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Book Cover
E-book
Author Peterson, Brian James

Title Islamization from below : the making of Muslim communities in rural French Sudan, 1880-1960 / Brian J. Peterson
Published New Haven : Yale University Press, ©2011

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 319 pages)
Contents The wars of Samori -- Reconstructing a fragmented world -- Slave emancipation and the expansion of Islam, 1905-1914 -- Coping with colonialism -- Transforming the village -- Migrants and the dialectics of conversion, 1930-1960 -- Changes in the religious landscape
Summary The colonial era in Africa, spanning less than a century, ushered in a more rapid expansion of Islam than at any time during the previous thousand years. In this groundbreaking historical investigation, Brian J. Peterson considers for the first time how and why rural peoples in West Africa "became Muslim" under French colonialism. Peterson rejects conventional interpretations that emphasize the roles of states, jihads, and elites in "converting" people, arguing instead that the expansion of Islam owed its success to the mobility of thousands of rural people who gradually, and usually peacefully, adopted the new religion on their own. Based on extensive fieldwork in villages across southern Mali (formerly French Sudan) and on archival research in West Africa and France, the book draws a detailed new portrait of grassroots, multi-generational processes of Islamization in French Sudan while also deepening our understanding of the impact and unintended consequences of colonialism
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-308) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Islam -- Mali -- Bougouni (Sikasso) -- History
RELIGION -- Fundamentalism.
RELIGION -- Islam -- History.
French colonies
Islam
Religion
SUBJECT Bougouni (Sikasso, Mali) -- History
France -- Colonies -- Africa -- Religion
Subject Africa
Mali -- Bougouni (Sikasso)
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780300152739
0300152736