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Between 1880 and 1920, Muslim Sufi orders became pillars of the colonial regimes and economies of Senegal and Mauritania. In Paths of Accommodation David Robinson examines the ways in which the leaders of the orders negotiated relations with the Federation of French West Africa in order to preserve autonomy within the religious, social and economic realms while abandoning the political sphere of their non-Muslim rulers. This was a striking development because the local inhabitants had a strong sense of belonging to the Dar al-Islam, the world of Islam, in which Muslims ruled themselves. By charting the similarities and differences of the trajectories followed by leading groups within the region as they responded to the colonial regimes, Robinson provides an understanding of the concepts of the relationship between knowledge and power, the concepts of civil society and hegemony, and the transferability of symbolic, economic and social capital.North America: Ohio U Press ... Read more

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From the vast desert stretches of the North, for ages crossed by cameleer nomads (the Moors), to the lands of the southern Sahel, with their plains and the Senegal River valley, that are the world of Black African shepherds and farmers, Mauritania is an extremely unusual, motley country. To the east, the absolute desert of the immense frontier confines, where man is absent, gives way to large sombre rocky plateaus, the historic centre of the country, broken by long steep ridges and dunes that come to rest, in the west, in an Atlantic Ocean whose mighty waves break along a 700-kilometres coastline: the waters of this ocean, among the richest of the Earth, explain both the passage of great flocks of migratory birds and the importance of the fishing activities.
Belonging both to the Sahara and the Sahel, historically continental and increasingly coastal, Mauritania, by the juxtaposition of its various societies, represents a dual culture: Arab world, African world. It offers a great diversity of landscapes and populations as well as a rare, often unsuspected wealth of historical and multicultural points of interest, on the interface of two apparently remote worlds, yet whose complementary nature for centuries fostered intense exchanges between black Africa and the Maghreb, to which the Mauritanian architectural heritage and many features of its social organisation bear witness. ... Read more

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The "Historical Dictionary of Mauritania" provides an up-to-date, in-depth review of the history, politics, economy, geography, society, and religion of Mauritania. ... Read more