Preface; Islamization; 1. Patterns of Islamization in West Africa 2. Slavery and Islamization in Africa: a comparative study; Islam in Politics: The Role of the 'Ulama'; 3. Islam in West African politics: accommodation and tension between the 'ulama' and the political authorities 4. Sociopolitics roles of Muslim clerics and scholars in West Africa 5. Merchants versus scholars and clerics in West Africa: differential and complementary roles; Background to the Islamic Revolutions; 6. Rural and urban Islam in West Africa: an introductory essay 7. The eighteenth century: background to the Islamic revolutions in West Africa 8. Eighteenth century renewal and reform in Islam: the role of sufi turuq in West Africa 9. Notes on the origins of Islamic militancy in the Futa Jallon; Historical Studies; 10. Berber nomads and Sudanese states: the historiography of the desert-Sahel interface 11. The Jews of Sijilmasa and the Saharan trade 12. 'Abd Allah b Yasin and the Almoravids 13. Mamluk Egypt and Takrur (West Africa); Textual Studies; 14. Ibn-Hawqal, the cheque, and Awdaghost 15. Ancient Ghana: a reassessment of some Arabic sources 16. The twelfth-century anonymous Kitab al-Istibsar: a history of a text 17. The thirteenth- and fourteenth-century kings of Mali 18. A seventeenth century chronicle by Ibn al-Mukhtar 19. Early nineteenth-century Arabic manuscripts from Kumasi; Index