From Texts to Meanings: Close Reading of the Textual Cultures of Islamic Africa

The previous volume of Islamic Africa (vol. 8, 2017), guest-edited by Fallou Ngom and Mustapha H. Kurfi, was devoted to seven essays addressing ʿajami texts in Africa. Like the four articles that follow, they were presented at the 2016 Symposium held in the memory of Professor John O. Hunwick (1936–2015) at Northwestern University, “Sacred Word: Changing Meanings in Textual Cultures of Islamic Africa.”1 The four essays here feature a close analysis of the internal meanings of texts from Islamic Africa.2 The symposium’s emphasis was on research that is now re-shaping our use of Arabic and Arabic-script manuscripts in Africa. Participants were asked to reflect on both Arabic and ʿajami writing (African languages written in the Arabic alphabet), as well as textual analyses. Within those foci, the symposium call-for-papers specified an interest in the meaning and the sanctity of the Word in the lives of African Muslim authors and their communities, and it asked how these may have changed across time. This set of papers highlights some of the most significant contributions that can be obtained from a close-reading