By Eric S. Ross

Sufi urban: city layout and Archetypes in Touba is a geographical learn of the trendy Muslim holy urban of Touba in Senegal, capital of the Mouride Sufi order. Touba used to be based in 1887 by means of a Sufi shaykh in a second of mystic illumination. because the demise of the founder in 1927, the Mouride order has designed and equipped the complete urban. Touba is termed for Tûbâ, the "Tree of Paradise" of Islamic culture. This archetypal tree articulates Islamic conceptions of righteous lifestyles on the earth, divine judgment, and entry to the Hereafter; the town of Touba actualizes this non secular build. vital elements of its configuration, equivalent to the vertical and horizontal alignment of its enormous primary shrine complicated, its radiating avenues and encircling ring roads, and the particular bushes that mark its panorama relate on to the archetypal tree of Sufi theosophy. the connection among the religious archetype and its earthly actualization as a urban is defined by means of recourse to Sufi technique. The booklet employs a semiotic research of city shape, cartography, hermeneutics, box research and research of satellite tv for pc imagery to be able to relate modern city layout matters to overarching metaphysical options. Sufi urban additionally explores the historical past of city networks in Senegal because the emergence of independent Muslim cities within the 17th century. eventually, the format of Senegal's sleek Sufi towns is expounded to the enormous palaver bushes that marked that country's old settlements. Eric S. Ross is a cultural and concrete geographer who holds a level in Islamic reports. on account that 1998 he has been assistant professor of Geography at Al Akhawayn collage in Ifrane, Morocco. except learn on Sufi orders and Muslim cities in Senegal, he has studied cultural tourism and concrete making plans in Morocco.