In this massive work, Joseph J. Williams documents the Hebraic practices, customs, and beliefs, which he found among the people of Jamaica and the Ashanti of West Africa. He initially examines the close relationship between the Jamaican and the Ashanti cultures and the folk beliefs. He then studies the language and culture of the Ashanti (of whom many Jamaicans have descended) by comparing them to well known and established Hebraic traditions. William's findings suggest stunning similarities. And, he challenges the reader by concluding that Hebraic traditions must have swept across "negro Africa" and left its influence "among the various tribes." While Williams presents a strong case, his evidence, including hundreds of quoted sources, also builds a strong case for the reverse--that an indigenous, continent-wide belief system among African people stands at the very root of Hebrew culture and Western religion. First published in 1931 and long out-of-print, today's reader will find Hebrewisms a valuable resource for understanding the cultural unity of African people.

Thinking in Public provides a probing and provocative meditation on the intellectual life and legacy of Jacques Roumain. As a work of intellectual history, the book investigates the intersections of religious ideas, secular humanism, and development within the framework of Roumain's public intellectualism and cultural criticism embodied in his prolific writings. The book provides a reconceptualization of Roumain's intellectual itineraries against the backdrop of two public spheres: a national public sphere (Haiti) and a transnational public sphere (the global world). Second, it remaps and reframes Roumain's intellectual circuits and his critical engagements within a wide range of intellectual traditions, cultural and political movements, and philosophical and religious systems. Third, the book argues that Roumain's perspective on religion, social development, and his critiques of religion in general and of institutionalized Christianity in particular were substantially influenced by a Marxist philosophy of history and secular humanist approach to faith and human progress. Finally, the book advances the idea that Roumain's concept of development is linked to the theories of democratic socialism, relational anthropology, distributive justice, and communitarianism. Ultimately, this work demonstrates that Roumain believed that only through effective human solidarity and collaboration can serious social transformation and real human emancipation take place.

The period covered in this volume begins with the emergence of anti-slave trade attitudes in Europe, and ends on the eve of European colonial conquest.

This book is the first comprehensive synthesis on mosques in sub-Saharan Africa, bringing together sites from more than twenty states from sub-Saharan Africa; and more than 285 monuments, from the IXth to the XIXth centuries.

"This book presents, one by one, the different groups of Black Jews in Western central, eastern, and southern Africa and the ways in which they have used and imagined their oral history and traditional customs to construct a distinct Jewish identity. It explores the ways in which Africans have interacted with the ancient mythological sub-strata of both western and African ideas of Judaism."--Résumé de l'éditeur.