Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara

Cover
Contents
Director’s foreword
Introduction
	Avenues of inquiry into the Sahelian Past
	Clay as metaphor
	The 1993 U.S. – Mali bilateral agreement
	Iconoclasm and the Great Mosque of Jenne
	Why the Sahel now?
Local perceptions of early times: Odes to Sahelian empires
	Ghana-Wagadu
	Mali Empire
	The Kingdom of Gao and the Songhay Empire
	Bamana Segu
On the shoreline of history: The state of archaeology in the Sahel
	A land of alternative polities
	Phantom capitals and small-scale societies
	Cities without citadels
	Threats and potential
Pre-Islamic artistic patronage
	Emergence of complex societies
	A female presence at Kumbi Saleh
	Sacred lanscapes of Central Mali
	Bura civilization
	Middle Niger Equestrians
	Entreaties for divine intervention
	Middle Niger authorship
	Translating the elemental into human
Islam in the West African Sahel
	Consoldiation of coexistence
	The Almoravids
	Early Arabic inscriptions at Tadmekkat-Essuk
	Early Gao and Ghana
	Mansa Musa of Mali
	Timbuktu
	Convergences and conflicts
Architecture in focus: four Sahelian landmarks
	Djinguereber Mosque of Timbuktu
	Friday Mosque of Jenne
	Tomb of Askia Muhammad, Gao
	Nando Mosque, Bandiagara Escarpment
Sahelian diasporas. Migrations from ancient Ghana and Mali
	Imperial Malian devotion
	Mande scepters as conduits of Nyama and emblems of authority
	A migration locus: Layers of settlement in the Bandiagara
	The Tellem-Dogon nexus
	Dogon prayers visualized by master sculptors
	Mali’s center of power and creative provinces
Collecting the Sahelian past: myth building and primary sources
	Appropriating the Sahel in words, images, and objects
	The treasure of Segu
	Ethnographic collecting: the paradox of artistic emotion
	Archaeology and the mission to collect
	Reclaiming the complexity of the Sahelian past
From the rise of Songhay to the fall of Segu
	Gao: at the center of empires
	A regional realignment
	The Bamana of Segu
	The Diarra dynasty
	The Jo association and arts patronage
	Painting with mud
	Rise of the Fulani/Fulbe: iconoclasm and the Umarian state
	Lomasa: the summit of Sahelian couture
	Visualizing an ever-changing world
Praying for life
Notes
Works in the exhibition
Selected bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index