One of the lesser-known secrets of the African past is the breadth of literary record dating back over four hundred years. This is a tradition founded on Arabic writing and the writing of African languages in Arabic script, the subject of this volume of essays by eminent authorities on the manuscript cultures of North and West Africa. This unique collection charting the state of the art in this rapidly expanding field began as a conference, Arabic-script manuscripts in Africa, convened by The Islamic Manuscript Association and Bibliotheca Alexandrina's Manuscripts Center in September 2021.
The book explores the Arabic script in its widest possible usage in Africa: in Arabic texts; as a sacred Islamic script; and as a script for writing African languages. Through various contributions, the book examines the social impact of Arabic-script writing, aiming to parse the materiality of the book in African societies and to understand African manuscripts in their life cycles from creation to archival shelf.
165 x 240 mm
592 pages
Published May 2023 (Hardback)
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-7392607-0-5
Hardback£100.00 (excluding shipping) |
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