Abstract: | Personal relationships between Muslims and Christians do not occupy a prominent place in the written history of Muslim-Christian relations. Nevertheless, their significance for mutual understanding and spiritual enrichment is important, as the example given in this article shows. During the last 25 years of his life Amadou Hampâté Bâ (d. 1991) came to be recognized internationally for his active religious tolerance. However, the beginnings of the formative process of his attitude of openness and ecumenical ideas have remained largely unexplored. This article draws on the material found in the generally unpublished letters which Hampâté Bâ wrote to Théodore Monod, the director of the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire in Dakar, in the 1940s and 1950s during the middle years of his life. It was within the context of rich friendship between these two men that Hampâté Bâ's desire to work for universal reconciliation started to attain a more definite outline. [Abstract Journal] |