Full Description
In a series of essays this collected volume challenges much of the conventional wisdom regarding the intellectual history of Muslim Africa. Ranging from the libraries of Early Modern Mauritania and Timbuktu to mosque lectures in contemporary Mombasa the contributors to this collection overturn many commonly accepted assumptions about Africa's Muslim learned classes. Rather than isolated, backward and out of touch, the essays in this volume reveal Muslim intellectuals as not only well aware of the intellectual currents of the wider Islamic world but also caring deeply about the issues facing their communities.
Contents
Preface—John O. Hunwick
Introduction: Islam in Africa: Challenging the Perceived
Wisdom, Scott S. Reese
Chapter One: Sufi Networks and the Social Contexts for Scholarship in Morocco and the Northern Sahara, 1660-1830, David Gutelius
Chapter Two: Inkwells of the Sahara: Reflections on the Production of Islamic Knowledge in Bilàd Shinqì†, Ghislaine Lydon
Chapter Three: The Shurafà' and the 'Blacksmith': The Role of the Idaw 'Ali of Mauritania in the Career of the Senegalese Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (1900-75), Rüdiger Seesemann
Chapter Four: Mass Islamic Education and Emergence of Female 'ulama' in Northern Nigeria: Background, Trends, and Consequences, Muhammad S. Umar
Chapter Five: Murta∂a al-Zabidi (1732-91) and the Africans: Islamic Discourse and Scholarly Networks in the Late Eighteenth Century , Stefan Reichmuth
Chapter Six: Goths in the Land of the Blacks: A Preliminary Survey of the Ka'ti Library in Timbuktu, Albrecht Hofheinz
Chapter Seven: From Wadi Mizab to Unguja: Zanzibar's Scholarly Links, Philip Sadgrove
Chapter Eight: "Making people think": The Ramadan Lectures of Sheikh Abdilahi Nassir in Mombasa (1419 A.H.), Kai Kresse
Chapter Nine: The Adventures of Abu Oarith: Muslim Travel Writing and Navigating the Modern in Colonial East Africa, Scott S. Reese
Chapter Ten: Zanzibar: Some Nineteenth-Century Arabic Writings on Healing, Lorenzo Declich
Chapter Eleven: "Small World": Neo-Sufi Interconnexions
Between the Maghrib, the Hijaz and Southeast Asia, R.S. O'Fahey
Notes on Contributors
Index
