Leo Africanus

In my day job, I teach university-level courses in African Studies. Occasionally I have to teach introductory courses that aim to cover the continent’s long and diverse history. One problem lecturers often have in teaching courses that include Africa’s pre-colonial past — a period when Africa’s interaction with Asian societies was more intense than it was with Europe and preceding the arrival of white traders, the Atlantic Slave Trade, and colonialism — is the lack of access to primary written sources. The best we often do is the tale of the 12th century Malian king Sundiata, or the 18th century recollections of the freed slave Olaudah Equiano (which has attracted its fair share of detractors but still retains its potency), or the secondary accounts of the life of the North African traveler, Hassan al-Wazzan also known as Leo Africanus, who inspired this blog (see for example Amin Maalouf or Natalie Zemon Davis’ books on the life of Leo Africanus). That brings me to the news that South Africa’s government funded a project to digitize thousands of books and manuscripts recovered in Timbuktu in Mali. The materials — estimated number: 30,000 — will be available for on the internet by scholars and students. For much of the period before whites arrived on the continent, Timbuktu served as a “crossroads in Mali for trade in gold, salt and slaves along the southern edge of the Sahara.” The first batch of the rare manuscripts have been digitized and made available online to scholars and students. At least 300 are expected to be available online by the end of 2008. The documents are mostly in Arabic — they’ll be translated into Western languages — and cover “… the sciences of astronomy, mathematics and botany; literary arts; Islamic religious practices and thought; proverbs; legal opinions; and historical accounts.” Full New York Times story here.

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