"Ajami Manuscripts & Knowledge Production"

Were there writing systems that were independent of Arabic influence?

Yes, there were. The most common one is, of course, the Ge’ez script of Ethiopia. There were other, less widespread ones, including Tifinagh of the Amazigh people (Berber) which is very old, and those invented in the 19th century, such as the Vai script of Liberia, the Bamum script of Cameroon, and more recent scripts, such as the pan-Mande script called N’ko, which is now widely used in Mali and Guinea. For more on the indigenous writing systems of Africa, see Helma Pasch, “Competing Scripts: The Introduction of the Roman Alphabet in Africa,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 191 (2008): 65-109.

Can you please talk more about who knows and uses Ajami today? What is the role of Ajami in different school systems in different West African countries?

Ajami is mainly used by people who attended local Quranic schools rather than Western schools. For most of them, Ajami is their only form of literacy. You can find them in both urban and rural areas. Unfortunately, Western school systems inherited from the colonial era generally do not include Ajami in their curriculum. In some communities, Ajami is widely used; in others, it is less used. Ajami is commonly used in the Murid and Hausa communities. For more information about the new generation of Ajami writers and its current applications, see the resources of our RIA project. For important Mandinka, Wolof, Hausa, and Fula Ajami texts that have been transcribed and translated into French and English, see our NEH project resources.

As we are living in a world that is in some ways returning to oral forms of communicating (voice notes in Whatsapp, etc.), but also the sharing of documentation through these mediums, how do you see the circulation of Ajami in these spaces? Have you come across digital forms of Ajami writings?

Recited Wolof Ajami poems are commonly on social media these days. For example, during this month of Ramadan, Dame Diané, a Wolof Ajami poet from Touba, regularly shares humorous videos he calls Kooru Baay Seex (The Fasting of Baay Seex), which he uses to market some products. See an example:
Kooru Baay Seex 2026 Daam jaane. Here is another YouTube link to Jotaayu Wolofal, where the new generation of Wolof Ajami poets performs their works: Jatayou Talif Playlist

Good afternoon Prof Ngom. Good afternoon to my friend Dr Ndiaye. Amazing presentation and very important topics for anybody working on African Muslim history and its diaspora. I have several questions. You said you finished digitizing documents. Are these documents accessible to the public? Regarding works written by African Muslims women, have you identified female scholars from the same time period as Nana Asma’u? I am myself a Black Muslim historian (my father is from Mali, Soninke from Kayes) conducting independent research, and I am looking for other Black Muslim females besides Nana Asma’u. I am currently developing a project to make Black Muslim History accessible to a non-academic audience, especially in the Muslim community, where the works of African Muslims are not well-known and recognized enough.

Yes, we just finished preserving over 52,000 pages of documents written in classical Warsh Arabic and Ajami by Fula scholars from Fuuta Jalon (Fouta Djallon in French sources) in the highlands of Guinea. We digitized the documents from the Fula communities who live in Senegal and Guinea. The documents were produced between 1792 and the 21st century. They are not online yet as we are still polishing the metadata and finalizing the archives. The archives should be available online at the African Ajami Library and the British Library by the end of this year. On the question of women writers besides Nana Asma’u, several daughters of Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba (1853-1927), the founder of the Muridiyya, have written in both classical Warsh Arabic and Wolof Ajami. They belong to a younger generation than Nana Asma’u. We have translated one poem co-authored by Bamba’s daughter, Ami Seex, and Sëriñ Muusa Ka (I call “the Wolof Shakespeare”). It is obvious that the voices of male writers of Muslim Africa have been more centered at the expense of those of their female counterparts. It is time to preserve and study their works so their voices can be better heard. A good article on this challenge, see Frede, B. (2025). Historical Amnesia at Work: Reflecting About the “Absence in the Presence” of Female Authors in Saharan Arabic Manuscript Collections. Hawwa, 23(3-4), 433-469. https://doi.org/10.1163/15692086-12341446.

What are the challenges you faced in decrypting these texts? Were you able to decrypt it and what are the themes in details they talk about?

Decoding Ajami texts presents many challenges. The first is linguistic: I had to learn the classical Warsh Arabic system and understand the modifications local scholars made to represent sounds (consonants and vowels) that do not exist in Arabic. Grasping these local writing conventions is essential for deciphering Ajami texts. The second challenge is cultural and historical: you need to understand the local culture, values, moral philosophy, metaphors, fauna and flora, and key historical events and figures—just to name a few. This is because Ajami texts reflect local cultures and worldviews, and understanding them requires knowledge of the contexts in which they were created. Despite my advanced knowledge of the Warsh Arabic script and various Ajami traditions, I have also sought guidance from local scholars and elders to help me interpret the meanings and subtleties within Ajami texts. Once you decipher the texts, you’ll find a mind of new information. Ajami texts deal with both religious and non-religious topics. I have discussed some of these issues in “African Language Archives and the Decolonization of African Studies,” in Special Issue, Regards Croisés: Langues, Cultures, et Enseignement au Sénégal, edited by Anna Marie Diagne and Adjaratou Oumar Sall, Mémoires de l’Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire, No. 95: 177–195. The themes in Ajami texts are varied, including both religious and secular topics. For instance, the new Ajami manuscripts we preserved from the Fuuta Jalon communities of Senegal and Guinea discuss God, praise of Prophet Muhammad, Quranic interpretation, inheritance laws, magical formulas (Arabic: khawātim), and local charms for wealth, prosperity, and protection. Some texts explore subjects such as the history of the Fulani people, their migration to the Fuuta Jalon mountains of Guinea, the establishment of their theocratic state (c. 1725-1896), its founders, and key battles fought. They also cover the castes and prominent families of Fuuta Jalon, French colonialism, and Guinea's first two presidents: Sekou Toure (1922-1984) and Lansane Konte (1934-2008).

How do you think the examination of Ajami and Arabic knowledge writing/knowledge production to study the diaspora outside Africa might reshape the field? I’m interested in Prof. Ngom’s insight on the texts (for example) that are held by the Library of Congress and Prof. Ndiaye’s insights on the diaspora in Brazil.

In my view, the insights from Ajami texts I uncovered today present a completely different picture of Africa as “a land of illiteracy par excellence.” They demonstrate that many African scholars were not only literate but also multilingual and multiliterate, and they were connected to the global knowledge system. Their works reflect their intellectual histories and their political, cultural, social, and religious preoccupations in ways that have often been missed in Europhone sources. Therefore, studying these texts will enhance research and teaching about Africa, revealing African voices that have been silenced for centuries.

Since you are doing your part so well, how can others get this rich history to get to educational institutions, including high schools, in Africa and the diaspora in a broad way?

This is truly my wish, but it ultimately depends on political decisions. African governments need to take these sources seriously and reform their educational systems to include them, although I am unsure if they are prepared for this. Most African government officials are educated in Western schools and are unaware of local scholars and Ajami sources within their communities. I hope the publications and resources we are sharing online can raise awareness about these sources among the new generation of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora, and lead to their inclusion in educational curricula alongside oral and Europhone sources they usually study.

Could you touch base a bit about Ajami literacy as a resource of dialectal variation and prestige among the writers? Whether these exist in one or many Ajami traditions?

Since Ajami writing systems lack standardization and writers tend to write as they speak using local conventions, their texts exhibit dialectal, sociolectal, theolectal, stylistic, and idiolectal variations. This is one reason Ajami texts are challenging for outsiders to interpret. However, a graphological study of their work combined with linguistic analysis—examining how consonants and vowels are represented, the diction used, the morphology and syntax of the texts, the writing styles, and the knowledge drawn from local cultures—could help identify the writers’ specific dialect, their education level, and even their social status, as those with higher education tend to code-switch more between Arabic and the local language and use more Arabic words. In sum, the dialectal and sociolinguistic features present in spoken language are reflected in Ajami texts, and a meticulous, innovative interdisciplinary approach is needed to analyze them effectively.