African dominion : a new history of empire in early and medieval West Africa / Michael A. Gomez.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gomez, Michael A., 1955- author.

Series:

Princeton scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Islam--Africa, West--History.

Islam.

Slavery--Africa, West--History.

Slavery.

Africa, West--History--To 1884.

Africa, West.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 510 pages) : maps.

Edition:

[Enhanced Credo edition]

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2018]

Summary:

A groundbreaking history that puts early and medieval West Africa in a global contextPick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book, the first on this period of the region's history in a generation, tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, including Arabic manuscripts, oral histories, and recent archaeological findings, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history more generally. Scholars have long held that such distinctions arose during the colonial period, but Gomez shows they developed much earlier.Focusing on the Savannah and Sahel region, Gomez traces the exchange of ideas and influences with North Africa and the Central Islamic Lands by way of merchants, scholars, and pilgrims. Islam's growth in West Africa, in tandem with intensifying commerce that included slaves, resulted in a series of political experiments unique to the region, culminating in the rise of empire. A major preoccupation was the question of who could be legally enslaved, which together with other factors led to the construction of new ideas about ethnicity, race, gender, and caste-long before colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade.Telling a radically new story about early Africa in global history, African Dominion is set to be the standard work on the subject for many years to come.

Contents:

PART I. EARLY SAHEL AND SAVANNAH

CHAPTER 1. The Middle Niger in Pre-Antiquity and Global Context

CHAPTER 2. Early Gao

CHAPTER 3. The Kingdoms of Ghana: Reform along the Senegal River

CHAPTER 4. Slavery and Race Imagined in Bilād As-Sūdān

PART II. IMPERIAL MALI

CHAPTER 5. The Meanings of Sunjata and the Dawn of Imperial Mali

CHAPTER 6. Mansā Mūsā and Global Mali

CHAPTER 7. Intrigue, Islam, and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa

PART III. IMPERIAL SONGHAY

CHAPTER 8. Sunni 'Alī and the Reinvention of Songhay

CHAPTER 9. The Sunni and the Scholars: A Tale of Revenge

CHAPTER 10. Renaissance: The Age of Askia Al-Ḥājj Muḥammad

CHAPTER 11. Of Clerics and Concubines

PART IV. LE DERNIER DE L'EMPIRE

CHAPTER 12. Of Fitnas and Fratricide: The Nadir of Imperial Songhay

CHAPTER 13. Surfeit and Stability: The Era of Askia Dāwūd

CHAPTER 14. The Rending Asunder: Dominion's End.

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2018.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9781400888160 (electronic book)

1-4008-8816-6

1-78785-405-1

OCLC:

1132665618