammad Salih Hendricks, who established Azzawia in 1920, a hundred years ago.
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Shaykh Seraj spent many years studying in Azzawia, particularly at the feet of his illustrious uncle, Shaykh Mahdi. But before he decided to follow in his uncles’ and grandfather’s footsteps, he was a high school English teacher in Cape Town — an experience that no doubt was crucial in honing his tremendous eloquence. It was also an experience that meant that whenever he edited or looked over my work, invariably, he would find a better word than I had in one place or another.
In 1983, Shaykh Seraj and his brother Shaykh Ahmad departed for Makka to study under al-Sayyid Muhammad b. ʿAlawī al-Mālikī. There were obviously high standards that they were expected to meet — they were the third generation of Hendricks to come and study with the Mālikī family. Several generations of those families had been intertwined by marriage and by student-teacher relationships, over the span of two centuries and across scores of different regimes over Makka.
Shaykh Seraj went through many different tests with Sayyid Muhammad; took the path with him; and eventually became his muqaddam while still in Makka as a student. During his studies, he also pursued formal academic work at Umm al-Qurā University. Ultimately, both Shaykh Seraj and Shaykh Ahmad were openly declared as khalīfas of Sayyid Muhammad — publicly affirmed as such on one of the Sayyid’s trips to Cape Town.
Shaykh Seraj also obtained ijāzāt from both the late Sayyid Aḥmad Mashhūr al-Ḥaddād and Sayyid ʿAbd al-Qādir bin Aḥmad al-Saqqāf (d. 1431/2010). These scholars are known as some of the pre-eminent ʿulamāʾ of the umma in the twentieth century. But Shaykh Seraj did not advertise that all that much. It was rare, if ever, that you would hear him mention the names of the distinguished and celebrated figures that gave him such authoritative licences. It was more in private sessions where he would discuss Sayyid Muhammad and his teachings in more detail. Such was the adab of Azzawia. He did not brandish his accolades like confetti, nor did he commercialise them for fame, though he certainly had them, and aplenty.
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After his return to Cape Town, Shaykh Seraj pursued further academic studies. He never stopped learning, never stopped reading the latest journal articles. He took his Master’s degree from the University of South Africa cum laude, with a dissertation entitled “Taṣawwuf (Sufism) — Its Role and Impact on the Culture of Cape Islam.” It is an incredible piece of work, which frankly could have turned into an M.Phil. or a PhD with not much more effort. Within that thesis alone, he expertly translated particularly poetic classical Arabic into an English idiom that was exalted.
He also translated works of Imam al-Ghazālī, and summarised parts of the Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn, most notably in the Travelling Light series, together with Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad of Cambridge University and Shaykh Yahya Rhodus of the United States. His scholastic expertise went deep into fiqh and uṣūl al-fiqh, which he taught to students at Azzawia, at Madina Institute, and at the International Peace College of South Africa.
But he was not parochial in this regard. He read extremely widely, and he studied far beyond Islamic law on the one hand, and was incredibly open to people of other faiths on the other. When one looks into Shaykh Seraj’s writings, including his master’s thesis, one finds him entirely conversant with Western academia on Islam, discussing the ideas of Annemarie Schimmel, James Piscatori, and many others. His perseverance with his tradition also — perhaps misinterpreted as paradoxically — meant he was open to taking positions that might have been viewed as ‘reformist’ at times. An example of this was his antipathy to taking notions of kafāʾa in marriage to extremes, which some among the Banī ʿAlawī in Southeast Asia had done in the early twentieth century. Those notions could be defended using the Shāfiʿī madhhab — but Shaykh Seraj viewed such emphasis as sometimes leading to conflict, and he was not in favour of it, despite his own attachment to the Shāfiʿī school.
His splendour of intellect was rooted, deeply, in the tradition of his shaykhs, of Azzawia, of the best of Capetonian tradition. He was firmly attached to the theology of the Ashʿarī approach and entrenched in the Shāfiʿī school of jurisprudence — that was, and is, the core of Azzawia from the time Shaykh Muhammad Salih returned from Makka. And yet, this commitment never led to the impetus of exclusion. Many a time, Shaykh Seraj would, even as a Shāfiʿī, tell me the argument of other scholars in other schools of law on specific points, with great approval. He never had any time for taʿaṣṣub — fanatic attachment to a particular approach at the expense of the greater whole of the Islamic tradition. As he wrote in A Sublime Way:
However, there is no gainsaying the fact that fanaticism is a reality of a recurrent nature. Every epoch and era — regardless of geography, place, time, habitation or belief — will produce its fanatics. So far are all true sages from the temptation of fanaticism. In the latter respect, prejudice — the stubborn antagonist of harmony and understanding — is often the result of an inability, or sheer lack of will, to understand and accept difference and diversity. In our quest for peace, therefore, we need to understand the wisdom behind the diversity that we witness in the world. As that understanding sinks in, we might yet be able to contribute to a renewal and rejuvenation — at the heart of which Sufism is vital and pertinent.
Among his positions, Shaykh Seraj served as head of the Muslim Judicial Council’s Fatwa Committee, which often led to him being described as the Muftī of Cape Town. He lectured in fiqh at the Islamic College of Southern Africa, and in the Study of Islam at the University of Johannesburg. He was appointed Dean of Madina Institute in South Africa, a recognised institution of higher learning and part of the worldwide Madina Institute seminaries led by Shaykh Dr Muhammad al-Ninowy. He held the Maqasid Chair for Graduate Studies at the International Peace College of South Africa. He was a member of the Stanlib Shariʿah Board and Ḥākim of the Crescent Observer’s Society. He was included in the ‘Muslim 500’ list continuously for many years. There were scores of South Africans who flocked to see him and take his advice, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, and often from extremely influential sectors of society, though this was not advertised as such.
Scholars visited Cape Town who insisted on making a visit to Shaykh Seraj a priority — the likes of Ḥabīb ʿUmar bin Ḥafīẓ of Yemen, Shaykh Muhammad al-Jilani of the Gambia, Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah of the United States, Shaykh Afeefuddin al-Jailani of Iraq, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad of the United Kingdom, Shaykh Faraz Rabbani of Canada, and Dr Mona Hassan of the United States. There were many, many more. They collaborated with him as well, and he made it clear he wanted to collaborate with them in all and any matters of good. When Shaykh al-Ninowy wanted to establish a branch of his global network of seminaries in Cape Town, he invited Shaykh Seraj to become its dean, who readily accepted.
At the same time, the shaykh was respectful of other people’s training and experience, never insisting upon another point of view merely on the basis of an ideological or dogmatic difference. He showed a humility that is so often lacking in many who sit in positions of such authority. It is what made him so beloved to so many.
Shaykh Seraj and I co-wrote a book that discussed Shaykh Muhammad Salih’s tradition of Azzawia, entitled A Sublime Way: the Sufi Path of the Sages of Makka. Embedded in that title is one of the secrets of Azzawia; for its tradition, embedded deeply into the soil of Cape Town, was a seed that dropped from a powerful tree of Makka. When the mashāyikh of Azzawia were asked about the ṭarīqa, one of them related what Sayyid Muhammad b. ʿAlawī al-Mālikī had answered in response to the question, “What is our ṭarīqa?” The scholar replied: “Ṭarīqa ʿUlamāʾ Makka” — the Way of the Sages of Makka.
His depth in knowledge; his scholastic prowess; his commitment to justice; his articulacy; all of this was a part of Shaykh Seraj. And all of it had been nurtured, across a century, in the shade of Table Mountain.
And Allāhu taʿālā aʿlam.
