Fadhili Mtani is a lecturer and Associate Researcher in the Department of History and Civilization at the Muslim University of Morogoro (Tanzania) and a PhD candidate in History and Civilization at the International Islamic University Malaysia, where he also completed his MA studies. His academic work focuses on African history, Islam in East Africa, Sufism, Islamic intellectual history, and the interaction between African and Islamic civilizations.

His doctoral research, titled “The Role of Sufism in the Spread of Islam from the Coast to the Interior of East Africa, 1850–1950,” examines the contribution of Sufi networks and tariqas to the Islamization of the East African interior. The project investigates the religious, cultural, and sociopolitical influence of Sufi movements, with particular attention to the transmission of Islamic knowledge, spiritual authority, and the relationship between coastal and the interior Muslim communities.

His research combines archival work, oral history, and fieldwork conducted in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, with particular methodological attention to Sufi silsila (chains of transmission) as forms of community memory and historical knowledge. The study approaches silsila not only as spiritual genealogies, but also as repositories of intellectual, social, and religious history that preserve local narratives of Islamization often obscured in colonial archives and conventional historiography. During his stay at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies as an Erasmus+ Research Fellow, he is focusing on data analysis and dissertation writing.

First Supervisor at IIUM: Prof. Spahic Omer

Supervisor at BGSMCS: Prof. Kai Kresse