2025 William A. Brown Lecture: William A. Brown, Arabic Manuscripts, and the Study of Nineteenth-Century West Africa

Mauro Nobili will interrogate the underappreciated role of William Brown as a meticulous collector of primary sources by showcasing some the documents that are crucial from his book project titled Timbuktu, the Queen of England, and the French Invasion of the Sahara. This project is a microhistory of an imperial encounter in the Niger Bend in the 1850s, shedding light on the agendas of a local scholar-cum-political leader named Aḥmad al-Bakkāy (d. 1864) in the face of European imperialism.