Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara

by Judith Scheele

Overview

A “detailed, often gritty, picture of a fragile world” (The Wall Street Journal) that tells the history of the Sahara from prehistory to the present, showing how Saharans have navigated scarcity, conquest, and the relentless challenges of the desert environment

What comes to mind when we think about the Sahara? Rippling sand dunes, sun-blasted expanses, camel drivers and their caravans perhaps. Or famine, climate change, civil war, desperate migrants stuck in a hostile environment. The Sahara stretches across 3.2 million square miles, hosting several million inhabitants and a corresponding variety of languages, cultures, and livelihoods. But beyond ready-made images of exoticism and squalor, we know surprisingly little about its history and the people who call it home.   

Shifting Sands is about that other Sahara, not the empty wasteland of the romantic imagination but the vast and highly differentiated space in which Saharan peoples and, increasingly, new arrivals from other parts of Africa live, work, and move. It takes us from the ancient Roman Empire through the bloody colonial era to the geopolitics of the present, questioning easy clichés and exposing fascinating truths along the way. From the geology of the region to the religions, languages, and cultural and political forces that shape and fracture it, this landmark book tells the compelling story of a place that sits at the heart of our world, and whose future holds implications for us all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541607125
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	06/03/2025
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Judith Scheele is professor of social anthropology at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, EHESS). She has spent almost two decades living in and researching Saharan societies. The author of three previous books, she now lives in Marseille, France.

Editorial Reviews

A captivating and indispensable work. Scheele clears the dust from our eyes to reveal the intricacies of a region few of us know nearly as well as we might believe.”—Maxim Samson, author of Invisible Lines

“A gritty, deeply engaged history of the heroic fusion of peoples whose homeland is the Sahara. This is a fascinating and intimate perspective of the region from the ground up, complete with plastic sandals, smugglers, migrants, and border boom towns, upheld by the Sahara’s enduring love affair with both camel and truck.”—Barnaby Rogerson, author of The Heirs of Muhammad

“From the first page, Judith Scheele brings to life this vast, remote and important part of the world. Her story is about the real world, focused on the heavily inhabited periphery of the Sahara and the myriad routes across it. Long viewed as impossibly alien and exotic, Scheele’s Sahara is embedded in the Mediterranean and in Sub-Saharan Africa and speaks to a vital, vibrant, cosmopolitan and troubled region. Read and learn.”—Joe Studwell, author of How Asia Works

“For the first time, in this excellent book, the Sahara is given a present and a past as seen from the inside, rather than through the distorting projections of outsiders who want to cross or control its supposed emptiness. Judith Scheele is an ethnographer of the region who has long displayed astonishing range, skill, and courage. Here she shows herself to be a masterly historian too. She tracks between the present day and deep time to reveal her subject ‘from the bottom up.’ Read her beautifully written and compelling account, ready for every preconception you might have held about its subject matter to be overturned.”—Peregrine Horden, All Souls College, Oxford

“A stunningly original and deeply empathetic guided tour of the world’s greatest desert from someone who knows it well. Scheele’s Sahara is a lively one, a destination of its own. She understands both the land and the people, offering a unique perspective from the inside out. This is far and away the best book on a distant place that might represent our near future.”—Gregory Mann, Columbia University

“Through her extensive travels across its fabled landscapes, Judith Scheele opens the hidden world of the Sahara from every point of the compass. Combining the life experiences of the women and men she encountered in years of anthropological research with a deep dive into scholarship spanning prehistoric to modern times, Scheele takes us to places we will probably never see for ourselves, and makes us wish that we could. A brilliant, unforgettable book.”—Eugene Rogan, author of The Damascus Events

“Shifting Sands takes us into a fascinating human Sahara where Mega Lake Chad was probably home to our earliest ancestors and a vast, urban civilization contemporaneous with the Roman Empire flourished in Libya’s Fezzan. Scheele’s Sahara is defined by its timeless human connectivity. Time and space converge and diverge to propel readers through the lived experiences of Saharans Scheele has skillfully rescued from—and for—history, during years of fieldwork in Algeria, Mali, and Chad.”—E. Ann McDougall, University of Alberta

From the Publisher

★ 2025-05-16
There’s far more to the Sahara than Hollywood’s endless vistas of sand dunes and camel caravans.

Scheele, a professor of social anthropology in Paris, points out that ancient Greeks and Romans and medieval Arab conquerors settled the temperate strip along the Mediterranean but considered the vast region to the south a wasteland dotted with savage tribes. European imperialists arrived in the 19th century and, under the mistaken impression that the desert had bloomed in Roman times, took a dim view of local pastoralists. Chasing off the herds (and their manure) and digging deep for water, they produced a short bloom of intensive agriculture that the region could not support, a disappointment that persuaded western experts that their lands were deteriorating and gave rise to massive “anti-desertification” programs that have soaked up billions of aid dollars to little effect. Scheele bumps over desert roads in rough company to deliver a vivid portrait of wildly disparate people and nations. The discovery of oil in Algeria and Libya in the 1950s gave their nations first-world wealth while autocrats, civil wars, and terrorism have produced a string of struggling states (Chad, Mali, Niger), among the world’s poorest. The author holds a low opinion of traditional European-oriented history, which ignores ancient African cultures, but does not lean over backward to proclaim their wonders. Slavery remains common throughout the region and, while different from the old American version, is no less deplorable. The exhilarating uprisings of a decade ago that overturned autocracies across the continent have failed. Misgovernment may be the rule, but it has a short reach; tribalism, religion, and commerce dominate day-to-day life and may outlive it.

A superb survey of an often-overlooked land.

Kirkus Reviews