Jörg Haustein
Religion, Politics and an Apocryphal Admonition: The German East African “Mecca Letter” of 1908 in Historical-Critical Analysis
Haustein, Jörg
Authors
Abstract
This article analyses a Muslim missive, which was circulated in German East Africa in 1908. Erroneously dubbed the “Mecca letter,” it called believers to repentance and sparked a religious revival, which alarmed the German administration. Their primarily political interpretation of the letter was retained in subsequent scholarship, which has overlooked two important textual resources for a better understanding of the missive: the presence of similar letters elsewhere and the extant fourteen specimens in the Tanzanian National Archive. Presenting the first text-critical edition of the letter, together with a historical introduction of the extant specimens and a textual comparison to similar missives elsewhere, the article argues that the East African “Mecca letter” of 1908 was nothing more than a local circulation of a global chain letter. As such, its rapid transmission was not connected to a single political agency, but was likely prompted by a large variety of motivations.
Citation
Haustein, J. (in press). Religion, Politics and an Apocryphal Admonition: The German East African “Mecca Letter” of 1908 in Historical-Critical Analysis. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 83(1), 95-125. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X20000026
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | May 31, 2019 |
Online Publication Date | Jan 31, 2020 |
Deposit Date | Jun 17, 2019 |
Publicly Available Date | Jun 17, 2019 |
Journal | Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies |
Print ISSN | 0041-977X |
Electronic ISSN | 1474-0699 |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 83 |
Issue | 1 |
Pages | 95-125 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X20000026 |
Keywords | Islam, German East Africa, Mecca Letter, Colonialism, Dream, Politics, Millennialism |
Related Public URLs | https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bulletin-of-the-school-of-oriental-and-african-studies |
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© SOAS University of London, 2020. This is the accepted manuscript of an article published by Cambridge University Press in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, available online: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X20000026
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