Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara: Islam, Spiritual Mediation, and Social Change

Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara situates battles over the meaning and control of Islamic esoteric knowledge (ḥjāb) in Mauritania’s history of racial and political struggles dating to the pre-colonial era. Innovatively using contemporary social media alongside traditional textual and oral sources, Pettigrew reveals the resilience and adaptability of both ḥjāb power and practitioners. ‘Magic’ in Mauritania has not disappeared; it has become a marketable commodity.

In this innovative new history, Erin Pettigrew utilizes invisible forces and entities – esoteric knowledge and spirits – to show how these forms of knowledge and unseen forces have shaped social structures, religious norms, and political power in the Saharan West. Situating this ethnographic history in what became la Mauritanie under French colonial rule and, later the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Pettigrew traces the changing roles of Muslim spiritual mediators and their Islamic esoteric sciences – known locally as l’ḥjāb – over the long-term history of the region. By exploring the impact of the immaterial in the material world and demonstrating the importance of Islamic esoteric sciences in Saharan societies, she illuminates peoples’ enduring reliance upon these sciences in their daily lives and argues for a new approach to historical research that takes the immaterial seriously.

In this innovative new history, Erin Pettigrew utilizes invisible forces and entities – esoteric knowledge and spirits – to show how these forms of knowledge and unseen forces have shaped social structures, religious norms, and political power in the Saharan West. Situating this ethno- graphic history in what became la Mauritanie under French colonial rule and later the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Pettigrew traces the changing roles of Muslim spiritual mediators and their Islamic esoteric sciences – known locally as l’hjab – over the long-term history of the region. By exploring the impact of the immaterial in the material world and demonstrating the importance of Islamic esoteric sciences in Saharan societies, she illuminates peoples’ enduring reliance upon these sciences in their daily lives and argues for a new approach to historical research that takes the immaterial seriously.

About the Author

Erin Pettigrew is Assistant Professor of History and Arab Crossroads Studies at New York University Abu Dhabi. She is a cultural historian of colonial and postcolonial West Africa, with a focus on the history of Islam, Slavery, race, gender, and nationhood.

Table of Contents

Part I – Knowledge and Authority in Precolonial Contexts

1 – Principles of Provenance

      2 – Local Wisdom

      Part II – Rupture, Consonance, and Innovation in Colonial and Postcolonial Mauritania

      3 – Colonial Logics of Islam

      4 – Postcolonial Transfigurations

      Part III – Articulating Race, Gender, and Social Difference through the Esoteric Sciences

      5 – Desert Panic

      6 – Sui Generis

Bibliographic Information

Title: Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara: Islam, Spiritual Mediation, and Social Change

Author:  Erin Pettigrew

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

 Language: English

Length: 352 pages

ISBN:  ‎ 978-1009224611

Pub. Date: January 26, 2023

Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara