Arabic in West Africa
- A Historical and Cultural Overview of the Use of Arabic in West Africa
The Use of Ajami
- A Historical and Cultural Overview of Indigenous Languages in West African Literature. Raw text examples and analysis included.


Classical West African Scholars
- A Collection of Pre-Colonial Scholars. Biographies, Full Works, and Textual Analysis included.
Modern West African Authors
- A Collection of Post-Colonial Authors. Biographies included.


West African Oral Traditions
- A Historical and Cultural Overview of the Griot Traditions. Stories, Epics, and Cultural Analysis included.
West African Islamic Introduction
- A Cultural Overview of Maliki and Sufi traditions in West Africa.
West African Islamic Law
- An Analysis of Fatwa (Legal Rulings).

This part of the website is dedicated to teaching the history of written West African Literature, which includes a very diverse range of traditions. Evidence of writing in West Africa dates back to the 5th century, but the 10th-21st century Islamic tradition of West Africa is absolutely one of the most prolific in the entire world. Timbuktu in Northern Mali is the most famous city of knowledge in West Africa, however its influence stretches to all the Muslim corners of West Africa, from Mali to Nigeria. While the script and paper have always come from outside, the intellectualism and culture surrounding it is completely local to Africa.


Beyond history, there will also be numerous texts and biographies of authors in the outlinks, ancient and contemporary (as far as copyright law permits). As you may have noticed, the website is also themed as a manuscript, where all the pieces are traced directly from ones drawn by African scholars and digitised in archives, so this specific chapter is a how-to guide on how to read and navigate this website!




You may have noticed the Arabic on the right. Most West African literature is written in right-to-left scripts, either using the Arabic script (in Ajami or otherwise) or invented scripts based on Arabic writing conventions. Designers working in both English and Arabic have always loved the simplicity of simply halving the page and letting them both take their priority directions, and this website is no different.


For original content like this, you'll see a Standard Arabic translation on the right. However, texts from West Africa may be written in Fusha Arabic, dialectical forms of Arabic, and commonly their native languages using the Arabic script (a practice known as Ajami).


The first thing you'll see is the title page, with a big title and a subtitle with more info. If the font loads correctly, you'll notice the fairly unusual Arabic font used. This bold angular font is a calligraphy style used for centuries in West Africa, and today is still practiced and expanded upon by scholars, this font was created to digitally emulate modern Hausa styles seen in Kano, Nigeria.


The Hausa style has some quirks that may create confusion for readers, for example different ways to write specific letters. Hence most text is rendered in a universal sans-serif font.


On top of this text you will notice a smaller headline decorated by circles in red and gold, this marks the beginning of a chapter. A circular mark on the left also marks the beginning of a chapter, but also subdivisions within a chapter.


On the bottom of this section you will see a grid, this marks the end of the page/section. Small texts or sectioned poetry may have these to ease the organization of the website.



Otherwise this should all be easy to decipher. Enjoy your adventures learning about this wonderful literary tradition.

Every culture, civilisation, and community has a storytelling tradition, it is what makes us human. We take real events and turn it into a moral narrative to teach kids how to be human or a gripping tale of half fiction that captivates our imagination. We might create arbitrary fictional stories that justify power or societal norms, from religion to the concept of a government. These have real importance in all societies, and it is what gives humans the ability to co-operate.

In West Africa this came in the form of griots, oral storytellers that would remember and recite in song vast stories. They would remember entire family geneaologies sometimes spanning centuries, the deeds of all kinds of kings and chiefs, the ordinary but great people that changed lives, the complex lives surrounding the gods of the land.

While many historiographic traditions completely rejected them as unreliable, in Africa they were used as sources of history. It is not from foreign sources but because of griots that we even know about the Ghana, Mali and Songhai Empires, their royal lineages, whom they conquered, and how they fell. For an analysis of how Africans pioneered historiography using oral tradition in the 17th century, visit here.



However, widespread writing was introduced to many parts of Africa through Islam. Many of the prejudiced type will point to this fact and factually talk about its foreign nature, drawing the conclusion of a lack of innovation in the continent. However with the sole exception of China, every corner of the Earth had its modern-day writing system imported from elsewhere and adapted into their local languages.

Unlike other areas in North Africa where conquest, jihads and social hierarchies forced and encouraged people to forget their local cultures and languages and speak and claim the Arabic heritage, in Africa Islam was the religion of the merchant and literate class. Those who wanted to learn to read and write had to convert and understand the Quran and Hadith.

With Islam also came a culture of the importance of memorisation and book-keeping, inspired by the Quran's message as the unfiltered word of God. As copying the Quran was an extremly important task, so was the Hadiths that came with it, the commentaries on them, writing your own. The cities of Timbuktu, Djenne, Gao, and Walata became cities of these book copyists and scholars. Timbuktu's population at one point was 25% scholars, a rate not seen elsewhere.

Madrasas taught law, astronomy, medicine, mathematics and theology, all through an Islamic lens. Libraries grew and hosted thousands of books of illuminated manuscripts and debates that were written down. Importantly, all this debate was also developing a unique style of Islam not seen in other regions of the world at the time, one that was more flexible to the African society.



Ajami is a term that comes from the Arabic word for vulgar, it refers to the practice of writing non-Arabic languages in the Arabic script. It is not used in reference to Urdu and Farsi due to its proximity to Arabian culture, however it is a pride among West Africans. Hausa, Fulfulde, Wolof, Mandinka, Soninke, and many other languages became literary languages used to teach, write stories, and settle legal disputes through fatwa.

Some societies like the ones in Futa Djallon, Futa Toro, and the Sokoto caliphate began using the Fulfulde African language in its own merit, becoming a language that foreign scholars would even learn similar to how English used to learn French. Nowadays other languages such as Hausa have this status among the modern day scholars.

This culture survived into the modern-day, however with a few caveats. Arabic was supplanted by French as the lingua franca of the nations that composed the region, and soon Islamic education was downplayed in favour of French Catholic education. Yet the culture survives, criminally under-researched.



Want to learn more? Click the outlinks below.

To contact me, email at januwobe@gmail.com