[1] West African countries with manuscripts from the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods include Togo, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, Niger, Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, Ghana, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, and Benin.
[4] West African manuscripts contain topics of alchemy, arithmetic, astrology, astronomy, biographies, business records and discussions, chemistry, chronicles, commerce, currency, dialectology, diplomacy between European and African rulers in the pre-colonial era, disease and cure, divination and geomancy, ethics and peace, eulogies, genealogies, geography, government legislations and treaties, healing, history, incantations, Islamic sciences, saints, and rituals, jurisprudence, instructions on codes of conduct, language and grammar, law, lists of kings and imams, literature, logic, medicine, numerology, official correspondence, pharmacology, philosophy, poetry, political economy, politics, private letters, prose, slavery, slave trade, and freedom, sociology, speeches, talismanic resources, theology, therapeutic medical manuals,[1] and the science of calendars.
[3] However, although West African manuscripts are plentiful, esteemed in academia and the media, and have been subject to numerous institutional initiatives to be preserved and digitized, there has been a limited amount of philological research done on West African manuscripts, due to a collective academic "hypertrophy of theory," "devaluation of the strictly textual in favor of the oral and the visual," "growing indifference to and incapacity in foreign languages, especially historical languages," and "shallow presentism of scholarship and even antipathy to the past," which has resulted in the retention of a "griot paradigm" within Africanist scholarship.
[3] West African countries with manuscripts from the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods include Togo, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, Niger, Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, Ghana, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, and Benin.
[1] Some of the West African Muslim scholars and authors include: Muhammad b. Malik al-Andalusi al-Jayani al-Dimashqi (d. 1238), Ahmad b. Muhmmad b. Isa al-Burnusi al-Fasi (d. 1493), Abd al-Rahman b. Abu Bakr al-Suyuti (d. 1505), Ali b. al-Qasim al-Tijibi (d. 1507),[5] Abd al-Rahman al-Akhdari (d. 1575),[9] Ahmad bin Furtu, Muhammad ibn al-Sabbagh (fl.
[1] West African manuscripts contain topics of alchemy, arithmetic, astrology, astronomy, biographies, business records and discussions (e.g., labor and agriculture), chemistry, chronicles, commerce, currency (e.g., gold), dialectology, diplomacy between European and African rulers in the pre-colonial era, disease and cure, divination and geomancy, ethics and peace, eulogies, genealogies, geography, government legislations and treaties, healing, history (e.g., local histories), incantations, Islamic sciences, saints, and rituals (e.g., pillars of the Islamic faith, translations and commentaries of the Quran in various scripts including the Wolof Ajami script, Sufism), jurisprudence, instructions on codes of conduct, language and grammar (e.g., Arabic language and grammar, African languages), law (e.g., laws of inheritance), lists of kings and imams, literature, logic, medicine, numerology, official correspondence, pharmacology, philosophy, poetry (e.g., satirical, polemical, and protest poetry), political economy, politics (e.g., politics in the Songhay empire), private letters (e.g., letters that provide insight on the history of Northern Ghana), prose, slavery, slave trade, and freedom, sociology, speeches, talismanic resources, theology, therapeutic medical manuals,[1] and the science of calendars.
[3] Regarding legal discourse on the wrongful enslavement of Muslims in West Africa, Hall (2018) states:[15] The earliest mention of the issue of the wrongful enslavement of Muslims in a text written in West Africa is in Muhammad ‘Abd al-Karim al-Magili's replies to Askia Muhammad, ruler of the Songhay Empire, written in 1498.
But Ahmad Baba's text written in 1615 is the best-known legal discussion of wrongful enslavement in the Muslim intellectual tradition in West Africa.
Famously, Ahmad Baba laid out a series of arguments that sought to defend the legitimacy of the free Muslim status of many among the 'Blacks' who found themselves wrongfully enslaved.
[17] West African manuscripts of northern Nigeria that spans 500 years also contain seven bilingual texts composed in Arabic and Old Kanembu, numerous copies of the Quran, and more than three thousand folios.
[1] West African manuscripts from northern Nigeria contain local formulas for bravery, diagnosis and medicinal treatment of diverse illnesses, divination and geomancy, enhancing the sexual performance of men and women, good heath, popularity, protection from evil spirits, resolving conflicts among couples, wealth, and winning court cases as well as a copy of Muammar Gaddafi's Green Book composed in Ajami and a copy of Reverend Dantine Garba Malumfashi's Book of Genesis, which was composed in Hausa Ajami and was used in his church since 2006.
[1] West African manuscripts of Senegambia contain a secular, bilingual, Wolof-French treaty, negotiated between the Senegambian king of Bar and the French king, Louis XVIII, in 1817 CE, which starts with a common Muslim opening doxology in Arabic and continues in Wolofal, detailing the appropriate payment for a construction of a trading post in the northern region of the Gambia River; the treaty is the "oldest Wolof Ajami document uncovered in Senegambia to date" and shows that "Wolof Ajami once served as a valid diplomatic language in pre-colonial Senegambia, though its practitioners have now been treated as illiterate in official literacy statistics subsequent to the colonial experience.
[1] West African manuscripts, which included a 1942 CE poem authored by Mamadou Cissé as a result of the ill impacts of World War II on Sédhiou, contain imprecation intended to cause the death of Ikileer (Adolf Hitler) and the elimination of his armies.
[1] West African manuscripts also include a medicinal manual, an introductory Arabic grammar text for Ajami users, and a tribute to the mother of Sëriñ Mustafaa Si, who was a significant Tijāniyya figure in Senegal.
[1] Additionally, West African manuscripts contain the letter of a man from Fuuta Jalon that provided updates about his life residing in Ziguinchor, Senegal and about his sister's wedding, which was sent to his relatives in Ivory Coast.
[1] Furthermore, West African manuscripts contain a list from Imam Nimbaly Thiam of Casamance, Senegal, who died in the 2015 Mina stampede in Saudi Arabia, regarding customers who sought Istikhāra, which are Islamic divination services.
[1] West African manuscripts by Siré Abbàs Soh, as communicated by Yoro Dyao, detailed six migrations from Egypt to Senegambia.
"[10] West African also manuscripts contain Dhikr bilād Mallī, which is the "main text is a chronicle of the region that, after a preliminary analysis, looks completely abstracted from the Tārīkh al-sūdān.
"[10] Additionally, West African manuscripts contain a history of the populations of the Timbuktu region, Tārīkh Iwellemedan, and the Risāla fī ẓuhūr al-khalīfa al-thānī ‘ashar, which was composed by Nūḥ b. al-Ṭāhir al-Fulānī (d. 1860) as a "propaganda pamphlet" on behalf of the leader of the Fulani Empire of Masina, Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Būbū al-Fulānī/Aḥmad Lobbo (d. 1845), one version for Saharan people and another version for sultans throughout the Islamic world.
[10] Furthermore, West African manuscripts contain a well-known Fulani composition, Ta‘rīf al-‘ashā’ir wa-l-khillān bi-shu‘ūb wa-qabā’il al-Fullān, which was composed by Alfa Hāshim (d.
"[9] Other examples include a "note on the verso of the last folio next to the colophon, concerning the appropriate way for a man to behave with his wife so as not to become impotent" and marginalia "in the top right corner written horizontally is a prayer to be recited before reading the manuscript; the upper half of the page contains a commented poem – marginalia within a marginalia so to speak – of Ahmad Baba with an explanation of the solar months and their calculations; the 'poem of the ant', still recited in Timbuktu today to ask for rain, is located on the bottom right of the page and written perpendicularly; finally, on the bottom left of the page and also written perpendicularly is a commentary on fathers and sons.
"[11] West African manuscripts contain an anonymously authored composition on cosmogony written on six folios and includes a colophon that states: "Finished here on Sunday by the hand of its scribe, who is al-Mustafa Suware ibn Yirimaghan Suware, in the place of Suwarekunda"; regarding the location, there "are several references to Suwarekunda (or Souare Counda) and one of them is mentioned in the studies written by Lamine Sanneh and Taslimaka Sylla respectively.
Both authors mention Suwarekunda as the name of one of the clerical wards that form the Jakha settlement located in the Bambukhu region of eastern Senegal"; another possible location is "an important scholarly centre in Badibu (also spelt 'Baddibu' or 'Badibbu'), the Gambia", which was "once predominantly populated by Mandinka people, the original settlers, as it is evidenced in the name of the city, were Jakhanke"; additionally, "Lamin Sanneh’s description of the life of al-Hajj Salim Gassama (Karamogo Ba), we find in the list of his students the name of Yirimaghan Suware, who lived in Badibu-Suwarekunda in the eighteenth century.
"[11] West African manuscripts contain "a copy of the poem Dalil al-qa’id li-kashf asar sifat al-wahid by Ibn Sulaym al-Awjili.
[3] However, although West African manuscripts are plentiful, esteemed in academia and the media, and have been subject to numerous institutional initiatives to be preserved and digitized, there has been a limited amount of philological research done on West African manuscripts, due to a collective academic "hypertrophy of theory," "devaluation of the strictly textual in favor of the oral and the visual," "growing indifference to and incapacity in foreign languages, especially historical languages," and "shallow presentism of scholarship and even antipathy to the past," which has resulted in the retention of a "griot paradigm" within Africanist scholarship.