While the historical Sahara has been the focus of a considerable number of studies, contemporary life in the Sahara has not gained comparable attention so far, except for a recent boom in rather one-dimensional ‘war on terror’ studies. Judith Scheele's book Smugglers and Saints of the Sahara: regional connectivity in the twentieth century is a welcome exception in this respect. Scheele's text is based on extended multi-site fieldwork (sixteen months between 2006 and 2009) in northern Algeria and eastern Mali, as well as meticulous research in local and colonial archives. In addition, Scheele had privileged access to family text collections and was closely affiliated with Saharan scholars and truckers, as well as their wives, and small-scale and long-distance entrepreneurs in both licit and illicit trades.

The text consists of six chapters in addition to an introduction and a conclusion. Chapter 1, ‘Founding saints and moneylenders’, sets the historical frame of the book in mostly ‘pre-truck’ times, and introduces the reader to the specific ecology and economy of oasis agriculture and its implications. This includes the precarious economic situation of most Saharan oases, which were required to import both workers and food. These constraints meant that Saharan oases as sites of investment and production, storage and trans-shipment were integrated into larger networks of exchange (of products and of debts) and that life in the oases was deeply informed by both monetary and debt relations as well as their legal ramifications. In these networks of exchange, families of scholars and traders played a crucial role, although their social, political and economic rules fluctuated over time, as is shown in a number of fascinating case studies of such families. ‘Saints on trucks’ (Chapter 2) is set in the period between the ‘coming of the French’ in the 1890s and the ‘coming of the truck’ in the 1940s, and, finally, the times of the African independences in the 1960s. Scheele focuses here on the reasons for the economic and social success of traders and scholars, namely reliable networks, good contacts with the ‘great and mighty’ and profitable smuggling enterprises, as well as trans-border marriages. Building on a number of colourful family portraits, Scheele stresses that family sagas were often characterized by initial failure, great risks, incredible successes and the subsequent fragmentation of trading families: family histories illustrate the diversity and changeability of the trade.

‘Dates, cocaine, and AK47s’ (Chapter 3) extends the story of Saharan exchanges into contemporary times and focuses on the border regions between Algeria and Mali. This chapter is in fact a chapter about life on and off the truck, on and off the road, and the logistics of transport as well as the rules of protection and corruption. Due to the fact that overland trade between Algeria and Mali was declared illegal in 1962, the region is now controlled by Tuareg and Arab smugglers from northern Mali. However, trade (and smuggling) is still organized in regional networks and mediated by family connections. Trucks and four-wheel drive pick-ups have become the most important means of transport, and established staples such as pasta and petrol have been complemented by new trade goods such as narcotics, arms and cigarettes since the 1990s. In this historical context, Scheele observes the emergence of two types of smuggling: ‘licit’ and ‘illicit’, or ‘al-frùd (fraud) al-îalál’ and ‘al-frùd al-îarám’. Because ‘frùd al-îarám’ is seen as corrupting and rotten, smugglers try to ‘marry out’, to invest in honourable ways of living and to improve their social position so that they can eventually drop out of ‘frùd al-îarám’. ‘Frùd al-îarám’ thus provides the funds that eventually lead to a ‘moral’ life: boundaries between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ ventures are fluid and distinctions between legal and illegal trade are largely meaningless.

‘Struggles over encompassment’ (Chapter 4) focuses on genealogies and their importance for both records of social distinction and the establishment of histories of connectivities during a period when old ascriptions (such as ‘noble’) are losing their importance and are increasingly being replaced by modern ascriptions (such as ‘white-skinned’). Such modern ascriptions are enforced by contemporary nation states such as Algeria, which confer Algerian nationality easily on ‘white’ Malians who ask for it. Established Saharan hierarchies as expressed in genealogies are challenged by contemporary hierarchies that are defined by modern nation states. Chapter 5, on ‘Universal law and local containment’, again starts, like the preceding chapter, in the precolonial period and depicts development to the present day. It shows how laws were administered in the past and illustrates how an increasingly powerful state has become central for its administration today. ‘Settlement, mobility, and the daily pitfalls of Saharan cosmopolitanism’ (Chapter 6) sums up the overall argument of the book. On the basis of a colourful comparison of Adrar, Tamanrasset and Gao, as well as the Malian border town of al-Khalil, and their respective ‘ghettoes’ of foreigners, migrants and traders, Scheele shows that these Saharan cities should be seen as ‘nodes of intensity in an overlapping matrix of connectivity’. In this matrix, regional supply, maintenance of social networks, the fragility of settlement, problems of outside dependence, aspirations to moral autonomy and the shifting boundaries of wilderness and civilization change fast and transform social life in these Saharan cities in extremely dynamic ways.

Judith Scheele's book can be regarded as a masterpiece of Saharan ethnography and social anthropology. It is brilliantly written and thrilling to read, an academic page-turner and an impressive piece of research that is going to be a must-read for anybody interested in Saharan studies.