Jihad in West Africa: early phases and interrelations in Mauretania and Senegal

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Periodical article

Title:	Jihad in West Africa: early phases and interrelations in Mauretania and Senegal
Author:	Curtin, Ph. D.
Year:	1971
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	12
Issue:	1
Pages:	11-24
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	West Africa Mauritania Senegal
Subject:	jihads
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/180564
Abstract:	Even an incomplete survey of the evidence on the West African religious revolutions as a major theme in the history of the 19th century suggests that some of the present interpretations are badly in need of revision. Better understanding will have to wait for detailed study of the wealth of Arabic manuscripts sources known to exist throughout the Western Sudan. As a suggestion of the directions this research might take some lines of transmission are traced that carried the idea of jihad through parts of the Western Sudan, using the evidence of oral tradition, European sources, and the few Arabic manuscripts already translated into Western languages. As a general conclusion is suggested that the external influence of the mid-eighteenth-century revival of Islam in Arabia and the Middle East has been overemphasized in West African religious history. Forces working for the reform of Islam based in Africa itself were already at work. Notes, summary.