Description:
The Chronicles of Two West African Kingdoms presents a new reading of West African history from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Based on close analysis of Arabic manuscripts from Timbuktu and other regions, this volume provides key historical context from the Songhay Empire through the Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi, along with translations and Arabic editions of the long-obscured Tārīkh Ibn al-Mukhtār in parallel with the later production known as the Tārīkh al-fattāsh. The central observation that emerges from these texts is that Muslim scholars in premodern West Africa, who saw themselves as constitutive to the powerful kingdoms in the Western Sudan, claimed almost unprecedented authority to shape reality through narration.
Brief description: Mauro Nobili is a historian of pre-colonial and early colonial West Africa. His research examines the political and intellectual history of Muslim societies in the region from the late Middle Ages to the early colonial period, focusing specifically but not exclusively on modern-day Republic of Mali. Through his research, he has worked in several archives of Arabic manuscripts in West Africa (Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, and Côte d'Ivoire), in Europe (France and Denmark), and in the United States, as well as in colonial archives in Britain (Foreign Office, the National Archives) and Germany (Staatsbibliothek, Hamburg).
Review Quotes:
The publication of this work is a landmark event in the historiography of medieval West Africa. For the first time, the Arabic manuscripts from Timbuktu, collectively known as the Tarikh el-Fettach, following the title assigned to their 1913 French translation, have been translated into English directly from the Arabic originals. More significantly, this work restores the manuscripts to their historical truth and reality. [...] [T]his volume is, from the point of publication, an essential reference for anyone studying the medieval polities of West Africa. And the editorial work therein has been carried out with such thoroughness and intellectual rigour that one may safely conclude that the Tarikh al-Fattash affair is finally case closed.
--Rahmane Idrissa "African Affairs"