When Marrying a Muslim

The Social Code of Political Elites in the Western Sudan, C. 1600– C. 1850

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8977264
AutoresJan Jansen (0000-0003-2277-0586, Leiden University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen57
Número1
Páginas25-45
Fecha de publicación2016-02-12
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of African History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0021853715000237
OpenAlexW2589703241
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas9

This study analyzes the marriage patterns in accounts of ‘founder strangers’ and ‘first-comers’. By telling whether and when a child from a marriage between a Muslim and a warrior was successful or not, the accounts reveal the social code of the political elites in the Western Sudan in the period c. 1600– c. 1850. This social code expressed the elites’ concern with legitimizing their political autonomy as well as with reproducing their ruling position in a context of increasing warfare and growing reformist Islam. This social code structured accounts of both matrilineal warrior rulers and patrilineal Muslim rulers. Though methodologically rooted in classical approaches, historiographically this study contributes not only to recent research on state formation in Kaabu (present-day Guinea-Bissau) and Kankan (present-day Guinea), but also offers an approach to the Sunjata epic that hints at a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century origin of most of the epic as we know it. These fresh insights may shed new light on the history of the Mali Empire and its aftermath, and on processes of state formation in the Western Sudan in general

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Autonomy · Context (archaeology · EPIC · Genealogy · Islam · Literature · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Tribe · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · European Political History Analysis · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law