Amir Syed is a cultural and intellectual historian of Muslim communities in Africa, with an emphasis on the Sahel region of West Africa. Syed’s broader research interests focus on the transmission and circulation of knowledge, shifts in epistemology, and the changing social, political, and intellectual roles of Muslim scholars over time, and he is also interested in questions related to the construction of different forms of authority, the function of various writing practices, as well as placing and investigating the connections between West Africa and the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds.

Syed is currently completing a book on the construction of religious authority and political imagination in West Africa through a historical ethnography of the teachings, actions, and political thought of ‘Umar Tall, one of the most important nineteenth century West African Muslim intellectuals. This book on political theology and sovereignty will provide a framework for new studies on the relationship between religion and politics in the precolonial African history.