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

Haustein, Jörg

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


Authors

Jörg Haustein



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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Copyright Statement
© 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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