Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī's theological legacy: Tracing the dissemination of creedal knowledge through the commentaries and glosses on al-Sanūsī's work in Medieval & pre-modern Maghrib (15-17th ce)

This study aims to trace the scholars and works in the Maghrib (from the ninth/fifteenth to the eleventh/seventeenth century) that comprise the theological legacy of Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī (Tlemcen 839/1436 - 895/1490) and, by convention, ends with the direct students of Abū Ḥasan al-Yūsī (Fes, 1040/1630- 1102/1691). The study of the dissemination of al-Sanūsī's theological works is a quest for the development and understanding of creedal literacy among non-elites which seems to mark the theological debates in the 15- 17th Century Maghrib. Rather than a philosophical study of theological concepts, we attempt to look at al-Sanūsī's theological legacy within the Maghrib as the expression, development and consolidation of a new mode of religious instruction, one which is manifested primarily in Islamic creedal, theological and legal literary works. Keywords: Horizontal learning, Islamic theology, taqlīd, pre-modern societies, descriptive network analysis