This lecture focuses on the contributions of Black Atlantic and African Diaspora Muslims to the global transmission, circulation, and preservation of the centuries-old Islamic intellectual heritage produced at different learning centers across Africa. The lecture is dedicated to the Muslim teachers and scholars who, despite the lack of institutional support, devoted their lives, time, and resources to doing the actual work of archiving, studying, teaching, and translating the centuries-old African Arabic writings that have remedied the legacies of ruptures and resuscitated the ties that bind Muslims on the continent with Muslims in the African Diaspora, particularly in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Dr. Abdulbasit Kassim is a Provostial Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of African and African American Studies at Stanford. An interdisciplinary scholar of Muslim societies in West Africa and the African Diaspora, his research explores Islamic intellectual history, reform movements, and diasporic networks from the early modern period to the present. He is the co-editor of The Boko Haram Reader and is currently completing two book projects tracing the global circulation of African Islamic thought. His work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, ACLS, and the African Studies Association.