On Guarded Ground: The Historical Geography of Healing and Harming in Mauretania

“To Invoke the Invisible: Muslim Healers, Amulets, and Magic in the Twentieth-Century History of the Southern Sahara”.

The capacity to heal sickness and prevent evil through the pronunciation of specific Qur’anic verses, to mediate between people and spirits, and to inscribe secret knowledge onto paper persists as a powerful skill claimed by some Sufi leaders, local medicine women, and religious families in Mauritania.  My research examines the popular scope of healing within the broader esoteric knowledge of Sufi Islam in the Southern Sahara and asks how transformations in political power, education, and the economy shaped this knowledge and the status of those utilizing it.  While anthropological work has identified important distinctions between esoteric practices and methods of preventing misfortune, curing disease, and invoking the invisible powers of spirits and God, it has often failed to account for historical change. I argue that these moments of intensification of possession or magic are not new but are part of longer historical trajectories. In the larger marketplace of healing and harming, Mauritanians differentiate between rural and urban as well as linguistic and tribal spaces. While the plants and healers from one’s region are often understood as the most effective in healing, clients are also willing to travel large distances to consult healing experts known for their treatments and skills.  The capital city, Nouakchott, was constructed to serve as the economic and political center of an independent Mauritania but has also come to serve as a center for healing, with most healers maintaining a presence there. This paper considers the ritual geography of “the administration of the invisible” and its administrators – holy men and women, traditional healers, those accused of blood-sucking, and magicians – in the space of Mauritania.