Religion, Politics and an Apocryphal Admonition: The German East African “Mecca Letter” of 1908 in Historical-Critical Analysis

Haustein, Jörg

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. (2020). 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
• 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