The West African manuscripts housed at the Northwestern University Library constitute the largest and richest collection in North America of Arabic and Ajami manuscripts from Africa, with over 5,000 items in four sub-collections. For over five decades, scholars have used these materials in their research and publications, travelling to consult items in person or requesting scans from the library. Yet, the meanings and significance of the manuscripts generally have not been accessible to those without the requisite language skills and knowledge of the contexts in which the manuscripts were produced.  

This workshop brings together participants who have worked with the manuscripts in various capacities—along with those who can bring new insights and expertise—to consider how we might open engagement with the manuscripts to broader audiences. It considers several inter-locking questions:  

1. How can we render these manuscripts more accessible as teaching and education resources for non-specialists?
   
2. What are some promising collaborative research projects that could be developed based upon this collection? 
3. How can the existing partnership between the CSMC, ISITA, and the Herskovits Library of African Studies support these initiatives, allowing the collection to realize its full potential as a research and teaching resource, accessible to a variety of stakeholders.
   

About the partnership

The Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) is based at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Since 2012 CSMC has created a cross-disciplinary and international research environment for the holistic study of handwritten artefacts and the rich diversity of global manuscript cultures beyond traditionally held boundaries of academic discipline, time, and space.

         

The Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA) is a research center based at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Since 2002, ISITA has facilitated scholarship on the Islamic tradition of learning in Africa and promoted awareness of the role of Islam in African societies.

  
The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University is the largest separate Africana collection in existence. It hosts an important collection of Arabic Manuscripts from West Africa dating from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.

CSMC and ISITA possess complementary strengths and resources in the study of African Islamic manuscripts and their cultures. Both are embedded in overlapping, but distinct, global networks of scholars and institutions. The CSMC-ISITA-Herskovits Library partnership has developed gradually since 2015 through a series of visits, meetings, and co-organized events. The present workshop is intended to launch a phase of more structured and sustained collaboration between our centers and universities, beginning with a focus on the West African manuscripts in the Herskovits Library.   

This workshop's hybrid format connects two in-person gatherings--one in Evanston and one in Hamburg--with additional individuals joining from various locations by Zoom. 

Evanston Workshop Details

Location: Forum Room
University Library, 2nd Floor
1970 Campus Drive
Evanston IL 60208
Map it

Hamburg Workshop Details

 

Day One: Monday, May 23, 2022

An "X" indicates that the session is being held either too early or too late for the audience in that time zone to participate.  The session will be recorded for viewing at a different time.  

Evanston Time CDT (UTC-5)	Hamburg Time  CEST (UTC+2)	Topic See the "Joint Sessions" tab for more information.
X	1:00-1:30 pm	Session 1. Dmitry Bondarev (CSMC): "An Update on Ajami Projects at the CSMC, Hamburg."  Recorded for US audience.
X	1:30-2:00 pm	Session 2. Walid Mourad: "Manuscript Ownership and Access in the Context of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library's Digitization Projects." Recorded for US audience.
8:30-9:00 am	3:30-4:00 pm	Session 3 (Joint Session). Welcome, introductions, & goals of the workshop
9:00-10:00 am	4:00-5:00 pm	Session 4 (Joint Session). Teaching with the Collection I: Manuscript Studies
10:00-10:15 am	5:00-5:15 pm	Break
10:15-11:45 am	5:15-6:45 pm	Session 5 (Joint Session). Teaching with the Collection II: Translation & Engaging with Contents (including a presentation introducing the Maktaba project)
12:00-1:00 pm	7:00 pm	Lunch for Evanston group / Day ends for Europe group
1:00-1:30 pm	X	Session 6. Ragy Mikhaeel: "A Pilot Project for Teaching Advanced Arabic Language using Manuscripts." Recorded for Europe audience.
1:30-2:00 pm	X	Evanston group watches recording of Session 1 (Bondarev).
2:00-2:30 pm	X	Evanston group watches recording of Session 2 (Mourad).

Day Two: Tuesday, May 24, 2022

An "X" indicates that the session is being held either too early or too late for the audience in that time zone to participate. The session will be recorded.

Evanston Time CDT (UTC -5)	Hamburg Time CEST (UTC+2)	Topic
X		Hamburg group watches recording of Session 6 (Ragy Mikhaeel).  Questions recorded.
8:30-9:00 am	3:30 pm	Session 7 (Joint Session). Q&A on Bondarev, Mourad, & Mikhaeel's presentations
9:00-10:00 am	4:00-5:00 pm	Session 8 (Joint Session). Outreach & Connecting with Stakeholders
10:00-11:15 am	5:00-6:15 pm	Session 9 (Joint Session). Promising Research Trajectories (Pitch Your Idea)
11:15-12:30 pm	6:16-7:30 pm	Session 10 (Joint Session). Avenues of Collaboration between ISITA & CSMC.  Wrapping Up.
12:30-1:00 pm	7:30-8:00 pm	Break
1:00-2:00 pm	8:00-9:00 pm	Concluding Session: Lecture by Charles Stewart, "Literary Authority in West African Islam" (open to the public).

Session 4
Monday, May 23
Teaching with the Collection I: Manuscript Studies 

The NU manuscript collection has potential as a teaching collection for courses in manuscript studies, codicology, and the so called “book disciplines.” ISITA, the Herskovits Library of African Studies, CSMC, and the Center for African Studies at UIUC already organized one such practical training workshop in August 2017, titled “Working with Arabic-Script Manuscripts."  Read more about the workshop here.

The focus on manuscripts from sub-Saharan Africa (and within that, attention to texts in ʿAjamī),  the inclusion of curators of African manuscript collections, and a holistic approach that went beyond codicology, were features that set this workshop apart from the Islamic manuscript codicology courses offered periodically through The Islamic Manuscript Association (TIMA), the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML), the El Escorial Collection (Spain), and other entities.  

Building on our successful experience with the 2017 workshop, we are ready to make the NU collection the home base for a regular series of hands-on courses based upon materials in the collection, leveraging the expertise and resources of ISITA and CSMC and our networks.  
In this session we will brainstorm about the contents of, and potential audiences for, these courses and how to establish a sustainable infrastructure for them.

Questions to consider include: 

• How can we transform manuscripts in the NU collection—through translation, contextualization, curation, and other methods—into resources suitable for undergraduate or graduate teaching across the humanities disciplines?
• What themes and topics should be included in a general introductory course for working with African Arabic script manuscripts? 
• What ideas do you have for more specialized courses on specific topics? 
• Who are the various audiences and constituencies we wish to serve?
• What are the prospects for integrating manuscript courses within the curriculum at either NU or CSMC/U. Hamburg?  What would be needed to make these courses credit-bearing?  
• Should we offer the courses through an established entity like the Rare Books School (which has already expressed interest) or create an independent structure through which we would offer the courses?  
• What is a sustainable financial and administrative model to ensure that any courses we devise are not one-off efforts? The August 2017 workshop charged participants a modest fee to keep it accessible, especially to graduate students, and subsidized the actual cost from grant and institutional (NU and CSMC) support.  From where would we seek grant support?  

---

Session 5
Monday, May 23
Teaching with the Collection II: Translation & Engaging with Texts

While the manuscripts in the NU collection have been used by scholars in a variety of disciplines for their own research agendas, the meanings and significance of the manuscripts are generally not accessible to those without the requisite language skills and knowledge of the contexts in which the manuscripts were produced.   

This session considers strategies for presenting manuscripts in the NU collection in ways that encourage non-specialists to engage with the contents of the texts.  

Questions to consider include: 

• How can we transform manuscripts in the NU collection—through translation, contextualization, curation, and other methods—into resources suitable for undergraduate or graduate teaching across the humanities disciplines? 
• We invite those of you who have incorporated West African manuscripts (from any collection) into your teaching to share your experience. What manuscripts did you use? For which courses?  What worked? What didn’t? 
  
• Are there specific manuscripts, or sub-sets of manuscripts, from the NU collection that it would be particularly beneficial to have translated and contextualized for teaching purposes? 

This session will also include a brief presentation about Maktaba: A Digital Collection of African Arabic Manuscripts in Translation--a new initiative coordinated jointly by UIUC (Mauro Nobili), ISITA, and NU Library.  Maktaba will be an open access digital collection that makes selected Arabic manuscripts from the NU and UIUC collections available in English translation. UIUC and ISITA recently received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to build a pilot version of the Maktaba site over the next two years. 

 

---

Session 8
Tuesday, May 24
Outreach & Connecting with Stakeholders

This session considers how we enable use and exploration of this collection by diverse audiences worldwide and especially constituencies interested in this material for religious or heritage reasons including West African Muslims (in Africa and the diaspora) and American Muslims.   

---

Session 9
Tuesday, May 24
Promising Research Trajectories (Pitch Your Idea)

If you could design a collaborative research project using the materials in the NU manuscript collection, what would it be? All participants are invited to take 5 minutes to pitch an idea for a collaborative research project with a sustained focus involving the NU manuscript collection (on its own or in conjunction with other collections) that could be supported through the ISITA-CSMC partnership.  Who would be involved?  How long would it take? What would the outputs be?    

---

Session 10
Tuesday, May 24
Avenues of Collaboration between ISITA & CSMC

CSMC and ISITA possess complementary strengths and resources in the study of African Islamic manuscripts and their cultures. Both are embedded in overlapping, but also distinct, global networks of scholars and institutions. The CSMC-ISITA partnership has developed gradually since 2015 through a series of visits, meetings, and co-organized events. The present workshop is intended to launch a phase of more structured and sustained collaboration between our centers and universities.   

In this session we will take stock of the ideas that have been put on the table over the past two days and identify the most promising avenues of collaboration between ISITA and CSMC. 

Organizing Committee

Zekeria Ahmed Salem, Director, ISITA
Dmitry Bondarev, Principal Investigator/Head of Project "Ajami Lab", CSMC
Esmeralda Kale, Curator, Melville J. Herskovits Library of Arican Studies, Northwestern
Darya Ogorodnikova, Research Associate, CSMC
Rebecca Shereikis, Associate Director, ISITA

Core Participants

Michaelle Biddle, CSMC & Emeritus, Wesleyan University
Said Bousbina, Independent Researcher, Marseilles
Andrea Brigaglia, University of Naples, "L'Orientale"
Heinen Ali Diakite, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library
Nikolay Dobronravin, Saint Petersburg State University
Bruce Hall, University of California, Berkeley
Abdulbasit Kassim, Rice University
Ragy Mikhaeel, Northwestern University
Walid Mourad, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library
Paul Naylor, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library
Mauro Nobili, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Charles Riley, Yale University
Amir Syed, University of Virginia
Charles Stewart, Emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Zachary Wright, Northwestern University in Qatar
Stephanie Zehnle, University of Kiel