Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire

Al-Sa‘dī's Ta’rīkh al-sūdān down to 1613 and other Contemporary Documents

John O. Hunwick

The principal text translated in this volume is the Ta’rīkh Al-sūdān of the seventeenth-century Timbuktu scholar ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Sa‘dī. Thirty chapters are included, dealing with the history of Timbuktu and Jenne, their scholars, and the political history of the Songhay empire from the reign of Sunni ‘Alī (1464-1492) through Moroccan conquest of Songhay in 1591 and down to the year 1613 when the Pashalik of Timbuktu became an autonomous ruling institution in the Middle Niger region. The year 1613 also marked the effective end of Songhay resistance. The other contemporary documents included are a new English translation of Leo Africanus's description of West Africa, some letters relating to Sa‘dīan diplomacy and conquests in the Sahara and Sahel, al-Ifrānī's account of Sa‘dīan conquest of Songhay, and an account of this expedition by an anonymous Spaniard.

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Status:

Available: In Print

€49.00$64.00

Author:

Hunwick

Category:

Middle East and Islamic Studies - History & Culture

BIC2:

Middle East, Middle Eastern history

ISBN13:

9789004128224

Publication Year:

2003

Edition info:

Version:

Paperback

Publication Type:

Book

Pages, Illustrations:

480 pp. 2 illus., 4 maps

Imprint:

BRILL

Language:

English

Biographical note Readership Reviews

Biographical note

John Hunwick, is Professor of History and Religions, and Director of the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa at Northwestern University. His publications include Shar'īa in Songhay (Oxford, 1985) and Arabic Literature of Africa, Vol. II & IV and The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton, 2002)

This Book won the Text Prize Award of the U.S. African Studies Association in 2001.

Readership

All those interested in centralised states in pre-colonial Africa, Islamic scholarship, the history of Timbuktu, and the history of the Western bilād al-sūdān in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Reviews

'This book provides a wealth of information on pre-modern West Africa, particularly on the Sonhay empire of the Niger river region and on the conquest of that empire by the Moroccan Sa'di dynasty during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.'
Stephen Cory, Religious Studies Review, 2000.

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