ABSTRACT
It seems regrettable that it so often takes the death of a colleague to generate this kind of collaboration. How much more fun it would have been to have had Nehemia Levtzion engage with us as we put forward these essays and respond in his inevitable challenging way to the resulting collection. Instead, this volume had its origins in an extremely sad set of panels. The first, referred to in the section below on “Ancient Ghana and Mali,” was organized by Levtzion himself for the 2003 African Studies Association (ASA) meeting to re-launch work on a “new version” of his seminal work of the same name. The panel carried on, under David Conrad’s chairmanship, and we are fortunate to have updated revisions of those presented in the following pages (David Conrad, Susan Keech McIntosh, and Roderick McIntosh). 1 The second was a consecutive set of two roundtables and a panel organized for the 2004 ASA in which several of our contributors participated (Ivor Wilks, Bill Miles, Martin Klein, David Robinson, John Voll, Yekutiel Gershoni, David Owusu-Ansah and Abdulai Iddrisu, and Kenneth Harrow). These were well attended by Levtzion’s colleagues, several of whom added their own reminiscences and comments to the proceedings (and Roland Oliver kindly agreed to include them in this collection). Finally, over the past year or so, more essays and reminiscences were offered (Naomi Chazan, Irit Back, Michael Frishkopf, and Dalton Collins) — extending the “engagement” represented here from those who first experienced research in Ghana with Levtzion in the heady days of that country’s early independence, through those for whom he was colleague, friend, mentor, or supervisor, to those who today carry on the next generation of research, influenced by his legacy, never having known the man. All are reflected in the following pages.
