HIS 256 The Islamic World to 1683

Urban cities have existed in Africa since antiquity. Using archival records and field research, this text analyses and describes the rich history of African cities from long before colonization began until the time of urban reorganization during industrialization.

The History of Islam in Africa presents a detailed historic mapping of the cultural, political, geographic, and religious past of this significant presence on a continent-wide scale. Bringing together two dozen leading scholars, this comprehensive work treats the historical development of the religion in each major region and examines its effects. Without assuming prior knowledge of the subject on the part of its readers, The History of Islam in Africa is broken down into discrete areas, each devoted to a particular place or theme and each written by experts in that particular area.

While nearly one in every five people in the world today is Muslim, Islam is spreading most rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where one in three Africans today practices a form of Islam. Sub-Saharan Africa is today home to over 150 million Muslims. Although immensely varied, African Islam, the authors demonstrate, is defined by three overarching beliefs. First, African Islam is local Islam, with no ordained clergy or international body to regulate doctrine. At the same time, the importance of Islam as a source of communal identity, both within African societies and as part of the worldwide Islamic community, is a defining feature of the African Muslim worldview. Finally, there is a pervasive belief among African Muslims that the West is on a new crusade against Islam.

This collection of essays offers a new paradigm, in which the trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic worlds of slavery are brought into focus under the same lens. While slave studies have considered either trans-Atlantic slavery in the world of Islam, rarely has any study combined the enslavement of Africans in America and the Lands of Islam in one volume. Both the Saharan and the Atlantic worlds drew upon the western and central Sudan for the enslaved population that was imported, but in general the two markets for slaves have been treated in isolation and without reference to the common bond of Islam.

This collection covers the major problems in the field, including classic texts, the newest research, and recent controversies about the origins of African history and Africa's contributions to non-Western world history. Its themes comprise: Africa and Egypt; Bantu Origins and Migration; African States and Trade; Islam in Africa; Women in African Societies; and, Slavery in Africa.