Mobility, Knowledge Transmission, and Authority in West Africa: Re-Reading Ivor Wilks’ Fieldnotes “Conversations about the Past”

This article provides a select reading of the British Africanist Ivor Wilks’ unpublished field notes, “Conversations about the past, mainly from Ghana, 1956–1996.” Specifically, it focuses on Wilks’ notes on the migration of Muslims in Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso, including his collection of interviews, diary entries, anecdotal observations, and ethnographic data. It offers new perspectives on the entanglements between mobility, knowledge transmission, and authority in the history of Muslim communities in West Africa that are normally taken for granted. While this article is not meant to be exhaustive, it highlights the possibility of using disparate notes and observations to stitch together the beginnings of a compelling story that centers mobility as a crucial aspect of the history of Islam in Africa.