The significance of Arabic manuscript documentation and preservation in West Africa

Abstract

This talk will in part be tribute to the leadership that Ghana, and Legon in particular, played in the beginnings of research into Arabic script writings in West African history, and in part it will be an autobiographical account by Stewart from his first year at Legon (1961-2) and subsequent M.A. study at the IAS (1963-5) that focused his career on the documentation and preservation of West Africa’s rich manuscript literature. During the past fifty years we have progressed from amazement that an indigenous, pre-colonial written record of any sort existed, to a non-critical reverence for the Word that led to an inflation in the reputed value of manuscripts, and finally, and more recently, serious, scientific study of the texts and their meanings as historical documents. This, and the recent interest in codicology, the materiality of the manuscripts themselves, breathes new life in the significance of manuscript documentation and importance of their preservation