Mostafa Massad
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Mostafa Massad (also cited as Mostafa Mohamed Massad) is an academic and historian of Islamic history who served as a professor of Islamic history and head of the Department of History at Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University.
Academic career and research
Massad held the position of professor of Islamic history and chaired the Department of History in the College of Social Sciences at Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University. His scholarship addressed topics in medieval Islamic and African history, including Arab-African relations and the spread of Islam in the Nile Valley and the Horn of Africa. He published a study on the Beja and the Arabs in the Middle Ages in the journal of the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University in 1959, and his monograph al-Islam wa-al-Nuba fi al-Usur al-Wusta ("Islam and Nubia in the Middle Ages") appeared in Cairo in 1960.
In his treatise Athar Da'wat al-Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab fi Harakat Uthman ibn Fudi al-Islahiyya fi Gharb Ifriqiya ("The Influence of the Call of Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab on the Reform Movement of Usman dan Fodio in West Africa"), presented for a research symposium at Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Massad investigated the doctrinal commonalities and historical connections between the Arabian reform movement and the 18th-century West African movement led by Usman dan Fodio. He noted that dan Fodio's reformism aligned with the principles of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in calling for the purification of monotheism from polytheistic practices, returning to the Quran and the Sunnah, opposing religious innovations, and engaging in reform, whether these ideas reached West Africa directly through the pilgrimage or via mentors such as Jibril ibn Umar.
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List of Works
This academic historical treatise investigates the ideological parallels and historical connections between the 18th-century Arabian Salafi revival and the West African jihad and reform movement led by Usman dan Fodio.