Ismael Montana

Current Research

My research interests lie at the intersection of slavery, its abolition and the development of the Black African diaspora in Ottoman North Africa and the western Mediterranean rim. My first book, The Abolition of Slavery in Ottoman Tunisia (University Press of Florida, 2013), examines how European capitalism, political pressure and evolving social dynamics across the western Mediterranean influenced debates surrounding the abolition of slavery in Tunisia.

My second book, Blacks of Tunis in al-Timbuktāwī's Hatk al-Sitr: A West African Jihadist's Perspective on Bori, Religious Deviance and Race and Enslavement in Ottoman Tunisia, with Translation and Critical Annotation (Brill, 2024), presents the first complete English translation of Hatk al-Sitr. This work analyzes the interplay of indigenous African religious practices, jihad and issues of race and enslavement within the broader context of the African diaspora in the Islamic world.

Over the years, my research agenda and scholarly contributions have deepened academic engagement with the legacy of slavery in North Africa and the Mediterranean Islamic world. I am currently working on two projects. The first is a digital humanities initiative tentatively titled Mapping the Historical and Demographic Characteristics of the Enslaved West African Population in Nineteenth-Century Tunisia Through the Majba Fiscal Registers. The second is a book monograph entitled Across the Desert and the Sea: Slavery, West Africa and the Making of the African Diaspora in the Middle East and North Africa, 1492–1960s.

I serve as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Global Slavery and am the immediate past board president of the West Africa Research Association (WARA), a non-profit academic organization that promotes research on West Africa and its diaspora and facilitates scholarly exchange between West African researchers and their counterparts in the region, the United States and beyond.

Major Publications

Books

• Blacks of Tunis in al-Timbuktāwī's Hatk al-Sitr: A West African Jihadist's Perspectives on Bori, Religious Deviance and Race and Enslavement in Ottoman Tunisia. With Translation and Critical Annotation (Brill, January 2024)
• The Abolition of Slavery in Ottoman Tunisia (University Press of Florida, 2013)
• Paul Lovejoy and Behnaz Mirzai Asl, eds., Islam, Slavery and Diaspora (New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2009)

Articles and Chapters

• "Ahmad Bey's 1846 Istiftāʾ: Its Dual Legislative Framework and Religio-Political Context," Law and History Review (2023), 1–18
• "Slavery in the Middle East and North Africa," in The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History, ed. Damian Pargas and Juliane Schiel (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), 459-477
• "African Religions in the Maghreb and the Middle East," in Oxford Encyclopedia of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Diaspora in African History, eds. Thomas Spear et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022)
• "The Forgotten Sudanic Palace Guards of Ali Bey I: Their Genesis, Functions and Legacy in Ottoman Tunisia," Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 38, no. 2 (2018): 296-309
• "European capitalism and the effects of agricultural commercialization on slave labor in Tunisia, 1780s–1880s," Labor History 58, no. 2 (2017): 201-214
• "Evolution and Transformations of West Africans' Households (Diyar) in Tunis, 1738-1880s: A Preliminary Assessment," in Scott Youngstedt and Tara Deubel, eds., Saharan Crossroads: Historical, Cultural and Artistic Linkages between North and West Africa (London: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014)
• "Bori practice among enslaved West Africans of Ottoman Tunis: Unbelief (Kufr) or another dimension of the African diaspora?," History of the Family: An International Quarterly 16 (2011): 152–159
• "The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade of Ottoman Tunisia, 1574 to 1782," The Maghreb Review 33, no. 2 (2008): 132-150
• "The Ordeal of Slave Flights in Tunis," in Alice Bellagamba, Sandra Greene, Carolyn Brown and Martin Klein, eds., African Slavery/African Voices (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming Spring 2013)
• "The Stambali of Tunis: Its Origins and Transculturation from a Secret-Possession Cult to Ethno-Religious and National Culture in Husaynid Tunisia," in Ehud R. Toledano, ed., African Communities in Asia and the Mediterranean: Identities Between Integration and Conflict (Halle and New Jersey: Max Plank Institute and Africa World Press, 2011)
• "Bori Colonies in Tunis," in Ismael M. Montana, Paul E. Lovejoy and Behnaz Mirzai Asl, eds., Islam, Slavery and Diaspora (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2009)
• "Ahmad Ibn al-Qadi al-Timbuktawi on the Bori Ceremonies of Sudan-Tunis," in Paul E. Lovejoy, ed., Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam (New Jersey: Marcus Weiner Publishers, 2004), 173-198

Teaching Interests

I teach a wide range of courses, including slavery and emancipation, the African diaspora, Islam and colonialism in Africa, Northwest Africa and the Mediterranean and pre-colonial and modern African history.

Courses Taught

• HIST 170 World History to 1500
• HIST 348 African History to 1600
• HIST 349 African History since 1600
• HIST 398-1 Slavery and the Slave Trade in West Africa
• HIST 440 Islam and Colonialism in Africa
• HIST 441 African Diaspora
• HIST 630-680 Graduate Reading Seminar: Northwest African, the Maghrib and the Mediterranean
• HIST 710-760 Graduate Research Seminar: Slavery and Emancipation

Interdisciplinary Affiliations

• African Studies Association
• Canadian Association of African Studies
• West Africa Research Association
• American Institute for Maghrib Studies