Awards

• Nominated for AAR Awards for Excellence in the Study of Religion 2023

Overview

Sorcery or Science? examines how two Sufi Muslim theologians who rose to prominence in the western Sahara Desert in the late eighteenth century, Sīdi al-Mukhtār al-Kuntī (d. 1811) and his son and successor, Sīdi Muḥammad al-Kuntī (d. 1826), decisively influenced the development of Sufi Muslim thought in West Africa. Known as the Kunta scholars, Mukhtār al-Kuntī and Muḥammad al-Kuntī were influential teachers who developed a pedagogical network of students across the Sahara. In exploring their understanding of “the realm of the unseen”—a vast, invisible world that is both surrounded and interpenetrated by the visible world—Ariela Marcus-Sells reveals how these theologians developed a set of practices that depended on knowledge of this unseen world and that allowed practitioners to manipulate the visible and invisible realms. They called these practices “the sciences of the unseen.” While they acknowledged that some Muslims—particularly self-identified “white” Muslim elites—might consider these practices to be “sorcery,” the Kunta scholars argued that these were legitimate Islamic practices. Marcus-Sells situates their ideas and beliefs within the historical and cultural context of the Sahara Desert, surveying the cosmology and metaphysics of the realm of the unseen and the history of magical discourses within the Hellenistic and Arabo-Islamic worlds. Erudite and innovative, this volume connects the Islamic sciences of the unseen with the reception of Hellenistic discourses of magic and proposes a new methodology for reading written devotional aids in historical context. It will be welcomed by scholars of magic and specialists in Africana religious studies, Islamic occultism, and Islamic manuscript culture.

Full Product Details

9780271092294

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Reviews

This work is a substantial contribution to the studies of Sufism, West Africa, the Sahara, and the histories of magic and the occult. It is refreshingly interdisciplinary, extremely well researched and informed, and draws on impressive manuscript work and textual analysis to make a number of important interventions across several fields. -Oludamini Ogunnaike, author of Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions

This work is a substantial contribution to the studies of Sufism, West Africa, the Sahara, and the histories of magic and the occult. It is refreshingly interdisciplinary, is extremely well researched and informed, and draws on impressive manuscript work and textual analysis to make a number of important interventions across several fields. -Oludamini Ogunnaike, author of Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions

“This work is a substantial contribution to the studies of Sufism, West Africa, the Sahara, and the histories of magic and the occult. It is refreshingly interdisciplinary, is extremely well researched and informed, and draws on impressive manuscript work and textual analysis to make a number of important interventions across several fields.” —Oludamini Ogunnaike, author of Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions “From its extensive engagement with a vast, and understudied, corpus of primary sources and the contexts of their production to its thoughtful reflections on the scholar’s position and approach, Sorcery or Science? represents an exciting model for future scholarship across disciplines.” —Beatrice Bottomley Journal of Islamic Studies

“This work is a substantial contribution to the studies of Sufism, West Africa, the Sahara, and the histories of magic and the occult. It is refreshingly interdisciplinary, is extremely well researched and informed, and draws on impressive manuscript work and textual analysis to make a number of important interventions across several fields.” —Oludamini Ogunnaike,author of Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions “From its extensive engagement with a vast, and understudied, corpus of primary sources and the contexts of their production to its thoughtful reflections on the scholar’s position and approach, Sorcery or Science? represents an exciting model for future scholarship across disciplines.” —Beatrice Bottomley Journal of Islamic Studies

Author Information

Ariela Marcus-Sells is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University.

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