Ngom Publishes Journal Article on West African Manuscripts
Fallou Ngom, Director of the African Studies Center at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Boston University, published a recent journal article on West African manuscripts in Arabic and African languages and the efforts to preserve them.
Ngom’s article, entitled “West African Manuscripts in Arabic and African Languages and Digital Preservation,” was published in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History in October 2017.
From the text of the article:
West African manuscripts are numerous and varied in forms and contents. There are thousands of them across West Africa. A significant portion of them are documents written in Arabic and Ajami (African languages written in Arabic script). They deal with both religious and nonreligious subjects. The development of these manuscript traditions dates back to the early days of Islam in West Africa, in the 11th century. In addition to these Arabic and Ajami manuscripts, there have been others written in indigenous scripts. These include those in the Vai script invented in Liberia; Tifinagh, the traditional writing system of the Amazigh (Berber) people; and the N’KO script invented in Guinea for Mande languages. While the writings in indigenous scripts are rare less numerous and widespread, they nonetheless constitute an important component of West Africa’s written heritage. Though the efforts devoted to the preservation of West African manuscripts are limited compared to other world regions, interest in preserving them has increased. Some of the initial preservation efforts of West African manuscripts are the collections of colonial officers. Academics later supplemented these collections. These efforts resulted in important print and digital repositories of West African manuscripts in Africa, Europe, and America. Until recently, most of the cataloguing and digital preservation efforts of West African manuscripts have focused on those written in Arabic. However, there has been an increasing interest in West African manuscripts written in Ajami and indigenous scripts. Important West African manuscripts in Arabic, Ajami, and indigenous scripts have now been digitized and preserved, though the bulk remain uncatalogued and unknown beyond the communities of their owners.
Besides sources that result from the colonial encounter (those in European languages and African languages written in Roman script),1 the overwhelming majority of West African manuscripts uncovered to date consist of documents written in Arabic and Ajami (African languages written with the modified Arabic script). The term “Ajami” comes from the Arabic word ʿajam, which initially denoted improper Arabic, foreign, or Persian. In the 21st century, the term references literary traditions in various languages spanning Africa but also including Persian, Pashto, and Urdu as well as the historical traditions of Islamic Spain (al-Andalus).
You can read the entire journal article here.
Dr. Fallou Ngom’s current research interests include the interactions between African languages and non-African languages, the Africanization of Islam, and Ajami literatures—records of West African languages written in Arabic script. He hopes to help train the first generation of American scholars to have direct access into the wealth of knowledge still buried in West African Ajami literatures, and the historical, cultural, and religious heritage that has found expression in this manner.