This article contains editions of three new copperplate charters of the kings of Valkhā who, in the late fourth and early fifth centuries ce, ruled a territory situated to the north of the Vākāṭaka kingdom along the Narmadā river. Ramesh and Tewari, the editors of the famous Bagh hoard of plates discovered in 1982, furnished a straightforward chronology of five successive Valkhā rulers on the basis of 32 plates known to them. However, one of the plates edited here flatly contradicts the sequence they proposed. It turns out that the dating of several previously known Valkhā charters is also controversial. It has been suggested by other scholars that there were, in fact, two kings of Valkhā by the name of Rudradāsa as well as two by the name of Bhuluṇḍa. A reinvestigation of old data combined with the newly edited plates confirms the former and shows a high likelihood of the latter.

This is an extended review of Jonathan Owens, Arabic and the Case against Linearity in Historical Linguistics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023) that addresses several important issues in the methodology of historical Arabic linguistics.

African historiography is most persuasive when it refuses to let the state’s archive dictate the story of the nation. Across the last two decades, historians and historical anthropologists have widened the evidentiary field beyond bureaucratic texts—toward oral histories, ritual grammars, sacred ecologies, newspapers, vernacular maps, and the grainy everyday of rumor and reputation. This scholarly review exemplifies that methodological turn while voicing a shared theoretical wager: African political and social life is not best explained by models of institutional consolidation but by moral economies, spatial counter-imaginaries, and religious idioms through which communities fashion accountability and meaning.

Between December 2018 and August 2019, political activities in Sudan resulted in the overthrow of the incumbent regime. Despite efforts by the security apparatus to retain control, continued mobilization of Sudanese working peoples ensured civilian participation in the transitional government. How did the organization of Sudanese working peoples lead to the overthrow of the regime and challenge the state? Drawing on the work of Global African thinkers, and analyzing organizational documents, systematically collected media reports on the uprising (2018–2019), and insights from ethnographic fieldwork in Khartoum (2022), I argue that the nonhierarchical coordination of autonomous, self-organized groups - such as the Neighborhood Resistance Committees and Tea Sellers Association - representing different sections of the working poeples was central to the movement’s success. These findings enrich our understanding of the Sudanese revolutionary process by showing how coordinated self-organization served as an asset for political change.

This contribution includes an original poem, “Benediction” in tribute of Valentin-Yves Mudimbe and the first translation in English of selections from Les Fuseaux, parfois (1974). Mudimbe authored several collections in the 1970s, and this translation is intended to draw more scholarly attention to his poetic output.

This article reconsiders V.Y. Mudimbe’s contribution to “decolonial” impulses that are central to current preoccupations in fields such as postcolonial studies. It argues that key concepts developed by Mudimbe, such as the “colonial library,” have been overlooked in these discussions. Further, the article provides insight into important aspects of Mudimbe’s thought on the colonial library by reminding readers of the genealogy he excavates in describing the contours of the colonial library and its continued influence (likened by Mudimbe to a lingering odor) that is still to be dismantled.

This article studies the origins of Jafr, an apocalyptic, eschatological and occult book attributed to the first Shiʿi imam, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 661). While it remains unclear whether Jafr was ever physically composed, it became associated with lettrism (ʿilm al-ḥurūf) in medieval Sunni and Shiʿi literature. Jafr gradually evolved into a crucial component of Islamic occult traditions and influenced various cosmological theories as well as the letter-magic practices of prominent Sunni and Shiʿi occultists. Despite its historical significance, confusion regarding Jafr’s roots, authorship and content in Shiʿi sources from the third to fifth centuries ah persists in scholarship. This article examines various aspects of Jafr in early Shiʿi tradition and sheds light on its status as a key text of messianism, prognostication and apocalypticism.

Debates over the links between ethnicity and conflict often focus on the national level and take an ahistorical approach. This approach hides cases of ethnic conflict that arise at the subnational level and leaves unanswered questions over how ethnicity became a driver of conflict. This article explores these blind spots, using three cases in the African Great Lakes region. The cases reviewed here are the bipolar situations of Hema v. Lendu in Ituri (DRC), Banyarwanda/Banyamulenge v. ‘Autochthons’ in South and North Kivu (DRC), and Hima v. Iru in Ankole (Uganda). These cases suggest that polarisation is a more useful approach than fragmentation, but simple correlations between ethnic dyads and conflict obfuscate the nature and depths of the cleavages, as well as the mechanisms fuelling them. We elaborate on the pathways of escalation, highlighting how and when elite manipulations can activate deeply held identitarian norms. We conclude by emphasising the many lulls and moments of de-escalation, countering the portrayal of ethnic conflict as somehow inevitable.

After nearly two decades of documenting Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s life and work, this reflection situates my conversations with him within a broader canvas—one that allows us to hear him in dialogue with fellow writers, activists, and global artists.