Muslim healing, magic, and amulets in the twentieth-century history of the Southern Sahara
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation examines how economic and social changes during the colonial and postcolonial periods in Mauritania affected the social history of l'ḥjāb, or a potent secret Islamic wisdom of healing and protecting, and its experts in the twentieth-century. These experts provided safe sites for individuals in the region to articulate their anxieties and vent their frustrations, enter into agreements with local political powers, and protect positions of authority and power. Attending to the intellectual history of local religious knowledge in focusing on the various ways Muslim scholars coped with tensions related to l'ḥjāb, this research identifies the long history of the trans-Saharan slave trade, as well as notions of racial genealogy and Islamic doctrine, as producing nodes of ritually powerful activity. The dissertation builds on this history of colonial intervention in l'ḥjāb and the institution of slavery in the region to examine accusations of bloodsucking in desert oases. The phenomenon of bloodsucking accusations in Mauritania provides a lens through which scholars can explore the social world of oasis towns, domestic relationships between masters and slaves, notions of race, and the origin of evil. The author also addresses the history of the Ahl Guennar, a confederation of families known in Mauritania and Senegal for their mastery of the Islamic esoteric sciences. This extended family's ambiguous racial identity, shifting religious and occupational affiliations, enigmatic reputation and secrecy, and long history in the region make them a compelling case study for the role of Islamic esoteric knowledge in the mercurial political and cultural environment in which they situated themselves. This history of straddling racial and political categories speaks to the fluid nature of racial, religious, and occupational identities and strategies employed by communities to navigate and explain this flexibility. Finally, the dissertation illustrates how increased contact and concern with religious reform movements of the Islamic heartland of the Middle East led to efforts to make these esoteric healing and protective practices conform to more rigid interpretations of doctrinally-permitted techniques of managing misfortune. Religious reform movements, along with postcolonial politics aimed at constructing a modern nation-state, drove experts of l'ḥjāb to go underground, using new terminology to refer to older techniques, to alter the materiality of their prescriptions, and increase the invisibility of these already hidden sciences.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Pettigrew, Erin |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History. |
| Primary advisor | Roberts, Richard, active 1899 |
| Thesis advisor | Roberts, Richard, active 1899 |
| Thesis advisor | Beinin, Joel, 1948- |
| Thesis advisor | Hanretta, Sean, 1972- |
| Advisor | Beinin, Joel, 1948- |
| Advisor | Hanretta, Sean, 1972- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Erin Pettigrew. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Erin Kathleen Pettigrew
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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