Book Review: Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa

Abstract

"By 2013, many people worldwide had heard about Timbuktu as a center of learning where thousands of Arabic manuscripts are preserved, some of which were destroyed by fanatics during the French counteroffensive to halt the expansion of Islamists in Mali. But few people know that Timbuktu was only one of many centers of Islamic learning in precolonial West Africa. This book analyses the rise and transformation of Arabo-Islamic erudition in West Africa from the beginning of the spread of Islam through the colonial period to the twenty-first century. It highlights the contribution of Muslim scholars in the production and transmission of knowledge and in shaping state and society in West Africa. It argues that no study of the history of education or knowledge production in West Africa will be complete unless it pays attention to this intellectual tradition. The book further shows how European colonialism obstructs historiography so that we know so little about it. Finally, the book analyze the transformation of West African educational system, in the twentieth and twenty first century and shows that far from declining, the Islamic tradition of West Africa has gained vitality in the postcolonial period."-- Timbuktu studies: the geopolitics of the sources -- The growth and political economy of scholarship in the Bilad al-Sudan -- The rise of clerical lineages in the Sahara and the Bilad al-Sudan -- Curriculum and knowledge transmission -- Shaping an Islamic space of meaning: the discursive tradition -- Islamic education and the colonial encounter -- Modern Islamic institutions of higher learning -- Islam in the postcolonial public sphere -- Arabophones triumphant: Timbuktu under Islamic rule.