Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire
Subtitle: Al-Saʻdī's Taʼrīkh al-sūdān down to 1613, and other contemporary documents
By: [translated and edited] by John O. Hunwick.
Contributors: Hunwick, John O.
Publisher: Brill
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Leiden; Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 414
Subjects: Mali (Empire); Tombouctou (Mali) -- History.; Songhai Empire.
Description: "This collection of sixteen essays deals with the role of magic, religion and witchcraft in European culture, 1450-1650, and the critical role of the visual in that culture. It covers the relationship of humanism and magic; the intersection of religious ritual, orthodoxy and power; the discursive links between the visual language of witchcraft and contemporary anxieties about sexuality and savagery. The introductory chapter urges us to exorcise our tendency to reduce historical experiences of the demonic to forms of unreason created in a distant past. Only then can we understand the role of the demonic in our historical definition of the self and the other. Richly illustrated with 112 images, the book will interest historians and art historians."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [369]-390) and index.
Originally published: 1999. With corrections and minor textual changes.