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Timbuktu Unbound

Islamic Texts, Textual Traditions and Heritage in West Africa

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  • © 2023

Overview

Editors:
  1. Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann

    1. Africa Institute, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

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  • Offers a reconsideration of manuscripts in Muslim West Africa
  • Diverges from the common focus of heritage discourse in order to examine the more nuanced activities of diverse actors
  • Gives voice to the dynamic ways in which textuality operates

Part of the book series: Heritage Studies in the Muslim World (HSMW)

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About this book

Timbuktu Unbound: Islamic Texts, Textual Traditions and Heritage in West Africa is a cutting edge collection offering a reconsideration of manuscripts in Muslim West Africa. The contributors give voice to the dynamic ways in which textuality operates through technological innovations, ongoing habituated practices, and how the workings of power and authority within these communities inform these texts and their roles. To that end this book explores a number of interrelated themes: the social value of texts as objects; personal libraries as forms of investment/legacy; social practices involved in the exchange, movement and gifting of certain kinds of manuscripts; hierarchies and evaluative treatments of manuscripts, and quasi-market forces. The recent destruction and subsequent salvage operations to protect the Timbuktu manuscript libraries has highlighted their role as the quintessential exemplar of manuscript heritage in newly historicized Africa. Yetthese events also underscore the prevalent narrative about Muslim West African cultural heritage - embodied in the form of manuscripts, archives and documents - as under dramatic and existential threat. This volume seeks to diverge from this dominant salvific starting point of heritage discourse - namely, that such objects are things of intrinsic value to be saved - in order to examine the more nuanced activities of diverse actors engaged in the study, preservation, acquisition, movement and, in some cases, destruction and disposal of the wide range of materials that constitutes the textual heritage of these societies.

Keywords

Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Timbuktu Unbound: Islamic Texts, Textual Traditions and Heritage in West Africa

    • Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann
    Pages 1-33

  3. Colonialism and Book Culture: The Resistance of the Muslim Scholarly Communities in Northern Nigeria

    • Sani Yakubu Adam
    Pages 35-64

  4. A Treasure in Disarray: Reflections on the Institute of African Studies Arabic Manuscripts Collections

    • Mohammed Hafiz
    Pages 65-92

  5. Efficacious Texts: Unraveling Nineteenth-Century Islamic Talismans in Asante (Ghana)

    • Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann
    Pages 93-122

  6. Building Family and Community Ties Through Manuscripts

    • Seyni Moumouni
    Pages 123-132

  7. Flecks of Timbuktu on the Skin: Excavating the Unbound Aspects of a Manuscript Collection

    • Ian Straughn
    Pages 133-153

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 155-161
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Editors and Affiliations

  • Africa Institute, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

    Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann

About the editor

Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann is an Associate Professor at the Africa Institute, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Timbuktu Unbound

  • Book Subtitle: Islamic Texts, Textual Traditions and Heritage in West Africa

  • Editors: Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann

  • Series Title: Heritage Studies in the Muslim World

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34824-2

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-34823-5Published: 05 September 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-34824-2Published: 04 September 2023

  • Series ISSN: 2662-7906

  • Series E-ISSN: 2662-7914

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIV, 161

  • Number of Illustrations: 13 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Islam, African History, Archaeology

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