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Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age pp 83–107Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Digital Archives for African Studies: Making Africa’s Written Heritage Visible

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Abstract

This chapter seeks to make visible what has long been overlooked: the existence of centuries old local forms of literacy written in non-European languages and housed in archives throughout Africa. Rich bodies of documents written in Arabic, Ajami (African languages written with enriched forms of the Arabic script), and other locally invented writing systems, Ngom shows, have existed in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial Africa for centuries, and digital technology has enabled their recuperation and dissemination.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Helma Pasch, “Competing Scripts: The Introduction of the Roman Alphabet in Africa,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 191 (2008): 65–109; David Dalby, “Further Indigenous Scripts of West Africa: Manding, Wolof, and Fula Alphabets and Yoruba Holy-Writing,” African Language Studies 10 (1969): 161–191; and Fallou Ngom, “West African Manuscripts in Arabic and African Languages and Digital Preservation,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History,” edited by Thomas Spear, 1–28 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

  2. 2.

    For more on this, see Ousmane Oumar Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual history of Muslim West Africa (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 1–20.

  3. 3.

    See Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer, Aix-en-Provence, France: Annex to the convention between the Emperor of France and the King of Malagea, May 5, 1854, Sénégal, IV, 28a; Convention entre l’Empereur des Français et le Roi de Malaguia, 5 août 1854, Sénégal, IV, 28a; Lettre de Diaorine Boul Madeguène Samba, Chef des notables et des hommes libres, SG, SN, IV, 98b; Lettre des habitants de Gorée-Dakar, 22 mars 1882, Sénégal, XVI, 1a; Lettre des habitants de Rufisque, 6 avril 1882, Sénégal, XVI, 1a; Lettre des habitants de Saint-Louis, 22 mars 1882, Sénégal, XVI, 1a; and Palabre de traité entre le Roi de France et le Roi de Bar, 13 mai 1817, Sen/ IV/ 1.

  4. 4.

    Ousmane Oumar Kane, Non-Europhone Intellectuals (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2012), 8–9.

  5. 5.

    Mamadou Cissé, “Écrits et Écriture en Afrique de l’Ouest,” Revue Electronique Internationale des Sciences du Language 6 (2007): 77–78.

  6. 6.

    Peter Easton, “Education and Koranic Literacy in West Africa,” IK Notes 11 (August 1999), 1–4, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/581121468329358898/pdf/23424-Replacement-file-IKNT11.pdf

  7. 7.

    Kane, Beyond Timbuktu, 6–7; Graziano Krätli and Ghislaine Lydon, eds, The Trans-Saharan Book Trade: Manuscript Culture, Arabic Literacy and Intellectual History in Muslim Africa (Leiden: The Netherlands: Brill, 2011); David Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Bruce S. Hall, A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); and Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). For the trans-Saharan slave trade, see John Wright, The Trans-Saharan Trade (New York: Routledge, 2007).

  8. 8.

    Robinson, Muslim Societies, 27–41.

  9. 9.

    Kane, Beyond Timbuktu, 6–10; and Shamil Jeppie and Souleymane Bachir Diagne, eds, The Meaning of Timbuktu (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2008).

  10. 10.

    Kane, Beyond Timbuktu, 50; and Amin Maalouf, Leo Africanus, translated by Peter Sluglett (Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 1986).

  11. 11.

    Kane, Beyond Timbuktu; 41–74; Lamin Sanneh, Beyond Jihad: The Pacifist Tradition in West African Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Rudolph T. Ware, The Walking Qurʾan: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014); and Fallou Ngom, Muslims Beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of Ajami and the Muridiyya (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

  12. 12.

    Jean Boyd and Beverly B. Mack, eds, Collected Works of Nana Asma’u, Daughter of Usman ‘dan Fodiyo (1793–1864) (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997); Beverly B. Mack and Jean Boyd, One Woman’s Jihad: Nana Asma’u- Scholar and Scribe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); Ngom, Muslims beyond the Arab World, 201–215; and Soxna Maymuna Jr. Mbàkke, Wolofalu Soxna May (Dakar: Imprimerie Serigne Saliou Mbacké, 2007).

  13. 13.

    Dmitry Bondarev, “Multiglossia in West African Manuscripts: A Case of Borno, Nigeria,” in Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field, edited by J. B. Quenzer, D. Bondarev and J.-U. Sobisch (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 113–155; Louis Brenner and Murray Last, “The Role of Language in West African Islam,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 55, 04 (1985): 432–446; Fallou Ngom, “Ajami Literacies of West Africa,” in Tracing Language Movement in Africa, edited by Ericka A. Albaugh and Kathryn M. de Luna (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 143–164; and Fallou Ngom and Mustapha H. Kurfi, eds., ʿAjamization of Islam in Africa: Special Issue of Islamic Africa 8, 1–2 (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

  14. 14.

    Ngom, Muslims beyond the Arab World, 219.

  15. 15.

    John O. Hunwick, “Catalog of Arabic Script Manuscripts at Northwestern University,” Sudanic Africa 4 (1993): 210–211; For references of other volumes and archives on Arabic sources of Africa, see Ngom, “West African Manuscripts in Arabic and African Languages and Digital Preservation,” 2017.

  16. 16.

    John O. Hunwick, West Africa, Islam, and the Arab World : Studies in Honor of Basil Davidson (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006), 53–62; and Kane, Non-Europhone Intellectuals, and Kane, Beyond Timbuktu.

  17. 17.

    Meikal Mumin and Kees Versteegh, eds., The Arabic Script in Africa: Studies in the Use of a Writing System (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Tal Tamari and Dmitry Bondarev, eds., “Qur’anic Exegesis in African Languages,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 15, 3 (2013); and Ngom, Muslims beyond the Arab World.

  18. 18.

    Lüpke and Bao-Diop, “Beneath the Surface,” 20–21.

  19. 19.

    Ngom, “Ajami Literacies of West Africa,” 144–152.

  20. 20.

    Ware, The Walking Qurʾan, 1–39.

  21. 21.

    Kane, Beyond Timbuktu, 74–95; and Ngom, “Ajami Literacies of West Africa,” 144–152.

  22. 22.

    John O. Hunwick and R. S. O’Fahey, Arabic Literature of Africa, Volume 2: Writings of Central Sudanic Africa (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 7–8.

  23. 23.

    Mustapha H. Kurfi and Fallou Ngom, African Ajami Library: Digital Preservation of Hausa Ajami Manuscripts of Nigeria (Boston: Boston University Library, 2015): http://hdl.handle.net/2144/11722

  24. 24.

    Meikal, Mumin, “The Arabic Script in Africa: Understudied Literacy,” in The Arabic Script in Africa: Studies in the Use of a Writing System, edited by Meikal Mumin and Kees Versteegh (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 41–78.

  25. 25.

    Andrea Brigaglia and Mauro Nobili, “Central Sudanic Arabic Scripts (Part 2): Barnāwī,” Islamic Africa 4, 2 (2013): 201.

  26. 26.

    Friederike Lüpke and Sokhna Bao-Diop, “Beneath the surface-Contemporary Ajami Writing in West Africa Exemplified through Wolofal,’ in African Literacies: Ideologies, Scripts, Education, edited by Kasper Juffermans, Yonas Mesfun Asfaha, and Ashraf Abdelhay (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 3; and Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali: Epigraphy, Chronicles and Songhay-Tuāreg History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

  27. 27.

    David Gutelius, “Newly Discovered 10th/16th c. Ajami Manuscript in Niger Kel Tamagheq History,” Saharan Studies Association Newsletter 8, no. 1–2 (2000): 6.

  28. 28.

    Nikolay Debronravin, “Literacy among Muslims in Nineteenth-Century Trinidad and Brazil,” in Slavery, Islam and Diaspora, edited by Behnaz A. Mirzai, Ishmael Musah Montana, and Paul E. Lovejoy (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2009), 217–236; Ivor Wiks, “Abu Bakr al–Siddiq of Timbuktu,” in Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade, edited by Philip. D. Curtin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 152–169; and Allen, Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles. New York: Routledge, 1997).

  29. 29.

    Muhammed Haron, “The Making, Preservation and Study of South African Ajami Manuscripts and Texts.” Sudanic Africa 12 (2001):1–14; and Kees Versteegh, “A Remarkable Document in Arabic- Afrikaans: The Election Pamphlet of 1884,” in The Arabic Script in Africa: Studies in the Use of a Writing System, edited by Meikal Mumin and Kees Versteegh (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 365–380.

  30. 30.

    Peter T. Daniels, “The Type and Spread of Arabic Script,” in The Arabic Script in Africa: Studies in the Use of a Writing System, edited by Meikal Mumin and Kees Versteegh (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 25–39.

  31. 31.

    Ngom, “Ajami Literacies of West Africa,” 159; and Fallou Ngom, “Murid Ajami Sources of Knowledge: The Myth and the Reality,” in From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme, edited by Maja Kominko (Open Book Publishers, 2015), 119–164.

  32. 32.

    Mamadou Cissé, “Écrits et Écriture en Afrique de l’Ouest,” Revue Electronique Internationale des Sciences du Language 6 (2007): 84.

  33. 33.

    Geoffrey Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

  34. 34.

    Lüpke and Bao-Diop, “Beneath the Surface,” 11–12.

  35. 35.

    Ibid.

  36. 36.

    British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme: https://eap.bl.uk/

  37. 37.

    Boston University’s African Ajami Library: https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/1896

  38. 38.

    Eleni Castro, “Mandinka and Arabic Manuscripts of Casamance, Senegal,” November 14, 2018, https://blogs.bl.uk/endangeredarchives/2018/11/mandinka-ajami-arabic-manuscripts-casamance-senegal.html

  39. 39.

    To visualize the entire manuscript, see Abdou Khadre Cissé’s Collection at the Boston University’s African Ajami Library: https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/28415

  40. 40.

    Ngom, Muslims beyond the Arab World, 59–66.

  41. 41.

    Ngom, Muslims beyond the Arab World, 32–34.

  42. 42.

    See the Romanized transcript of the entire text: http://www.daaraykamil.com/XARNU-BI.pdf. For the Ajami text, see Muusaa KA, Xarnu bi, Mustafaa Gey, editor (Touba: Imprimerie Librairie Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, n.d.).

  43. 43.

    For more on the poet, see Sana Camara, “Ajami Literature in Senegal: The Example of Sëriñ Muusaa Ka, Poet and Biographer,” Research in African Literatures 28, 3 (1997), 163–182.

  44. 44.

    For useful references on literate African slaves in the Americas, see Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York: New York University Press, 1988); Grace Turner, “In His Own Words: Abdul Keli, a Liberated African Apprentice,” Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society 29 (2007): 27–31; Rolf Reichert, Os Documentos Árabes do Archivo Público de Estato da Bahia, no. 9, Série Documentos (Universidade Federal da Bahia: Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais, 1970); Mahir Şaul, “Islam and West African Anthropology,” Anthropology Today 53, 1 (2006): 3–33; William Brown Hodgson, The Gospels, Written in the Negro Patois of English, with Arabic Characters by a Mandingo Slave in Georgia (New York: Ethnological Society of New York, 1857); Michael A. Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” Journal of Southern History 60, 4 (1994): 671–710; and Martin, B.G., “Sapelo Island’s Arabic Document: The ‘Bilali Diary’ in Context,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 78, 3 (1994): 589–601.

  45. 45.

    The statistics are updated every six months. Click on “Show Statistical Information” at the bottom of the webpage for updated statistics: https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/1896

  46. 46.

    Kurfi and Ngom, African Ajami Library: http://hdl.handle.net/2144/11722

  47. 47.

    For more on the research agenda on Africa’s Ajami archives at Boston University, see the nascent field called Ajami Studies in Ngom, Muslims beyond the Arab World, 247–25. For materials to teach Ajami literacy to new generations of students and scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and professional fields working in African communities with Ajami traditions, see Alex M. Zito, Diving into the Ocean of Wolofal: First Workbook in Wolofal/Wolof Ajami (Boston University: African Studies Center, 2010); and Mustapha H. Kurfi, Jorgan Koyan Hausa Ajami a Aiwace: A Practical Guide to Learning Hausa Ajami (Boston University: African Studies Center, 2017). The development of new Ajami teaching resources (including for public health professionals) is underway.

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  1. Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Fallou Ngom

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  1. Department of English, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Susan L. Mizruchi

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Ngom, F. (2020). Digital Archives for African Studies: Making Africa’s Written Heritage Visible. In: Mizruchi, S. (eds) Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33373-7_8

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