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...

Winner of the Society for Arabian Studies Grant in 2003. This study examines a view ''from outside' of the three terminals: Makran, Muscat and Zanzibar which is a partial one in the history of the western Indian Ocean. Such themes are, however, essential when viewed against the background of Anglo-French rivalry in the Gulf and Indian Ocean during the first half of the nineteenth century, and are central to numerous debates. The methodological perspective, therefore, whilst concerned with oriental figures and events, is still largely based on sources in western languages precisely...

This is a pioneering scholarly study of the colourful career of Sayyid ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Mahdī and his brainchild Neo-Mahdism. It explains his calculative strife to deal with the British onslaught on his father's Mahdiyya, and to gradually attain the essence of its political and religious mission. The discourse contests the long held presumption of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's subservience to Britain, and portray's him as the architect of national independence, and the Sudan's most towering celebrity in the 20th century. It highlights al-Sayyid's mastery of...