Blog

New Yoruba Ajami Material in Database

29 February 2012

In October of last year, the Nigerian scholar of Arabic written traditions, Amidu Sanni, spent two weeks in Cape Town and very generously agreed to upload onto our database some of the Yoruba ajami material he has collected over the years.  This material is quite unique and represents a vibrant tradition that is still alive today in southern Nigeria.  Of course, the Hausa ajami tradition of Northern Nigeria has been well known and studied for some time, however, the Yoruba material is an exciting new field, that has only recently begun to be explored.  During his enlightening talk, Prof Sanni read some of the Yoruba ajami poetry and explained its emergence and development in its historical context.

Welcome to our website

25 November 2010

Over the past few years I have been part of an initiative to bring more attention to the written heritage of Timbuktu. The major achievement of this initiative was the new library-archive facility in Timbuktu built by South Africa in collaboration with the government of Mali that was completed in 2009 and recently started its operations.