Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past: Essays in Honour of Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias(6 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.

Table of Contents:
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 Māli City and Siğilmāsa  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 Wlād Dlaym (15th–17th Centuries)  Benjamin Acloque 7 The Almoravids and Ašʿarism: Regarding the Work of al-Murādī al-Ḥaḍramī  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 Taʾrīḫ 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 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Aġa’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

About the Author :
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).

Review :
[...] The editors have done a very good job of bringing together a wide range of scholars to engage with Moraes Farias’ ideas and give them new life. This book is a useful and welcome contribution that overcomes traditional disciplinary divides and makes for a very fitting tribute to this great scholar and his work.[...] Sirio Canós-Donnay, Institute of Heritage Sciencies, Spanish National Research Council, in African Archaeology Review (2020) 37:315–316