Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad

Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad
Author: Michael A. Gomez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2002-07-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521528474

Bundu was an anomaly among the precolonial Muslim states of West Africa. Founded during the jihads which swept the savannah in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it developed a pragmatic policy, unique in the midst of fundamentalist, theocratic Muslim states. Located in the Upper Senegal and with access to the Upper Gambia, Bundu played a critical role in regional commerce and production and reacted quickly to the stimulus of European trade. Drawing upon a wide range of sources both oral and documentary, Arabic, English and French, Dr Gomez provides the first full account of Bundu's history. He analyses the foundation and growth of an Islamic state at a crossroads between the Saharan and trans-Atlantic trade, paying particular attention to the relationship between Islamic thought and court policy, and to the state's response to militant Islam in the early nineteenth century.

American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 13:1

American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 13:1
Author: John Obert Voll
Publisher: International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)
Total Pages: 164
Release:
Genre:
ISBN:

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), established in 1984, is a quarterly, double blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal, published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and distributed worldwide. The journal showcases a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world including subjects such as anthropology, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam.

The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare

The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare
Author: Sean M. Kelley
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2016-02-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469627698

From 1754 to 1755, the slave ship Hare completed a journey from Newport, Rhode Island, to Sierra Leone and back to the United States—a journey that transformed more than seventy Africans into commodities, condemning some to death and the rest to a life of bondage in North America. In this engaging narrative, Sean Kelley painstakingly reconstructs this tumultuous voyage, detailing everything from the identities of the captain and crew to their wild encounters with inclement weather, slave traders, and near-mutiny. But most importantly, Kelley tracks the cohort of slaves aboard the Hare from their purchase in Africa to their sale in South Carolina. In tracing their complete journey, Kelley provides rare insight into the communal lives of slaves and sheds new light on the African diaspora and its influence on the formation of African American culture. In this immersive exploration, Kelley connects the story of enslaved people in the United States to their origins in Africa as never before. Told uniquely from the perspective of one particular voyage, this book brings a slave ship's journey to life, giving us one of the clearest views of the eighteenth-century slave trade.

I Cannot Write My Life

I Cannot Write My Life
Author: Mbaye Lo
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2023-08-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469674688

Omar ibn Said (1770–1863) was a Muslim scholar from West Africa who spent more than fifty years enslaved in the North Carolina household of James Owen, brother of Governor John Owen. In 1831 Omar composed a brief autobiography, the only known narrative written in Arabic by an enslaved person in North America, and he became famous for his Arabic writings. His enslavers also provided him with an Arabic Bible and claimed Omar as a convert to Christianity, prompting wonder and speculation among amateur scholars of Islam, white slave owners, and missionaries. But these self-proclaimed experts were unable or unwilling to understand Omar's writings, and his voice was suppressed for two centuries. Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst here weave fresh and accurate translations of Omar's eighteen surviving writings, for the first time identifying his quotations from Islamic theological texts, correcting many distortions, and providing the fullest possible account of his life and significance. Placing Omar at the center of a broader network of the era's literary and religious thought, Lo and Ernst restore Omar's voice, his sophisticated engagement with Islamic and Christian theologies, his Arabic skills, and his extraordinary efforts to express himself and exert agency despite his enslavement.

On Trans-Saharan Trails

On Trans-Saharan Trails
Author: Ghislaine Lydon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2009-03-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521887240

This study examines the history and organization of trans-Saharan trade in western Africa using original source material.

Not Made by Slaves

Not Made by Slaves
Author: Bronwen Everill
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674240987

How abolitionist businesses marshaled intense moral outrage over slavery to shape a new ethics of international commerce. “East India Sugar Not Made By Slaves.” With these words on a sugar bowl, consumers of the early nineteenth century declared their power to change the global economy. Bronwen Everill examines how abolitionists from Europe to the United States to West Africa used new ideas of supply and demand, consumer credit, and branding to shape an argument for ethical capitalism. Everill focuses on the everyday economy of the Atlantic world. Antislavery affected business operations, as companies in West Africa, including the British firm Macaulay & Babington and the American partnership of Brown & Ives, developed new tactics in order to make “legitimate” commerce pay. Everill explores how the dilemmas of conducting ethical commerce reshaped the larger moral discourse surrounding production and consumption, influencing how slavery and freedom came to be defined in the market economy. But ethical commerce was not without its ironies; the search for supplies of goods “not made by slaves”—including East India sugar—expanded the reach of colonial empires in the relentless pursuit of cheap but “free” labor. Not Made by Slaves illuminates the early years of global consumer society, while placing the politics of antislavery firmly in the history of capitalism. It is also a stark reminder that the struggle to ensure fair trade and labor conditions continues.

The New Cambridge History of Islam: Volume 5, The Islamic World in the Age of Western Dominance

The New Cambridge History of Islam: Volume 5, The Islamic World in the Age of Western Dominance
Author: Francis Robinson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 945
Release: 2010-11-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316175782

Volume 5 of The New Cambridge History of Islam examines the history of Muslim societies from 1800 to the present. Francis Robinson, a leading historian of Islam, has brought together a team of scholars with a broad range of expertise to explore how Muslims responded to the challenges of Western conquest and domination across the last two-hundred years. As their articles reveal, the social, economic, political and historical circumstances which influenced these responses have, in many different parts of the world, empowered Muslim societies and encouraged transformation and religious revival. The volume offers a fascinating glimpse into the local dimensions of that revival and how regional connections have been forged. Synthesising the academic research of the past thirty years, as well as offering substantial guidance for further study, this book is the starting-point for all those who wish to have a serious understanding of modern Muslim societies.

Mungo Park's Ghost

Mungo Park's Ghost
Author: Dane Kennedy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2024-01-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009392980

The forgotten story of two British expeditions to Africa that went disastrously wrong and left a hidden legacy.

Africana Faith

Africana Faith
Author: James L. Conyers
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 533
Release: 2016-12-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0761868739

Essentially, the study of black religion in America has been mysterious, quarrelsome, and paradoxical. Repeatedly the reason in this primer aspires to make a concentric analysis of the function and capacity of spirituality and religiosity, within the African American Muslim movement. Recently, there have been numerous volumes in the form of biographical or communal studies conducted on Black twentieth century religious figures. Much of this discussion has exacerbated in hierarchy of religious values, rather than a concentric analysis of the role and function of spirituality and religiosity. Therefore, this collection of essays places emphasis on the role and views of the missionary and voluntary spread of Islam among African Americans in the United States.

Black Crescent

Black Crescent
Author: Michael A. Gomez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2005-03-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521840958

Beginning with Latin America in the fifteenth century, this book, first published in 2005, is a social history of the experiences of African Muslims and their descendants throughout the Americas, including the Caribbean. The record under slavery is examined, as is the post-slavery period into the twentieth century. The experiences vary, arguably due to some extent to the Old World context. Muslim revolts in Brazil are also discussed, especially in 1835, by way of a nuanced analysis. The second part of the book looks at the emergence of Islam among the African-descended in the United States in the twentieth century, with successive chapters on Noble Drew Ali, Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X, with a view to explaining how orthodoxy arose from varied unorthodox roots.