Khaled Esseissah (Georgetown) speaks with Moses Ochonu about the life of Bilad Ould Mahmud, a 19th century enslaved Saharan Muslim whose renowned miracles, poetry, and Qur’an recitation enabled him to acquire Sufi sainthood without belonging to a Sufi order. Esseissah’s scholarship unsettles longstanding historical narratives about the interplay between spiritual authority, race, and slavery in Saharan-Mauritanian society. Esseissah’s article ‘Enslaved Muslim Sufi Saints in the Nineteenth-Century Sahara: The Life of Bilal Ould Mahmoud’ appears in the November 2021 issue of the Journal of African History.