A major objective of the ISITA program is a series of publications. These fall into three main categories.

• Arabic Literature of Africa, (hereafter ALA ) compiled by J.O. Hunwick and R.S. O'Fahey with the assistance of various scholars.

• Proceedings of the yearly ISITA colloquia. The proceedings of the 2001 ISITA colloquium are being prepared for publication by Scott S. Reese and will be published by E.J. Brill in early 2004 under the title The Transmission of Knowledge in Islamic Africa . The proceedings of the 2002 ISITA colloquium have been divided into two. The papers dealing primarily with language issues will be published in a special issue of Sudanic Africa, while those dealing primarily with political issues are being prepared for publication by Muhammad S. Umar to appear in a special issue of Islam et sociétés au sud du Sahara. The proceedings of the 2003 ISITA colloquium on Muslim/Christian Encounters in Africa are being prepared for publication in E.J. Brills Islam in Africa Series (see below).

• Publication of monographs in a series on Islam in Africa published by E.J. Brill and co-edited by J.O. Hunwick and Knut S. Vikør.   The first volume in the series is Ousmane Kane, Muslim Modernity in Postcolonial Nigeria, which appeared in 2003.

Other ISITA-Related Publications

• Sudanic Africa. A Journal of Historical Sources (SAJHS) Founded in 1990 by J.O. Hunwick and R.S. O'Fahey and edited by Knut S. Vikor, SAJHS publishes original documents in Arabic and in African languages, along with translations, annotations, and commentary. The journal also publishes articles discussing sources, biographical and bibliographical notes, and book reviews.

 

• The Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (CMEIS), University of Bergen, regularly publishes a number of works related to ISITA themes, including Bergen Studies on the Middle East and Africa, a series of monographs from younger scholars.

Other recent publications that are related to ISITA themes are briefly noted below.

• Muhammad S. Umar (Arizona State University) completed the following articles while serving as ISITA Preceptor in 2001-02: "Profiles of New Islamic Schools in Northern Nigeria," forthcoming in The Maghreb Review ; and "Islamic Arguments for Western Education: Muazu Hadejias Hausa Poem, Ilmin Zamani" Islam et societies au sud du Sahara, 16 (2002): 85-106.

 

• Anne K. Bang, Sufis and Scholars of the Sea: Family networks in East Africa, 1860-1925 (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003). The author notes, "The topic of this study is the history of Islam in the northwest Indian Ocean during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. More specifically, it focuses on the scholarly exchange of ideas between Hadramawt in South Arabia and the East African Coast."

• The Exoteric Teachings of Ahmad ibn Idris , ed. and transl. by Bernd Radtke, John O'Kane, R.S. O'Fahey and Knut S. Vikør (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999). This is the latest in a series of publications arising from research carried out at the University of Bergen on the Idrisi spiritual tradition, that is the spiritual tradition stemming from the Moroccan teacher and Sufi, Ahmad b. Idris (1747/8 to 1837). The work contains the text and translation of a treatise by Ibn Idris setting forth his views on ijtihad and the text and translation of an account of public debate held in 1832 between Ibn Idris and group of Wahhabi ulama. The Idrisi tradition is placed within a wider context by O'Fahey in "Neo-Sufism, pietism and enlightenment in nineteenth-century Islam." Kyrkohistorisk Ärskrift (Sweden: Lund, 2000): 89-96.