The Epistemology of Arabic Islamic Scholarship in Post-Conflict Borno: Reconstruction, Resilience, and Renewal

The Boko Haram insurgency devastated Borno State's centuries-old tradition of Arabic Islamic scholarship between 2009 and 2023, destroying manuscripts, displacing scholars, and dismantling the educational institutions through which Arabic scholarly knowledge was reproduced across generations, creating an unprecedented crisis of epistemic continuity in one of West Africa's most important Islamic intellectual traditions. This study investigates the epistemological reconstruction of Arabic Islamic scholarship in post-conflict Borno, examining how surviving scholars, returned displaced academics, and a new generation of students are rebuilding Arabic scholarly knowledge systems, pedagogical institutions, and textual authority in the context of physical, psychological, and institutional trauma. Drawing on an extended post-conflict ethnographic methodology conducted across Maiduguri, Dikwa, Bama, and Monguno between 2022 and 2025, the research combines participant observation of rebuilt madrasa instruction, scholarly knowledge transmission events, and manuscript recovery initiatives, with 60 in-depth life history interviews with scholars who survived displacement and return. Islamic epistemological frameworks including the concepts of isnad, ijaza, and ilm al-yaqin are employed alongside post-conflict resilience theory and knowledge ecology frameworks to analyse the reconstruction processes. The study produces an original theory of post-conflict Arabic scholarly epistemological renewal with implications for Arabic language education policy in conflict-affected northern Nigeria. Keywords: Arabic Islamic scholarship, post-conflict reconstruction, Borno State, Islamic epistemology, scholarly resilience.