An Islamic Alliance ─ Ali Dinar and the Sanusiyya, 1906-1916

An Islamic Alliance uses non-European sources to portray the defense, by devoutly Islamic leaders, of some of the last parts of the African continent to be conquered during the imperial European "scramble for Africa" that ended with the First World War. These surviving pieces of diplomatic correspondence concentrate on the alliance between Ali Dinar, prince of the sultanate of Dar Fur in the western Sudan, and the leaders of the Sanusi brotherhood then based in southern Libya. In contrast to the European view of the alliance as ephemeral, the documents indicate a sincere, passionate attempt to join--despite immense physical difficulties--an ancient monarchist tradition to a more modern, trade-based sociopolitical organization.

Jay Spaulding is a historian of Northeast Africa, with a special interest in the Sudan. A medievalist by background, he writes most frequently about the precolonial age. He teaches at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, USA, and has been a visiting scholar at the University of Bergen, Norway, the University of Khartoum, Sudan, and at Michigan State University and Columbia University in the United States. He lived in the Sudan for extended periods during the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to his writings about the Sudan, he has helped to compile textbooks used by the General Education program at Kean University, and by the Senior Seminar that serves as the capstone course for the History Department's undergraduate degree program.