Description:

Join the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA) for a talk in our Islam in Africa - New Books in the Field series. 

Lunch will be served at the talk.

Mauro Nobili, Zachary Wright, and Ali Diakite will discuss their new book, The Chronicles of Two West African Kingdoms: TheTārīkh Ibn Al-Mukhtār of the Songhay Empire and the Tārīkh Al-Fattāsh of the Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi (Liverpool University Press, 2025).

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.

Dr. Mauro Nobili is Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Ali Diakite is Cataloger for West African Manuscripts at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (Collegeville, MN).

Dr. Zachary Wright is ISITA's Director, as well as Professor in Residence and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at Northwestern University in Qatar.