Historical Context: Notes on the Arabic Literary Tradition of West Africa

By Andrea Brigaglia, 05/12/2018, ссылка на источник: http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/arbmss/historical.html 

The peoples of the western savannah regions that stretch south of the Sahara first became acquainted with the religion of Islam in the late 8th and early 9th centuries. After the Arab expansion in North Africa, occasional commercial missions, coupled with the more regular movements of pastoral Berber-speaking tribes across the western fringes of the Sahara, helped diffuse Islam south of the Sahara in its earliest phase. The Empire of Ghana, in today’s southwest Mali, was the first political entity in the region to establish commercial relations with the Maghreb and Andalusia, and to host Muslim communities in its capital city. In the 11th century, Ghana was invaded by the Berber-led Almoravid Empire. The Almoravid influence was an important one, in that it reinforced Maliki Sunnism as the established version of Islam, and spread the Kufic-derived style of Arabic script that is still characteristic of West Africa.

The conservation of the latter aesthetic trait, and its development into local sub-varieties of Arabic script showing varying degrees of similarity with the Medieval maghribi style, is clear evidence of the existence of a West African literate culture, and of its historical depth. Some West African hands, especially those of the Central Sudan (Bornu and Kano), developed from the Kufic hand their characteristic thick and bold style1. Other, more cursive styles of writing that are well represented in most Nigerian manuscripts collections have been labeled as jihadi and tabi‘i. Timbuktu hands and other Western Sudanic hands are usually closer to the classical Maghribian/Andalusian styles: more smoothed than Bornuan and other Nigerian hands, they usually also feature a smaller kaf, a shorter qaf, and a ra’ which comes back up in a hooked shape rather than stretching below the following group of letters in a sword shape. Decorated qur’ans are an interesting feature of collections in West Africa, as elsewhere in the Islamic world, and those produced in Bornu and Kano are among the most distinctive. In addition to the calligraphic traits described above, they exhibit original geometrical patterns for rub‘ (a quarter of the Qur’an) divisions, usually filling a whole page, and smaller sajda (prostration), hizb (one-sixtieth) and juz’ (one thirtieth) markers, always with a combination of black, red, yellow and green inks.

The making of a West African tradition of literacy in Arabic, reflected in the development of local styles of writing, was a consequence of the involvement of native actors in the political and cultural venture of Islam in the region. Thanks to the participation of local groups, Islam would mature largely as a phenomenon indigenous to West Africa. The study of Arabic permitted local scholars to draw on the literature produced in the Arab centers of scholarship in North Africa and the Middle East. The Arabic language, however, was also adopted by the local literate class as a shared scholarly language to produce (and not only to consume) literacy. Scholars from various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds blended in a cultural koiné where Arabic played a role comparable to that of Latin in Medieval Europe. The role of Arabic writing and literature in West Africa has been long underestimated, although a major step in reconstructing this tradition occurred with the publication of volumes II (The Writings of Central Sudanic Africa, 1995) and IV (The Writings of Western Sudanic Africa, 2003) of the Arabic Literature of Africa series, both compiled by John Hunwick and published by E.J. Brill.[…]

Крымский федеральный университет им. В. И. Вернадского

Институт иностранной филологии

Кафедра иностранных языков № 2

Список разговорных тем по дисциплине «Иностранный язык» для обучающихся 45.03.01 Филология (арабский язык и литература)

1. Our University

2. Famous Universities of the World

3. Famous Arabic Author

4. Philology vs Linguistics

5. English as an International Means of Communication 

6. My future profession is a Philologist

7. Arabic Language

8. Arabic Literature

Крымский федеральный университет им. В. И. Вернадского

Институт иностранной филологии

Кафедра иностранных языков № 2