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SAHARAN OCEANS AND BRIDGES, BARRIERS AND DIVIDES IN AFRICA'S HISTORIOGRAPHICAL LANDSCAPE*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2015

GHISLAINE LYDON
GHISLAINE LYDON*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Abstract

Based on a broad assessment of the scholarship on North-Western Africa, this article examines Saharan historiography with a particular view towards understanding how and why historians have long represented the continent as being composed of two ‘Africas’. Starting with the earliest Arabic writings, and, much later, French colonial renderings, it traces the epistemological creation of a racial and geographic divide. Then, the article considers the field of African studies in North African universities and ends with a review of recent multidisciplinary research that embraces a trans-Saharan approach.

Keywords

SaharaNorth AfricaWest Africahistoriographycolonialismracism
Type
JAH Forum: Trans-Saharan Histories
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 3 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

This article is dedicated to historian and diplomat Mohamed Saïd Ould Hamody with whom I spend many enjoyable afternoons discussing Saharan myths and sagas in the propitious setting of his library. I am grateful to Richard Von Glahn and Ross Dunn for editing and guidance, and to four anonymous reviewers of this journal for critical readings.

References

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3 Ibid. 21. This particular insight inspired other historians to investigate Saharan-Mediterranean links, starting with Godinho, V. M., O ‘Mediterrâneo’ saariano e as caravanas do ouro: geografia econômica e social do Sáara Ocidental e Central do XI ao XVI século (São Paulo, 1956)Google Scholar, whose work was included in Braudel's second edition.

4 P. Braudel, La Méditerranée, 161, esp. 156–72.

5 An excerpt of this unpublished lecture entitled ‘Le Sahara: barrière où trait d'union’ is featured in Capot-Rey, R., L'Afrique blanche française tome second: le sahara français (Paris, 1953), 533Google Scholar and a copy is preserved at the Archives Nationales du Sénégal. See Marfaing, L. and Wippel, S. (eds.), Les relations transsahariennes à l’époque contemporaine: un espace en constante mutation (Paris, 2004)Google Scholar, 7.

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14 Al-Jāḥiẓ is one of the ninth century's most prolific Muslim scholars. Vincent Cornell translated this particular book under the title The Book of the Glory of the Black Race (Waddington, NY, 1981). A later Iraqi scholar, Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 1200), similarly would write on the ‘virtues of the Sūdān’, cited by the seventeenth-century Timbuktu jurist Aḥmad Bābā. See Hunwick, J. and Harrak, F., Mi‘rāj al-Ṣu‘ūd: Aḥmad Bābā's Replies on Ethnicity and Slavery (Rabat, 2000)Google Scholar.

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16 Levtzion, N. and Hopkins, J. F. P. (eds.), Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History [hereafter Corpus] (Princeton, NJ, 2000)Google Scholar, 65.

17 Fatwā of Shaykh Sīdi, ‘Abayda b. Muhammad al-Saghīr b. Anbūja (c. 1840s) on Caravan Wages (SBA 3), Family Archives of Sharīf Shaykhna Būyaḥmad (Tichitt, Mauritania).

18 Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails, 6–7.

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21 Ibid. 47.

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23 Corpus, 325.

24 Ibid. 324–7.

25 See ‘Umar al-Naqar, , ‘Takrūr: the history of a name’, The Journal of African History, 10:3 (1969), 365–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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28 Robinson, D., ‘France as a Muslim power in West Africa’, African Studies Review, 46:3/4 (1999), 105–27Google Scholar.

29 Samuel Anderson, a doctoral student at UCLA, is writing a dissertation on the migrations in Western African history of Algerian institutions and genealogies of colonial knowledge.

30 Hannoum, A., Violent Modernity: France in Algeria (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), 22–31Google Scholar. Hannoum does not broach the concept of ‘white Africa’, although his focal point is France's obsession with Berbers and Arabs.

31 An early expression of the paradigm appears in a public lecture on linguistics. Henri, V., ‘La distribution géographique des langues’, Bulletin de la société de géographie de Lille, 1 (1882)Google Scholar, 114 (‘l’Afrique noire, séparée de l'Afrique blanche par le Sahara, qui constitue encore aujourd'hui une ligne de démarcation ethnique et linguistique parfaitement tranchée’).

32 Le Chatelier, A., Questions sahariennes: Touat, Châamba, Touareg: mission dans le sud Algérien en juin-août 1890 (Paris, 1890)Google Scholar.

33 L. Faidherbe, ‘L'Avenir’, 242 (‘Le Sénégal et L'Algérie doivent se donner la main par dessus le Sahara’).

34 Ibid. 130. Le Chatelier was of the opinion that the ‘Transsaharien ne deviendrait viable, commercialement, qu’à la suite d'une transformation complète des populations nègres, auxquelles il apporterait la civilisation.’

35 Monteil, P.-L., De Saint-Louis à Tripoli par le Lac Tchad, voyage au travers du Soudan et du Sahara accompli pendant les années 1890–91–92 (Paris, 1895)Google Scholar.

36 His best known works are Missions au Sahara: Tome I, Sahara Algérien (Paris, 1908); La conquête du Sahara: essai de psychologie politique (Paris, 1910); and Le Sahara (Paris, 1928).

37 Gautier, E. F., L'Afrique blanche (Paris, 1939), 8–10Google Scholar. It is tempting to link this ‘hardening of racial boundaries’ to the psychological impact of the French field of eugenics and the social-hygiene movement. Keller, R., Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa (Chicago, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 65.

38 Despois, J. and Capot-Rey, R., L'Afrique blanche française (Paris, 1953 [orig. pub. 1949])Google Scholar.

39 Julien, C. A., L'histoire de l'Afrique des origines à 1945 (Paris, 1958)Google Scholar, 23 (‘l'Afrique Noire, la véritable Afrique, se dérobe à l'histoire’.) This pocket history of Africa, in the ‘Que sais-je ?’ series, was originally published in 1941 and went through no less than six editions. Naturally, Julien also wrote a pocket history of ‘white Africa’. See Julien, C. A., Histoire de l'Afrique blanche (Paris, 1966)Google Scholar.

40 Ibid. 7.

41 Ibid. 17. It is interesting to note how far south he drew the boundary between white and black Africa.

42 As P. Curtin aptly remarked, Eurocentric chauvinism caused scholars ‘to draw the line between literacy and non-literacy at the edge of the desert, contributing further to the unfortunate tendency to separate North African history from that of the rest of the continent’. See P. Curtin, ‘Recent trends in African historiography and their contribution to history in general’, in Ki-Zerbo, J. (ed.), General History of Africa I: Methodology and African Prehistory (Berkeley, CA, 1981)Google Scholar, 58.

43 See G. Lydon ‘Obtaining freedom at the Muslims’ court: women, divorce, and Islamic law in colonial Senegal’, in Jeppie, S., Roberts, R., and Moosa, E. (eds.), Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa (Amsterdam, 2010)Google Scholar, 139.

44 Harrison, C., France and Islam in West Africa, 1860–1960 (Cambridge, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, D., Paths of Accommodation (Athens, OH, 2000)Google Scholar; Triaud, J.-L., ‘L'islam au sud du Sahara: une saison orientaliste en Afrique occidentale’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 198–200 (2010), 907–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See M. Monjib, who examines how the encounter with West African Islam caused the French to invent an ‘Arab Islam’: ‘L'Islam arabe en Afrique de l'Ouest: une construction altruisante au temps de la colonisation’, in Harrak, F. and Chegraoui, K. (eds.), Les constructions de l'autre dans les relations interafricaines (Rabat, 2008)Google Scholar.

45 J. Ki-Zerbo, ‘General introduction’, in Ki-Zerbo (ed.), General History, 20–1.

46 Curtin, P., Feirman, S., Thompson, L., and Vansina, J., African History: From Earliest Times to Independence (London, 1995)Google Scholar. The editors discussed the challenges posed by an inclusion of North Africa ‘a special case and a long-standing problem for the organization of historical knowledge’.

47 Jewsiewicki, B. and Newbury, D. (eds.), African Historiographies: What History for Which Africa (Beverly Hills, CA, 1986)Google Scholar; Awenengo, S., Barthélemy, P., and Tshimanga, C. (eds.), Écrire l'histoire de l'Afrique autrement? (Paris, 2004)Google Scholar; Philips, J. E. (ed.), Writing African History (Rochester, NY, 2006)Google Scholar.

48 Sarkozy's 2007 Dakar speech is a bleak reminder that racism and prejudicial ignorance about African history is still very much alive in France. See M. Gassama (ed.), L'Afrique; Ba Konaré, Adame (ed.), Petit précis de remise à niveau sur l'histoire africaine à l'usage du président Sarkozy (Paris, 2008)Google Scholar; and Chrétien, J.-P. (ed.), Le Discours de Sarkozy: un déni d'histoire (Paris, 2008)Google Scholar.

49 Cornevin, R., L'Histoire de l'Afrique tome I des origines au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1962)Google Scholar, 11.

50 Abitbol, M., Tombouctou et les Arma, de la conquête marocaine du Soudan nigérien en 1591 à l'hégémonie de l'empire peul du Macina en 1833 (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar.

51 Abitbol, M., Les commerçants du roi: Tujjār al-Sultān (Paris: 1998)Google Scholar; Schroeter, D., The Sultan's Jew: Morocco and the Sephardic World (Stanford, CA, 2002)Google Scholar; see also Gottreich, E. and Schroeter, D. (eds.), Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa (Bloomington, IN, 2011)Google Scholar. See Jessica Marglin's 2013 review in this journal.

52 Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails.

53 Laroui, A., L'histoire du Maghreb: un essai de synthèse (Casablanca, 1995)Google Scholar. A more recent textbook in English, claims that it ‘tangentially includes the Sahara and the Sahel … [and that] this book North Africa also embraces Egypt and the Sahara’, but in the end it follows well-known historiographical patterns. Naylor, P. C., North Africa: A History from Antiquity to the Present (Austin, TX, 2009)Google Scholar, 2.

54 Brett, M., Approaching African History (Woodbridge, 2013)Google Scholar.

55 Khaldūn, Ibn, Kitāb al-ibar wa-dīwān al-mubtada’ wa-al-khabar f̣ī ayyām al-‘Arab wa-al-‘ajam ẉa-al-barbar, Vol. 2 (Cairo, 1867)Google Scholar. See also Kāẓim, Tamthīlāt al-ākhar.

56 Qadéry, El, ‘L'Afrique a-t-elle perdu le nord? Le Maghreb et ses dichotomies coloniales’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 198–200 (2010), 736–9Google Scholar. El Qadéry's article is mainly concerned with the colonial construction of the Arab-Berber divide.

57 Pouessel, S. (ed.), Noirs au Maghreb: enjeux identitaires (Paris, 2012)Google Scholar.

58 For a review of this voluminous literature, see Hama, B., Recherches sur l'histoire des Touareg sahariens et soudanais (Paris, 1967)Google Scholar; Boilley, P., Les touaregs Kel Adagh, dépendances et révoltes: du Soudan français au Mali contemporain (Paris, 1999)Google Scholar; Lecocq, B., Disputed Desert: Decolonisation, Competing Nationalisms, and Tuareg Rebellions in Northern Mali (Leiden, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 El Qadéry, ‘L'Afrique’, 734.

60 Camps, G., Berbères: aux marges de l'histoire (Paris, 1980)Google Scholar.

61 Various works, several are alluded to in Camps’ article, used partial cranial analysis to argue that ‘negroids’ were recent newcomers to the Sahara. Camps, ‘Recherches sur l'origine des cultivateurs noirs’, Revue de l'Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée, 7 (1970), 35–45. See also Capot-Rey, Sahara français, 166–90.

62 Chlyeh, A. (ed.), L'Univers des Gnaoua (Grenoble, 1999)Google Scholar; Kapchan, D., Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa Transe and Musique in the Global Marketplace (Middletown, CT, 2007)Google Scholar; El Hamel, , ‘Constructing a diasporic identity: tracing the origins of the Gnawa spiritual group in Morocco’, The Journal of African History, 49:2 (2008), 241–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Among his publications, see Khiat, S., ‘La confrérie noire de Baba Merzoug: la sainteté présumée et la fête de l’équilibre’, Insāniyāt, 31 (2006), 113–34Google Scholar.

64 Valensi, L., ‘Esclaves chrétiens et esclaves noirs à Tunis au XVIIIe siècle’, Annales, Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 22:6 (1967), 1267–88Google Scholar. For a more recent study, see Mrad Dali, Inès, ‘De l'esclavage à la servitude: le cas des noirs de la Tunisie’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 179–80 (2005), 935–56Google Scholar.

65 Bin, T., Āmir, Ḥaḍāra al-Islāmīya wa-tijārat al-raqīq khilāl al-qarnayn al-thālith wa-l-rābi` lil-Hijra (Tunis, 1996)Google Scholar.

66 Rahal, A., La communauté noire de Tunis: thérapie initiatique et rite de possession (Paris, 2000)Google Scholar; Montana, I. M., The Abolition of Slavery in Ottoman Tunisia (Gainsville, FL, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Schroeter, D., ‘Slave markets and slavery in Moroccan urban society’, in Savage, E. (ed.), The Human Commodity: Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade (London, 1992), 185–213Google Scholar.

68 Ennaji, M., Soldats, domestiques et concubines: l'esclavage au Maroc au XIXe siècle (Casablanca, 1994)Google Scholar. See also Aouad, R., ‘Esclavage et situation des “noirs” au Maroc dans la première moitié du XXe siècle’, in Marfaing, and Wippel, (eds.), Les relations transsahariennes, 337–59Google Scholar; Hamel, C. El, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam (Cambridge, 2013)Google Scholar.

69 Āmāl Muḥammad al-Ṭālib, Al-Ḥayat al-Usriya fī wilāya Ṭrāblus al-gharbi fī al-‘uthmānī al-thānī (1911–1835) (Tripoli, 2006), esp. ch. 3. Currently she is completing at University of Manchester a dissertation entitled ‘Slavery: an economic reality and social concept in Tripoli, Libya (1711–1911)’. Of relevance is Renault, F., ‘La traite des esclaves noirs en Libye au XVIII esiècle’, The Journal of African History, 23:1 (1982), 163–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 R. Bader, ‘Une Algérie noire? Traite et esclaves noirs en Algérie coloniale’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Université Aix-Marseille III, 2005); Brower, B. C., ‘Rethinking abolition in Algeria: slavery and the “indigenous” question’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 195:3 (2009), 805–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Brower, B. C., A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France's Empire in the Algerian Sahara (New York, 2009)Google Scholar.

72 McDougall, E. A., ‘Research in Saharan history’, The Journal of African History, 39:3 (1998), 467–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 The Saharan Studies Association (http://ssa.asu.edu/) regularly sponsors conference panels and maintains an informative website, currently edited by Jacob Mundy (Colgate College), a specialist of the politics of the Western Sahara.

74 Depois, J., ‘L'institut de recherches sahariennes et les sciences de l'homme’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés et Civilisations, 13:3 (1958), 523–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Larneaud, M., ‘La géographie du Sahara et l'institut de recherches sahariennes’, Annales de géographie, 55 (1946), 294–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who discusses how researchers of the institute assisted the French military during the Second World War.

75 Monod, M. T., ‘La structure du Sahara atlantique’, Travaux de l'institut de recherches sahariennes, 3 (1945), 27–35Google Scholar.

76 Colloque international sur les routes des caravanes, ṭarīq al-qawāfil (Algiers, 2001), 99–120Google Scholar.

77 In the 1970s, Vansina spent several months in Tripoli as a guest of the Center where he set up its oral history laboratory.

78 Particularly noteworthy are the transcribed commercial records and correspondence from Ghadames by Qāsim Yūsha`, B., Ghadāmis: Wathā'iq Tijāriya wa Ta'rīkhiya wa Ijtimā‘iya (1228–1312) (Tripoli, 1982)Google Scholar and a second volume Wathā'iq Ghadāmis: Wathā'iq Tijāriya wa Ta'rīkhiya wa Ijtimā‘iya (949–1343), 2 (Tripoli, 1995). Also relevant are two histories of the caravanning towns of Ghat and Murzuk, bearing very similar titles. Rajab ḍayyāf, N., Madīnat Ghāt wa-tijārat al-qawāfil al-ṣaḥrāwīya khilāl al-qarn al-tāsi‘ ‘ashar al-milādī (Tripoli: 1999)Google Scholar; Naṣīr al-Abayḍ, R., Madīnat Murzuq wa-tijārat al-qawāfil al-ṣaḥrāwīya khilāl al-qarn al-tāsi‘ ‘ashar (Tripoli, 1998)Google Scholar; Muḥammad al-Takītaka, J., Mamlaka Sunghāyi al-Islāmiya fī ‘ahad al-Askiya Muḥammad al-Kabīr 1493–1528 (Tripoli, 1998)Google Scholar.

79 Since 1979, Majallat al-Buḥūth al-Ta'rīkhiya (journal of historical research) publishes multiple yearly volumes each of which includes a section listing recent works of relevance in Romance languages, English and German.

80 Majallat al-Buḥūth al-Ta'rīkhiya, ‘Tijārat al-qawāfil ‘abr al-ṣaḥrā’, 3:1 (1981). The proceedings of a more recent conference on caravan trade were published in Abdullatif Ahmida, Ali (ed.), Bridges Across the Sahara: Social, Economic, and Cultural Impact of the Trans-Saharan Trade During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 2009)Google Scholar.

81 Ibid. 5.

82 Al-Dālī wrote his Master's thesis on the Mali Empire and its relationship with Northern states (University of Tripoli) and his doctoral dissertation on the history of West Africa from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century (University Hassan II, Morocco). See his Mamlakat Mālī al-Islāmīyah wa-‘alāqāt ma‘a al-Maghrib wa-Lībīyā min al-qarn 13–15 m: ṣafaḥāt min ta'rīkh al-‘alāqāt al-‘Arabīyah al-Afrīqīyah (Beirut, 1993); Al-Tārīkh al-ḥaḍārī li-Afrīqiyā fī mā warā'a al-ṣaḥrā’: min nihāyat al-qarn al-khāmis ‘ashar ilá bidāyat al-qarn al-thāmin ‘ashar (Tripoli, 2001).

83 Al-Dālī, Al-Tārīkh al-ḥaḍārī, 9–10.

84 Al-Dālī, Qabā'il al-Hawsā: dirāsah wathā'iqīyah (Tripoli, 2005).

85 Al-Dālī (ed.), Izāla al-rayyib wa al-shak wa al-tafrīṭ fī al-mu'alifīn min ahl al-Takrūr wa al-ṣaḥrā’ wa ahl Shinqīṭ li-Aḥmad Būla‘āf al-Tiknī (Tripoli, 2001). It must be noted that Al-Dālī's introduction and the brief biographical note on Būla‘rāf contain a number of errors. See Lydon, G., ‘A thirst for knowledge: Arabic literacy, writing paper and bibliophiles in southwestern Sahara’, in Krätli, G. and Lydon, G. (eds.), The Trans-Saharan Book Trade: Arabic Literacy, Manuscript Culture, and Intellectual History in Islamic Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 35–72Google Scholar.

86 Abitbol, M., ‘Le Maroc et le commerce transsaharien du XVIIe au début du XIXe siècle’, Revue de l'Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée, 30:1 (1980), 5–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Juifs maghrébins et commerce transsaharien du VIIIe au XVe siècle’, in Le sol, la parole et l’écrit: mélanges en hommage à Raymond Mauny (Paris, 1981), 561–76.

87 Miège, J.-L., ‘La Libye et le commerce transsaharien au XIXe siècle’, Revue de l'occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 19 (1975), 135–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Le commerce transsaharien au XIXe siècle, essai de quantification’, Revue du monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 32 (1981–2), 93–120.

88 Al-Kattānī, M. I. and ḥājjī, M. (eds.), Fatḥ al-Shakūr fī ma‘rifati a‘yān ‘ulamā’ al-Takrūr lil-ṭālib Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr al-ṣadīq Al-Bartaylī al-Walātī. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1981)Google Scholar.

89 These often-cited works remain unpublished: Z. Tamouh, ‘Le Maroc et le Soudan au XIXe siècle (1830–1894): contribution à l'histoire inter-régionale de l'Afrique (Thèse de Doctorat 3ème cycle, Centre de Recherches Africaines, Université de Panthéon, Sorbonne, Paris I, 1982); A. El Alaoui, ‘Le Maghreb et le commerce transsaharien (milieu XI au milieu du XIVè s.)’ (Thèse de 3ème cycle, Université de Bordeaux, 1983).

90 For a historiographical review of research on Morocco and Western Africa, that includes a review of relevant theses in Arabic and in French see Zahra Tamouh, ‘L'histoire interrégionale comme socle de l'intégration panafricaine: l’émergence d'une école des historiens spécialisés dans les relations du Maroc avec le Soudan’, in Adandé, A. B. A. (ed.), Intégration régionale, démocratie et panafricanisme: paradigmes anciens et nouveaux défis (Dakar, 2007), 21–36Google Scholar.

91 Publications de l'Institut des Études Africaines, Le Maroc et l'Afrique Subsaharienne aux débuts des temps modernes (Rabat, 1995).

92 See, for example, Harrak, F. and Chegraoui, K. (ed.), Les constructions de l'autre dans les relations interafricaines (Rabat, 2008)Google Scholar. Incidentally, the Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain in Tunis recently held a conference entitled ‘Le Maghreb et ses Africanités: l'identité nationale au regard de ses “altérités”’ (Mar. 2011).

93 Abou El Farah, Y., Akmir, A., and Beni Azza, A. (eds.), La présence Marocaine en Afrique de L'Ouest: cas du Sénégal, du Mali et de la Côte d'Ivoire (Rabat, 1997)Google Scholar.

94 Aouad, R., ‘Réseaux marocains en Afrique sub-saharienne: le Tekna de l'oued noun: l'exemple de la famille Benbarka, 1880–1930’, Revue Maroc-Europe, 4 (1993), 219–245Google Scholar; ‘Aspects des relations entre Fès et l'Afrique noire au tournant du XIXe et du XXe siècle’, in Páez López, J. and Triki, H. (eds.), Fès: Mille deux cents ans d'histoire (Casablanca, 2009), 396–412Google Scholar.

95 Aouad, R., ‘De Tombouctou à Conakry: musulmans et juifs du Maroc dans l'espace de la relation Maroc-Afrique noire (fin XIXe siècle – début XXe siècle)’, in Abécassis, F., Simani-Dirèche, K., and Aouad, R. (eds.), La bienvenue et l'adieu: Migrants juifs et musulmans au Maghreb, XVe-XXe siècle, 1 (Paris, 2012), 191–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 Brenner, L., ‘The North African trading community in the nineteenth century central Sudan’, in McCall, D. F. and Bennett, N. R. (eds.), Aspects of West African Islam (Boston, 1971), 137–50Google Scholar; Grégoire, É., ‘Territoires marchands en Afrique subsaharienne’, Historiens et Géographes, 379 (2002), 133–40Google Scholar.

97 Their publications include: Al-Shukrī, Mamlakat Ghāna wa ‘alāqātiha bil-ḥarakat al-Murābiṭīn (Rabat, 1997) and Chergraoui, ‘Etat et islam en Afrique de l'ouest à propos du discours politique soudanais au XIXème siècle’, Al-Maghrib al-Ifrīqī (2002).

98 Shrāyimī, M. (ed.), Abḥāth wa-dirāsāt ḥawla al-ṣaḥrā (Rabat, 2009)Google Scholar.

99 Boubrik, R., Saints et société en Islam: la confrérie ouest-saharienne Fâdiliyya (Paris, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dirasāt ṣaḥrāwīya: al-Mujtāma‘a wa al-ṣulta wa al-Dīn (Rabat, 2008).

100 Bardagos, A. López, Arenas Coloniales: Los Awlad Dalim Ante la Colonización Franco-Española del Sáhara (Barcelona, 2003)Google Scholar; Baroja, J. C., Estudios Saharianos (Madrid, 1955)Google Scholar.

101 His three-volume dissertation ,‘Nomadisme, Islam et pouvoir politique dans la société maure précoloniale: essai sur quelques aspects du tribalisme’ (Thèse de Doctorat 3ème cycle, Université de Paris V, René Descartes, 1985) is a foundational work in western Saharan history. He has published numerous articles and book chapters, as well as Eléments d'histoire de la Mauritanie (Nouakchott, 1988) and edited Sahara: l'Adrar de Mauritanie sur les traces de Théodore Monod (Paris, 2002). Also see McDougall, ‘Research’.

102 al-ḥusayn, Wuld, ṣaḥrā’ al-mulathamīn: dirāsah li-ta'rīkh Mūrītāniyā wa-tafā’uluhā ma‘a muḥīṭīhā al-iqlīmī khilāl al-‘aṣr al-wasīṭ min muntaṣaf al-qarn 2 H/8 M. ilā nihāyat al-qarn 5 H./11 M (Beirut, 2007)Google Scholar. Aiddah, Wuld, Al-ṣaḥrā’ al-kubrā: Mudun wa Quṣūr, Vol. 2 (Algiers, 2009)Google Scholar.

103 al-Bara, Wuld, Al-Majmū‘āt al-Kubrā fī Fatāwī wa Nawāzil Ahl ‘Arb wa Janūb ‘Arb ṣaḥrā’, Vol. 10 (Nouakchott, 2010–11)Google Scholar. He also publishes in French as Ould El Bara.

104 A case in point is Julia Clancy-Smith latest book, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c. 1800–1900 ( Berkeley, CA, 2010).

105 Marfaing and Wippel (eds.), Les relations transsahariennes; Boesen, E. and Marfaing, L. (eds.), Les nouveaux urbains dans l'espace Sahara-Sahel: un cosmopolitisme par le bas (Paris, 2007)Google Scholar.

106 Since 1998, the center publishes annually the journal L'ouest saharien/The Western Sahara with an editorial board headed by Pierre Boilley (University Paris-Sorbonne and Centre d’Études des Mondes Africains).

107 Schmitz, J., ‘Migrants ouest-africains: miséreux, aventuriers ou notables?’, Politique Africaine, 109 (2008)Google Scholar. Also relevant is Streiff-Fenart, J. and Segatti, A. (eds.), The Challenge of the Threshold: Border Closures and Migration Movements in Africa (Lanham, 2011)Google Scholar.

108 J. Schmitz and E. Grégoire (eds.), Autrepart, 16 (Nov. 2001). ‘Ce numéro d'Autrepart entend donner une vision large et diversifiée des relations entre l'Afrique blanche et noire.’

109 S. Bredeloup and O. Pliez (eds.), Autrepart, 36:4 (2005).

110 Bennafla, , ‘La réactivation des échanges transsahariens: l'exemple tchado-libyen’, in Marfaing et, Wippel, (eds.), Les relations transsahariennes, 89–112Google Scholar; Pliez, O. and Bennafla, K., in Pliez, (ed.), Les Cités du désert: des villes sahariennes aux saharatowns (Toulouse, 2011)Google Scholar; Brachet, J., Migrations transsahariennes: vers un désert cosmopolite et morcelé (Niger) (Paris, 2009)Google Scholar; O. Pliez, ‘De la guerre à la coopération: les dangereuses liaisons tchado-libyennes’, in Pliez, O. (éd.), La nouvelle Libye, sociétés, espaces et géopolitique au lendemain de l'embargo (Paris, 2004)Google Scholar.

111 Scheele, J., Smugglers and Saints: Saharan Connectivity in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and with McDougall, J., Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwestern Africa (Bloomington, IN, 2012)Google Scholar.

112 Tilmatine, M., ‘Un parler berbèro-songhay du sud-ouest algérien (Tabelbala): eléments d'histoire et de linguistique’, Etudes et Documents Berbères, 14 (1996), 163–98Google Scholar; Souag, L., ‘Sub-Saharan lexical influences on North African Arabic and Berber’, in Lafkioui, M., African Arabic: Approaches to Dialectology (Berlin, 2013), 211–36Google Scholar; L. Souag, ‘The subclassification of Songhay and its historical implications’, Journal of African Languages and Linguistics (2014)Google Scholar.

113 MacDonald, K., ‘A view from the south: sub-Saharan evidence for contacts between North Africa, Mauritania and the Niger, 1000 BC–AD 700’, in Dowler, A. and Galvin, E. R. (eds.), Money, Trade, and Trade Routes in pre-Islamic North Africa (London, 2011)Google Scholar. See also Fentress, E., ‘Slavers on chariots’, in Dowler, A. and Galvin, E. R. (eds.), Money, 65–71Google Scholar; Wilson, A., ‘Saharan trade in the Roman period: short-, medium-, and long-distance trade networks’, Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 47:4 (2012), 409–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; , S.Nixon, , ‘Excavating Essouk-Tadmakka (Mali): new archaeological investigations of early Islamic trans-Saharan trade’, Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 44:2 (2009), 217–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.