Linking global cities; Tracing local practices. Islamic Literature and Networks in the South-Western Indian Ocean

Our knowledge about the history of Islam in South-Eastern Africa ca. 1800-2000 has many lacunas. Very little is known about the spread, social structure and the writings of the Muslim communities in Northern Mozambique. Furthermore, only a handful of stud ies exist on the interconnections between these communities and other Islamic peoples in the Indian Ocean region, including the Swahili coast and the Arabian Peninsula. Also for the coastal cities of South Africa, Islamic history has yet to be studied in its regional context, including Islamic scholarly links extending along the coast. This stands in sharp contrast to the scholarly attention devoted to the Northern Swahili coast over the past decade. The present project will link the Islamic presence of S outh-Eastern Africa with the wider Indian Ocean context. Here, global connections will be contrasted with local practices. Due to the lack of previous studies on the topic, the project will have a bio-bibliographical focus, bringing forward new sources, m ainly in the form of Islamic literature and writings. These will be studied in a comparative perspective, thus highlighting interactions between the global and local dimensions. In order to obtain the widest possible range of new sources, the project is p aired with a NUFU project under which Islamic manuscripts will be collected, copied and indexed in the Northern Mozambique region. Five researchers will be active in the project, which is scheduled to run over 3 years. The researchers are all historians o f Islamic Africa, but with different linguistic specializations. The result of the project will be detailed bibliographical knowledge of this region as well as knowledge about the place of South Eastern Africa in the wider context of Indian Ocean Islam. C oncretely, the project will result in two monographs, two bio-bibliographical reference works, one proceedings volume and articles in peer reviews journals.