Islam in Africa and the Middle East: Studies on Conversion and Renewal * BY NEHEMIAH LEVTZION. Edited by MICHEL ABITBOL and AMOS NADAN

Abstract

Nehemiah Levtzion was an important member of the community of ‘northern’ historians of Muslim West Africa and the Middle East. Based in Israel and proficient in classical Arabic, he had a ‘take’ on the subject that was slightly different from that of some of his colleagues in his field: recent changes in Muslim thinking mattered to him and his compatriots, especially in his later years, but his apprenticeship in the West African world of Islam had already given him a distinct perspective that was valuable. His death in 2003 at the age of 67 has meant that this volume, made up of 15 of his papers, plus an autobiography and a full bibliography of his writings (he was involved in 13 books and authored some 72 papers), constitutes his ‘last word’. An earlier variorum volume of his collected essays had given us in 1994 Islam in West Africa: Religion, Society and Politics to 1800. For this new volume, the editors have picked on two themes—conversion/Islamization and renewal/Sufism—with the earliest paper dating back to 1979 and half the other papers to 2000 or later. The editors must have had a hard time making their selection: were they to show the width of Nehemiah's interests or to pick only the most ‘significant’ of his ideas? Or simply include items few students of the subject would have seen? There are some unpublished essays here that are good to have, and the two that Nehemiah wrote with Gideon Weigert were for me among the most interesting.