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Lovejoy Paul . Jihad in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions . Athens : Ohio University Press , 2016. xix + 396 pp. Photographs. Glossary. Orthography. Bibliography. Index. $90.00. Cloth. $34.95. Paper. ISBN: 978-0821422410.
BOOK REVIEWS
HISTORY
In Jihad in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions Paul Lovejoy argues provocatively that the West African jihads were a crucial part of the revolutions that altered world history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and he criticizes Atlantic and world historians for not recognizing their role. The book is most persuasive, however, in its discussion of Sokoto and Bornu in northern Nigeria. Lovejoy argues convincingly in favor of a point that I made forty-five years ago; that the jihads were to a large degree a response to disruptions caused by the Atlantic slave trade. He also argues correctly that ethnicity was fluid.
The core argument of the book is that jihad leaders were opposed to the sale of Muslims, that many regimes banned the sale of Muslims to Christians, and that as a result the export of slaves from Muslim areas declined after the jihads. This argument--also made recently by Rudolf Ware III (The Walking Qu'ran: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and...