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

This book studies the parameters of Islamic political practice. It examines the emergence of Islam as conjoint religio-political world view, wherein the establishment of an Islamic state is considered as important for salvific purposes as prayer and pilgrimage. This books seeks to foreground the ideological imperative behind projection of religious identity through political idioms in Islam.

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.

Islamic Thought and the Art of Translation presents a diverse selection of studies, translations, and textual editions in honor of two of the most beloved and productive scholars in the field of Islamic Studies, Professors William Chittick and Sachiko Murata.

Historians have long grappled with the question of how Islamic civilization - so clearly dominant during the medieval period - could fall completely under Western hegemony in the modern age? Many Western writers answer this question by referencing European ingenuity, initiative, and transformative energy in contrast with Islamic parochialism, passivity, and resistance to change. This book challenges such assumptions by studying the career of an aggressive sultan in early-modern Morocco, Mulay Ahmad al-Mansur (r. 1578-1603), who dared to take on the international super-powers of his day and sought to redraw the map of Islamic Africa. Al-Mansur is best known for launching a bold invasion across the Sahara desert to conquer the West African Songhay Empire. Most historians ascribe strictly economic motives for this assault, stating that the sultan wished to capture the prosperous gold trade that had traveled for centuries from West Africa to the Mediterranean. Dr Cory argues instead that Mulay Ahmad was pursuing more expansive goals than simply stuffing his coffers with West African gold, as evidenced by audacious claims made on his behalf in numerous panegyric texts produced by the sultan's court. Through a detailed analysis of official histories, documents and correspondence, writings by European observers, and architectural evidence, he contends that the sultan sought to establish a Western caliphate that would eclipse the Ottoman Empire. Mulay Ahmad advanced this agenda through panegyric literature, elaborate court ceremonies, grand constructions, stunning military conquests, and astute diplomacy with European powers, Ottoman officials, and sub-Saharan rulers. Such assertions of universal caliphal authority had not been seriously promoted in Islam for over three hundred years before al-Mansur's reign. Thus al-Mansur sought to move his country forward into the modern age by returning to an institution that had governed Muslim lands during the fabled golden age of the Abbasid and Andalusian Umayyad caliphates. Through an investigation of the sultan's ambitions and achievements Dr Cory provides new insight into the history of relations between Muslim states and the West.

A reinterpretation of the history of Sokoto that provides a new assessment of its leaders and their visions for the Muslim state.Sokoto was the largest and longest lasting of West Africa's nineteenth-century Muslim empires. Its intellectual and political elite left behind a vast written record, including over 300 Arabic texts authored by the jihad's leaders: Usman dan Fodio, his brother Abdullahi and his son, Muhammad Bello (known collectively as the Fodiawa). Sokoto's early years are one of the most documented periods of pre-colonial African history, yet current narratives pay little attention to the formative role these texts played in the creation of Sokoto, and the complex scholarly world from which they originated. Far from being unified around a single concept of Muslim statecraft, this book demonstrates how divided the Fodiawa were about what Sokoto could and should be, and the various discursive strategies they used to enrol local societies into their vision. Based on a close analysis of the sources (some appearing in English translation for the first time) and an effort to date their intellectual production, the book restores agency to Sokoto's leaders as individuals with different goals, characters and methods. More generally, it shows how revolutionary religious movements gain legitimacy, and how the kind of legitimacy they claim changes as they move from rebels to rulers.some appearing in English translation for the first time) and an effort to date their intellectual production, the book restores agency to Sokoto's leaders as individuals with different goals, characters and methods. More generally, it shows how revolutionary religious movements gain legitimacy, and how the kind of legitimacy they claim changes as they move from rebels to rulers.some appearing in English translation for the first time) and an effort to date their intellectual production, the book restores agency to Sokoto's leaders as individuals with different goals, characters and methods. More generally, it shows how revolutionary religious movements gain legitimacy, and how the kind of legitimacy they claim changes as they move from rebels to rulers.some appearing in English translation for the first time) and an effort to date their intellectual production, the book restores agency to Sokoto's leaders as individuals with different goals, characters and methods. More generally, it shows how revolutionary religious movements gain legitimacy, and how the kind of legitimacy they claim changes as they move from rebels to rulers.