Research Catalog

Title

Ransoming prisoners in precolonial Muslim western Africa / Jennifer Lofkrantz.

Author

Lofkrantz, Jennifer, 1975-

Publication

• Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2023.
• ©2023

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 218 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

"This study, the first to cover ransoming in African regions south of the Sahara, ranges over a broad temporal and geographical area-from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries and including present-day Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Morocco. It focuses particularly on the nineteenth-century jihad era and on the Sokoto Caliphate and the Umarian States. The overall period was a time of intense intellectual debate over the questions of who was and who was not a Muslim, how Islamic law could and should be implemented, what rights and protections recognized freeborn Muslims should have, and what role governments should play in ensuring those rights especially during a time when slavery was legal. Ransoming discourses and procedures expose Muslim West African answers to these questions as well as providing a lens on broader issues and ideas on slavery, freedom, and religious and ethnic identity. Based on research conducted mostly in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and France and on Arabic-, French-, and English-language archival sources, treatises, personal correspondence, oral sources and testimony, biographical data, travel reports, and early colonial documents, this study approaches the question of ransoming of captives through an examination, first, of intellectual debates amongst pre-nineteenth-century West African scholars on issues of ransoming; second, of nineteenth-century policies based on understandings of those intellectual debates in the context of the jihads; and, finally, of West African practices of ransoming in the nineteenth century"--

Series Statement

Rochester studies in African history and the diaspora, 1092-5228 ; 97

Uniform Title

Rochester studies in African history and the diaspora ; 97.

Subjects

• Ransom
• History
• West Africa
• Muslims > Intellectual life
• Intellectual life
• Africa, West > Intellectual life
• Islamic law > Africa, West
• Muslims > Africa, West > Intellectual life
• Slavery and Islam > Africa, West
• Ransom > Religious aspects > Islam
• Ransom > Africa, West > History

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Islamic Discourse on Slavery and Ransoming before 1800 -- The Policy and Practice of Ransoming in the Maghrib -- Jihad, the Sokoto Caliphate, and Ransoming -- The Jihad of 'Umar Taal and its Ransoming Nonpolicies -- The Negotiation and Practice of Ransoming Captives.

Call Number

JFE 24-1118

ISBN

• 9781648250644
• 1648250645
• 9781805430001 (canceled/invalid)
• 9781800109995 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2022058087

OCLC

1355830995

Author

Lofkrantz, Jennifer, 1975- author.

Title

Ransoming prisoners in precolonial Muslim western Africa / Jennifer Lofkrantz.

Publisher

Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2023.

Copyright Date

©2023

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Rochester studies in African history and the diaspora, 1092-5228 ; 97

Rochester studies in African history and the diaspora ; 97.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Form:

Online version: Lofkrantz, Jennifer. Ransoming prisoners in precolonial Muslim western Africa Rochester : University of Rochester Press, 2023 9781805430001 (DLC) 2022058088

Research Call Number

JFE 24-1118