Chanfi Ahmed shows how West African ʿulamāʾ, who fled the European colonization of their region to settle in Mecca and Medina, helped the regime of King Ibn Sa’ud at its beginnings in the field of teaching and spreading the Salafῑ-Wahhabῑ’s Islam both inside and outside Saudi Arabia. This is against the widespread idea of considering the spread of the Salafῑ-Wahhābῑ doctrine as being the work of ʿulamāʾ from Najd (Central Arabia) only. We learn here that the diffusion of this doctrine after 1926 was much more the work of ʿulamāʾ from other parts of the Muslim World who had already acquired this doctrine and spread it in their countries by teaching and publishing books related to it. In addition Chanfi Ahmed demonstrates that concerning Islamic reform and mission (daʿwa), Africans are not just consumers, but also thinkers and designers.

The spectre of Boko Haram and its activities in Nigeria dominates both media and academic analysis of Islam in the region. But, as Alexander Thurston argues here, beyond the sensational headlines this group generates, the dynamics of Muslim life in northern Nigeria remain poorly understood. Drawing on interviews with leading Salafis in Nigeria as well as on a rereading of the history of the global Salafi movement, this volume explores how a canon of classical and contemporary texts defines Salafism. Examining how these texts are interpreted and - crucially - who it is that has the authority to do so, Thurston offers a systematic analysis of curricula taught in Saudi Arabia and how they shape religious scholars' approach to religion and education once they return to Africa. Essential for scholars of religion and politics, this unique text explores how the canon of Salafism has been used and refined, from Nigeria's return to democracy to the jihadist movement Boko Haram.

From the Almoravid’s invasion of Ghana in 1062 until the Moroccan conquest of the Songhay Empire in 1591 that, allegedly, was not “sufficiently Muslim,” Africa south of the Sahara has been exposed to a “purification of Islam” project. This project took two forms, one was the quietist, intellectually driven reformism (for instance, the 15th century Moroccan al- Maghili and 16th century Malian Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti d. 1627). The second was militant Islamism, for which the 19th century, better known as the “Jihadist period,” was particularly significant in Sudanic Africa. Maba Diakhou Ba (1809-1867) was active in the Senegambia, ‘Umar Tall (1795-1864) in Central Mali, and ‘Usman dan Fodio (1754-1817) in mainland Central Sudan (Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroun). Since the second half of the 20th century when the shari'a[Islamic Law] was the rule in ‘Usman dan Fodio’s Sokoto Caliphate (1804-1903), the development became a reference point for Jihadist ideologues in Nigeria. The 1979 Iranian Revolution further served as an impetus for political activism and reformist tendencies in Muslim West Africa, ranging from the moderate to the extremist, even before the September 11, 2001 cataclysm in the U.S. The Yan Izala, a pan-Wahhabi literalist, reformist movement to which Abū Bakr Gumi (1924-1992) served as the patron saint, the spirit auctores, provided a platform for both the quietist intellectual Salafī protagonists of Nigeria on the one hand, and the Jihadi Salafi interlocutors on the other. The most illustrious exponent of the latter category is Boko Haram. This paper gives an overview of the history of Salafi and Jihadist narratives in Sudanic Africa with particular attention to Boko Haram of Nigeria, as it now assumes a wider regional profile in Muslim West Africa.

While in the Ottoman Regency of Tunis after returning from pilgrimage around 1809 C.E., the Timbuktu cleric and religious puritanist, Aḥmad b. al-Qādī b. Yūsuf b. Ibrāhīm al-Fulānī al-Timbuktāwī wrote Hatk al-Sitr ʿammā ʿalayhi sūdān Tūnis min al-kufr (Piercing the Veil: Being an Account of the Infidel Religion of the Blacks of Tunis), which he dedicated to the ruler of the Beylic, Ḥammūda Pāsha (r. 1782-1814 C.E.) In this treatise, al-Timbuktāwī provided a vivid account of the Hausa Bori cult and entreated Tunisian authorities to imprison or even re-enslave its practitioners whom he distinguished from the heterogeneous Black population in the Regency. This critical edition and complete translation of Hatk al-Sitr places the story of al-Timbuktāwī’s encounter with the Bori practitioners not just in their Maghribi and Sudanic African contexts, but also in the environment of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Jihad and Islamic revivalism. The result is an insight into a discourse on Bori, jihad, and race and enslavement in the context of the African Diaspora to the Islamic World.

Explores the interconnected creative partnerships of the Wattses and De Morgans - Victorian artists, writers and suffragists

A significant re-examination of the Tārīkh al-fattāsh, revealing it to be a crucial nineteenth-century source for history in West Africa.