Africa History

Exploring the history and religious community of a group of Muslim Sufi mystics who came largely from socially marginal backgrounds in colonial French West Africa, this study shows the relationship between religious, social, and economic change in the region. It highlights the role that intellectuals - including not only elite men, but also women, slaves, and the poor - played in shaping social and cultural change and illuminates the specific religious ideas on which Muslims drew and the political contexts that gave their efforts meaning.

By distilling the interactions between European science and African vernacular knowledge, this stunningly illustrated work offers a fascinating examination of the colonial and postcolonial politics of expertise about nature.

A groundbreaking, sweeping overview of the great kingdoms in African history and their legacies, written by world-leading experts.

African research played a major role in transforming the discipline of anthropology in the twentieth century.