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

370 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.69 kg

'Pettigrew deserves enormous credit for having taken an extremely difficult topic and rendered it comprehensible and relevant to those interested in the history of Muslim societies in Africa.' Bruce Hall, American Historical Review

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'ḥjāb - 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'ḥjāb in the Saharan West
2. Local wisdom: contestations over l'ḥjāb in the 18th-19th centuries
3. Colonial logics of Islam: managing the threat of l'ḥjāb
4. Postcolonial transfigurations: contesting l'ḥjāb 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'ḥjāb
Epilogue.

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