The “Narziguas,” Forgotten Protagonists of Saharan History
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9403418 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Francisco Freire (0000-0002-6653-8669, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 35-65 |
| Publication date | 2011-05-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Islamic Africa (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0803-0685 • E-ISSN: 0806-7120 |
| Publisher | Brill (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.5192/21540993020135 |
| OpenAlex | W1994504041 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 7 |
This article discusses the processes leading to an almost complete exclusion of some populations native to the western Sahara from oral tradition and historical writing. I will consider the Arabization of this context and its implications in the formation of contemporary identities, when evidence suggests precisely their complexity and non-linearity. In order to assess this argument I will look attentively at a mid-sixteenth-century letter sent to Lisbon from the Arguin castle, off the Saharan coast. This document should prove particularly important as the population depicted there as the main interlocutors of the Portuguese in the region—the “Narziguas”—is nowadays excluded from most historical accounts. The reading I propose of this letter explores the possibility of a Narziguas leadership in the coastal western Sahara prior to the seventeenth century; in this manner, questioning some of the well-established Arab-centered historiography and oral tradition. It is also argued that Islam has been ideologically and genealogically used as a privileged instrument in the reconfiguration of the region’s social landscape
Archaeology · Argument (complex analysis · Context (archaeology · Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Historiography · Ideology · Islam · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · African Studies and Geopolitics · Demography · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law
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Jihad in West Africa
Islam and Social Order in Mauritania. A Case Study from the Nineteenth Century
The question of 'race' in the pre-colonial southern Sahara
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,4 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2022 (7) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |