Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara
Islam, Spiritual Mediation, and Social Change

Explores how Islamic esoteric sciences and spiritual mediators have shaped social change in the Saharan West.

Erin Pettigrew (Author)

9781009224611, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 January 2023

252 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.69 kg

'Erin Pettigrew's monograph offers a fresh interpretation of Islam and societal life in the Saharan West. Replacing local histories of Muslim esoteric sciences within the various cultural and social contexts that nurtured them, the author masterfully challenges notions of marginality and periphery in Islamic studies and African history.' Ismail Warscheid, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

In this innovative new history, Erin Pettigrew utilizes invisible forces and entities - esoteric knowledge and spirits - to show how these forms of knowledge and unseen forces have shaped social structures, religious norms, and political power in the Saharan West. Situating this ethnographic history in what became la Mauritanie under French colonial rule and, later the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Pettigrew traces the changing roles of Muslim spiritual mediators and their Islamic esoteric sciences - known locally as l'?j?b - over the long-term history of the region. By exploring the impact of the immaterial in the material world and demonstrating the importance of Islamic esoteric sciences in Saharan societies, she illuminates peoples' enduring reliance upon these sciences in their daily lives and argues for a new approach to historical research that takes the immaterial seriously.

Introduction: a Saharan ontology of the invisible
1. Principles of provenance: origins, debates, and social structures of l'?j?b in the Saharan West
2. Local wisdom: contestations over l'?j?b in the 18th-19th centuries
3. Colonial logics of Islam: managing the threat of l'?j?b
4. Postcolonial transfigurations: contesting l'?j?b in the era of social media
5. Desert panic: bloodsucking accusations and the terror of social change
6. Sui generis: genealogical claims to the past and the transmission of l'?j?b
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: African history [HBJH], Regional & national history [HBJ], History: theory & methods [HBA]