Ngom Publishes Journal Article in History Compass
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, co-authored a recent journal article on the digital preservation of African sources written in Mandinka ʿAjamī — the enriched form of the Arabic script used to write the Mandinka language for centuries.
Ngom’s article, entitled “Beyond African Orality: Digital Preservation of Mandinka ʿAjamī Archives of Casamance,” was published in History Compass in June 2019. The article was co-written with Eleni Castro, OpenBU and Electronic Theses and Dissertations Librarian at Boston University.
From the abstract of the article:
This article focuses on the digital preservation of African sources written in Mandinka ʿAjamī, i.e., the enriched form of the Arabic script used to write the Mandinka language for centuries. ʿAjamī writing has been utilized to document intellectual traditions, histories, belief systems, and cultures of non‐Arab Muslims around the world. ʿAjamī texts have played critical roles in the spread of Islam in Africa and continue to be used for both religious and nonreligious writings. However, African ʿAjamī texts such as those of the Mandinka people of Casamance in southern Senegal are not well known beyond local communities. ʿAjamī texts in Mandinka and other Mande languages are among the least documented. Only a few Mande ʿAjamī texts are available to scholars. Thanks to the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), Africa’s rich written heritage in ʿAjamī and other scripts previously unavailable to academics is being preserved and made universally accessible.
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.