About

Ghislaine Lydon is a Professor at UCLA Department of History with a research focus on African History, Economies, Institutions, Religions, Women, Gender, and the World. Her work explores various aspects of African societies, emphasizing the intersections of economic and social structures, religious practices, and gender roles. As a scholar, she contributes to understanding the historical development and complexities of African civilizations and their global connections.

Research topics

• History
• Geography
• Political science
• Genealogy
• Ethnology

Selected publications

• Defining Regions of Pre-Colonial Africa: A Controlled Vocabulary for Linking Open-Source Data in Digital History Projects

  History in Africa · 2021 · 5 citations

  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Sociology

  Abstract Regionalizing pre-colonial Africa aids in the collection and interpretation of primary sources as data for further analysis. This article includes a map with six broad regions and 34 sub-regions, which form a controlled vocabulary within which researchers may geographically organize and classify disparate pieces of information related to Africa’s past. In computational terms, the proposed African regions serve as data containers in order to consolidate, link, and disseminate research among a growing trend in digital humanities projects related to the history of the African diasporas before c. 1900. Our naming of regions aims to avoid terminologies derived from European slave traders, colonialism, and modern-day countries.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Messick Brinkley. — Sharīʿa Scripts: A Historical Anthropology

  Cahiers d études africaines · 2019-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Brinkley Messick’s long-awaited book is the fruit of several decades of reflection on the practice of Islamic law, following his 1993 classic The Calligraphic State. It is set in the author’s research terrain of predilection: Yemen’s central highlands in and around the city of Ibb. This predominantly agrarian world is rather distinct, as it never experienced colonial rule directly, neither under the Ottomans nor at the hands of subsequent foreign powers. Another exceptionalism is the nature o...

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• M<scp>ichael</scp> A. G<scp>omez</scp>. <i>African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa</i>.

  The American Historical Review · 2019-04-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The story of the rise and fall of the Ghana, Mali, and Songhay Empires is the most commonly taught part of African history, featured as a chapter in the world history curriculum of most American high schools. The grand narrative of West Africa’s golden age is conveyed in a formulaic fashion that has remained static for decades. This is partly because serious research has been lacking since the 1970s when landmark studies were produced by the likes of Sékéné Mody Cissoko, Nehemia Levtzion, and Madina Ly-Tall, and the subsequent scholarship of John Owen Hunwick and Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias. Lamentably, the study of Africa before the nineteenth century as a whole continues to attract too few historians. Still, a number of archaeologists have excavated key sites, and scholars have collected and mined oral traditions, typically centered on the epic of Emperor Sunjata, Mali’s heroic founder. This is one of the many reasons why the publication of Michael Gomez’s African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa is such an exciting moment in the field of African history. Besides, this is the first study of its kind to tackle the successive experiences of statecraft across a thousand-year period (ca. 500–1600).

  PublisherDOI

• Paper Instruments in Early African Economies and the Debated Role of the Suftaja

  Cahiers d études africaines · 2019-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article provides a longitudinal reflection on the institutional history of African economies from the earliest times until the 1300s. It examines paper instruments or documents that facilitated exchange and the delegation of obligations, property and capital. The essay analyses the evidence from Pharaonic Egypt to medieval Northwest Africa, with a focus on paper instruments used in long-distance financial transfers. Medieval Muslim legal scholars described and oftentimes rigorously debated the nature of written contracts, including those used in finance. Based on a manuscript composed by a legal scholar from Mauritania, I examine Islamic debates concerning the lawfulness of the suftaja, a form of long-distance payment or check. By reviewing the history of early paper economies, this essay seeks to highlight the contributions of African societies to world economic history.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Inventions and Reinventions of Sharia in African History and the Recent Experiences of Nigeria, Somalia and Mali

  Ufahamu A Journal of African Studies · 2018-01-01 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This essay provides a reflection on how the concept of “sharia” has been re-invented in recent African history. It sketches the history of Islamic legal practice among African Muslims, with a particular focus on women's rights and the question of adultery ( zinā ), in an effort to place in context contemporary events in Nigeria, Somalia and Mali. Its overarching conclusion is that the recent actions by extreme Muslims groups in Africa, in the name of so-called sharia, are far removed from the spirit of Islamic law.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Inscribing the Now and the Hereafter: First Writings in Early African History

  2018-07-18 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND COLONIAL BOUNDARIES - Frontières de sable, frontières de papier: Histoire de territoires et de frontières, du jihad de Sokoto à la colonisation française du Niger, XIXème –XXXème siècles. By Camille Lefebvre . Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015. Pp. 543. €45, hardback (ISBN 978-2-85944-883-7).

  The Journal of African History · 2016-11-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND COLONIAL BOUNDARIES - Frontières de sable, frontières de papier: Histoire de territoires et de frontières, du jihad de Sokoto à la colonisation française du Niger, XIXème –XXXème siècles. By Camille Lefebvre . Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015. Pp. 543. €45, hardback (ISBN 978-2-85944-883-7). - Volume 57 Issue 3

  PublisherDOI

• Excavating Arabic sources for the history of slavery in Western Africa

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2016-02-29 · 6 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  An early twentieth-century correspondence between the French colonial administration and the trading com munity of St. Louis, expressing concern for their commercial activities, makes clear that the exchange of slaves for firearms was ongoing."Rapport do détégue du Gouverneur Général en Pays Maures (Xavier Coppolani) a Monsieur Ic Gouvemeur Génhral de I'A.O.F.sur Ia mission d'organisation du Tagant, ' lbn Abf Zayd, 224, 226, 228; Khahl devotes a chapter on the question of manumission, and the rights of a manumitted slave, 219-221.Qur'an (24:33). 46Khalil, 133.There are countless stipulations about this clause, and specifications about how a seller's knowledge of a slave's inadequacies and failure to reveal it are considered in the eyes of law.' Sikainga, "Slavery and Muslim Jurisprudence in Morocco," Slavery and Abolition 19, 2 (1998), 66. 48Octave Pesle, La Vente dans ta Doctrine Matikite (Rabat, 1940), 163.Ibn Abi Zayd, 204-206; Khalit, 130-131 and 135.°°Ibn Abi Zayd, 210; Khahl, 135 (he further specifies that insanity must be hereditary, not passing); Pesle,

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2016-02-29 · 28 citations

  book

  What were the experiences of those in Africa who suffered from the practice of slavery, those who found themselves captured and sold from person to person, those who died on the trails, those who were forced to live in fear? And what of those Africans who profited from the slave trade and slavery? What were their perspectives? How do we access any of these experiences and views? This volume explores diverse sources such as oral testimonies, possession rituals, Arabic language sources, European missionary, administrative and court records and African intellectual writings to discover what they can tell us about slavery and the slave trade in Africa. Also discussed are the methodologies that can be used to uncover the often hidden experiences of Africans embedded in these sources. This book will be invaluable for students and researchers interested in the history of slavery, the slave trade and post-slavery in Africa.

  PublisherDOI

• SAHARAN OCEANS AND BRIDGES, BARRIERS AND DIVIDES IN AFRICA'S HISTORIOGRAPHICAL LANDSCAPE

  The Journal of African History · 2015-01-30 · 53 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Based on a broad assessment of the scholarship on North-Western Africa, this article examines Saharan historiography with a particular view towards understanding how and why historians have long represented the continent as being composed of two ‘Africas’. Starting with the earliest Arabic writings, and, much later, French colonial renderings, it traces the epistemological creation of a racial and geographic divide. Then, the article considers the field of African studies in North African universities and ends with a review of recent multidisciplinary research that embraces a trans-Saharan approach.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Matthew S. Hopper

  University of Minnesota

  49 shared

• Mariana P. Candido

  Emory University

  49 shared

• Colleen E. Kriger

  49 shared

• Henry B. Lovejoy

  University of Colorado Boulder

  49 shared

• Walter Hawthorne

  49 shared

• John Thornton

  Michigan State University

  49 shared

• Paul E. Lovejoy

  49 shared

• Edward A. Alpers

  49 shared

Awards & honors

• Winner of the Martin A. Klein Prize in African History at th…