Toyin Falola is Professor of History, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He has received over 30 lifetime career awards and 14 honorary doctorates. He has written extensively on Nigeria and Africa, including his latest book with Bloomsbury, Daily Life in Colonial Africa (2024).

Focusing on the three leading religious traditions in Africa (African Traditional Religion, Islam, and Christianity), this book shows how belief in the supremacy of sacred words compels actions and influences practices in contemporary Africa.

"Sacred words" are taken to mean holy texts as in divination, the Quran and the Bible. Toyin Falola evaluates how religious leaders engage with sacred words, both orals and texts, engendering practices that reveal the expression of religious beliefs, the impact of those beliefs, and the knowledge contained in them. Attention is given to the key ideas in the words chosen by religious leaders, and how they form a continuous knowledge system, impacting the politics of managing society and people.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Notes on Sources
Introduction: Sacred Words and Realms
PART I. Indigenous Systems
1. Diviners and Indigenous Knowledge
2. Shamanism as a Knowledge System
3. Magic and Witchcraft
PART II. Islam
4. Sufism as a Knowledge System
5. Political and Intellectual Thoughts of Usman Dan Fodio
6. Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba and the Muridiyya Sufi Order
PART III. Christianity
7. Missionaries and Knowledge Production
8. Pentecostalism: Philosophies and Prractices
9. African Spiritual Churches
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index