Engaging with a Legacy: Nehemia Levtzion (1935-2003)
Engaging with a Legacy shows how Nehemia Levtzion shaped our understanding of Islam in Africa and influenced successive scholarly generations in their approach to Islamization, conversion and fundamentalism. The book illuminates his work, career and family life including his own life vision on the occasion of his 60th birthday. It speaks to his relationship with researchers at home and abroad as mentor, colleague and provocateur; in one section, several authors reflect on those dynamics in terms of personal and professional development. Levtzions contemporaries also speak of interactions with him (and his life-long companion, wife Tirza) in the 1950s and 1960s; we see in these writings the birth of West African historical studies. Levtzions arrival as an Israeli graduate-student in Nkrumahs Egyptian-leaning Ghana, and the debate over what African Studies should mean in an environment that included the personal intervention of W.E.B. Du Bois, are stories told for the first time. Most poignant is the account of Levtzions commitment to building African Studies, complete with emphasis on Islam, in the heart of the Jewish state at The Hebrew University. His never-ending defence of the program reflected his determination to be both engaged historian and engaged Israeli a legacy he chose for himself. Finally, an Epilogue to the original publication shows how one aspect of this legacy, Levtzions growing preoccupation with the public sphere in Muslim societies, has become even more relevant in post-Arab Spring Africa and the Middle East.
This book was first published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of African Studies.
E. Ann McDougall (Professor), Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada has researched social and economic history in southern Morocco and Mauritania for over thirty years. Her current project focuses on a comparative study of servile/marginal status in these regions, with attention to its importance in contemporary democratization.
Nehemia Levtzion 1935-2003
First published 2013
by Routledge
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2013 Canadian Association of African Studies
This book is a reproduction of the Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. 42, issue 2-3. The Publisher requests to those authors who may be citing this book to state, also, the bibliographical details of the special issue on which the book was based.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN13: 978-0-415-63167-9
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Taylor & Francis Books
Publishers Note
The publisher would like to make readers aware that the chapters in this book may be referred to as articles as they are identical to the articles published in the special issue. The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen in the course of preparing this volume for print.
The chapters in this book were originally published in the Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008). When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:
Engaging with the Legacy of Nehemia Levtzion: An Introduction
E. Ann McDougall
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
The Legacy of Nehemia Levtzion 1935-2003
Nehemia Levtzion
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
Nehemia Levtzion and Islam in Ghana: Reminiscences
Ivor Wilks
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
Memories of Nehemia
Martin Klein
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
Remembering Nehemia: Personal Tributes
Roland Oliver, William F. S. Miles, Naomi Chazan, and E. Ann McDougall
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
In Memory of Tirtza Levtzion, 1935-2007
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
Breaking New Ground in Pagan and Muslim West Africa
David Robinson
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
Neo-Sufism: Reconsidered Again
John O. Voll
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
Linking Translation Theory and African History: Domestication and Foreignization in Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History
Dalton S. Collins
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
Reconceptualizing Early Ghana
Susan Keech McIntosh
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
Captain of We Band of Brothers: An Archaeologists Homage to Nehemia Levtzion
Roderick J. McIntosh
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
From the Banan Tree of Kouroussa: Mapping the Landscape in Mande Traditional History
David C. Conrad
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
Christians and Muslims in Nineteenth Century Liberia: From Ideological Antagonism to Practical Toleration
Yekutiel Gershoni
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
pp. 409-422
From the Colony to the Post-colony: Sufis and Wahhbsts in Senegal and Nigeria
Irit Back
Canadian Journal of African Studies, volume 42, issue 2-3 (2008)
pp. 423-445
The Philosophy of the Revolution: Thoughts on Modernizing Islamic Schools in Ghana
