Ousmane Oumar Kane is Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity School and Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University.
Medieval Timbuktu was a wealthy city whose great libraries allowed
it to flourish as a center of learning and scholarship. Kane’s
compelling intellectual history of West Africa places Timbuktu
within a much broader tradition of Islamic learning in the region,
which was home to other medieval knowledge centers and which
continues to advance the study of Arabic philology even today. Kane
wants to show that West Africa has been much more central to Islam
than has been typically understood. His wide-ranging book focuses
on the intellectual traditions of the region and its role in the
production and circulation of key Arabic-language texts regarding
religion, law, and ethics.
*Foreign Affairs*
Beyond Timbuktu is an insightful analysis of how, through the
centuries and from different perspectives, Muslim intellectuals
have shaped the production, dissemination, and content of Islamic
knowledge in relation to the socio-political contexts in which they
lived. As Ousmane Kane demonstrates, this process continues today
in the ways the transformation of Muslim educational institutions
and availability of new communication technologies make possible a
resurgent Muslim public presence. No similar overview of West
African Muslim intellectual history exists.
*Louis Brenner, School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London*
A fascinating and comprehensive analysis of the intellectual
history of Islamic West Africa. This original book not only fills a
gap but also challenges traditional readings of classical
texts.
*Chouki El Hamel, Arizona State University*
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