Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past

Essays in Honour of Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-34883-7
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 6, 522 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 726 g

Reihe: African History

Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past offers a comprehensive assessment of new directions in the historiography of West Africa. With twenty-four chapters by leading researchers in the study of West African history and cultures, the volume examines the main trends in multiple fields including the critical interpretation of Arabic sources; new archaeological surveys of trans-Saharan trade; the discovery of sources in Latin America relating to pan-Atlantic histories; and the continuing analysis of oral histories. The volume is dedicated to Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, whose work inspired the intellectual reorientations discussed in its chapters and stands as the clearest formulation of the book’s central focus on the relationship between political conjunctures and the production of sources.


Contributors are: Benjamin Acloque, Karin Barber, Seydou Camara, Mamadou Diawara, Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, François-Xavier Fauvelle, Nikolas Gestrich, Toby Green, Bruce Hall, Jan Jansen, Shamil Jeppie, Daouda Keita, Murray Last, Robin Law, Camille Lefebvre, Paul Lovejoy, Ghislaine Lydon, Carlos Magnavita, Sonja Magnavita, Kevin MacDonald, Thomas McCaskie, Ann McDougall, Daniela Moreau, Mauro Nobili, Insa Nolte, Abel-Wedoud Ould-Cheikh, Benedetta Rossi, Charles Stewart.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Green, Toby

Rossi, Benedetta

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Historiographie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Geschichtswissenschaft: Theorie und Methoden
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Part 1: Archaeology and Material Landscapes

1 All that Glitters is not Gold: Facing the Myths of Ancient Trade between North and Sub-Saharan Africa

Sonja Magnavita and Carlos Magnavita

2 African Archaeology and the ‘Chalk Line Effect’: A Consideration of Mali City and Sigilmasa

François-Xavier Fauvelle

3 The ‘Pays Dô’ and the Origins of the Empire of Mali

Kevin C. MacDonald, Nikolas Gestrich, Seydou Camara, Daouda Keita

Part 2: Imagined Landscapes and Moral Topographies

4 Imitation and Creativity in the Establishment of Islam in Oyo

Insa Nolte

5 Fante ‘Origins’: The Problematic Evidence of ‘Tradition’

Robin Law

6 The Unknowns of the Modern Era in the Greater Western Sahara: Reassessing the Territorial Location of the Wlad Dlaym (15th–17th Centuries)

Benjamin Acloque

7 The Almoravids and Aš'arism: Regarding the Work of al-Muradi al-Hadrami

Abdel Wedoud Ould-Cheikh

Part 3: Contextualising Writing and Written Sources

8 Inscribing the Now and the Hereafter: First Writings in Early African History

Ghislaine Lydon

9 New Reinventions of the Sahel: Reflections on the Ta'riH Genre in the Timbuktu Historiographical Production, Seventeenth to Twentieth Centuries

Mauro Nobili

10 Calibrating the Scholarship of Timbuktu

Charles C. Stewart

11 Rethinking the Place of Timbuktu in the Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa

Bruce S. Hall

12 Two Examples of Sahelian Book Collectors Over Two Centuries

Shamil Jeppie

Part 4: Contextualising Orature and Traditionalists

13 The Time-Tested Traditionist: Intellectual Trajectory and Mediation from the Early Empires to the Present day

Mamadou Diawara

14 The Next Generation: Young Griots’ Quest for Authority

Jan Jansen

15 In Praise of History; History as Praise

Karin Barber

16 From Essentialism to Pluralisms: New Directions in Precolonial West African History from the Oral History Archive at Fajara, the Gambia

Toby Green

17 Dreamworlds: Cultural Narrative in Asante Visionary Experience

Thomas C. McCaskie

Part 5: Projects, Texts, and Representations

18 The Life of a Text: Carsten Niebuhr and 'Abd al-Rahman Aga’s Das innere von Afrika

Camille Lefebvre

19 The Kano Chronicle Revisited

Paul E. Lovejoy

20 Slavery or Death in Sokoto and Borno: Tactics, Legalities and Sources

Murray Last

21 A Story of Exile, a Story in Exile: Louis Hunkanrin, Mauritania and ‘Un Forfait Colonial’ (Revisited)

E. Ann McDougall

22 Edmond Fortier (1862–1928): Photographer, Documentarian and Creator of Stereotypes in West Africa

Daniela Moreau

Afterword: Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias’ Publications and Interview

Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias

Interpreting Sources of the African Past: An Interview with Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias by

Benedetta Rossi

Über Autor(innen)

Toby Green is Senior Lecturer in Lusophone African History and Culture at King’s College London. He is the author of The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589 (Cambridge, 2012).

Benedetta Rossi is Reader in African Studies at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of From Slavery to Aid: Politics, Labour, and Ecology in the Nigerien Sahel, 1800-2000 (Cambridge 2015).