Saharan frontiers: space and mobility in Northwest Africa

This collective volume deals with the ways in which Saharan peoples have moved through time and space and with the limits, both long established and recent, to those movements. Part 1, Framing Saharan Africa, considers Saharan regional history over the long term with chapters on connectivity, the Mediterranean and the Sahara (Peregrine Horden), being Saharan (E. Ann McDougall), Saharan trade in Antiquity (Katia Schrle), and frontiers in Saharan history (James McDougall). Part 2, Environment, territory and community, revisits the notion of Saharan place and local notions of territoriality with chapters on diaspora, Ibadism and social status in the valley of the Mzab, Algeria (Fatma Oussedik), celebrating ‘mawlid’, the birth of the Prophet, in Timimoun, Algeria (Abderrahmane Moussaoui), changing territorialities among the Tuareg of northern Mali (Charles Grmont), and the relationship between Moorish and Haalpulaar societies in the Senegal Valley (Olivier Leservoisier). Part 3, Strangers, space and labor, pursues the connections between mobility, economic practice, and the making and transformation of place with chapters on Mauritania and the new frontier of Europe (Armelle Choplin), living together and living apart in Nouakchott (Laurence Marfaing), and cultural interactions and the artisanal economy in Tamanrasset, Algeria (Dida Badi). Part 4, Economies of movement, considers local and long-distance economic factors in the making of informal commercial and migration networks with chapters on the informal economy in southern Morocco (Mohamed Oudada), Saharan connectivity in the trading town of Al-Khalil, northern Mali (Judith Scheele), and movements of people and goods in the central Sahara, notably Niger (Julien Brachet). [ASC Leiden abstract]