Interview‘One of the big surprises has been just how widespread Ajami writing is’

15 September 2025

Photo: Nicolas Réméné

Ousman Yaro identifying Ajami writings at the Bibliothèque des manuscrits de Djenné (Manuscript library in Jenne).

What role did local languages play in West African Islamic scholarship? Dmitry Bondarev and colleagues explore this in ‘African Voices in the Islamic Manuscripts from Mali’, focusing on rarely studied Ajami manuscripts. At the project’s halfway mark, we discussed their achievements and next steps.

Dmitry Bondarev, what are Ajami manuscripts and why do they matter?

The Arabic term ‘Ajami’ originally meant ‘foreign’ or ‘non-Arabic’. In the context of West Africa, it refers to African languages written in Arabic script. For centuries, across West Africa and the wider Sahel, scholars and students learned to read and write in Arabic and applied Arabic letters to writing in their own languages. These Ajami writings appear not only as standalone manuscripts in African languages but also, and much more commonly, as shorter passages, glosses, systematic annotations, or even brief marginal notes accompanying Arabic texts.

Ajami manuscripts shed light on Africa’s complex written culture and intellectual history, especially by revealing how people navigated between languages and religious, legal, and literary knowledge. For a long time, academic research focused mainly on Arabic writings, often overlooking or underestimating the extensive use of local languages in written form. Ajami studies allow us to uncover a deeply multilingual world of learning that has been invisible in most manuscript catalogues and academic discourse.

It seems odd that this phenomenon, although widespread, has been neglected for so long. What is the reason for that?

In West Africa, as in much of the Islamic world, Arabic was the scholarly lingua franca, much like Latin in medieval Europe. Local African languages were typically seen as aids to learning Arabic and not as primary languages of scholarship. From a Western academic perspective, early collectors and cataloguers of manuscripts were mainly trained in Arabic or, at best, in a few major African languages. Non-Arabic content — especially short passages, glosses, or annotations in local languages — was often unrecognised and omitted in catalogues.

Additionally, a disciplinary divide contributed to this neglect: in African studies, Arabists and historians concentrated on written Arabic sources, while linguists focused chiefly on oral traditions rather than written Ajami texts. The majority of Ajami writing, especially the annotations and glosses that are now known to be widespread, thus remained unrecorded and under-researched.

What kinds of texts do you find in Ajami? Are these entire books in African languages, or just marginal notes?

To make sense of the diversity, we use a typology based on different types of Ajami manuscripts. First, there are entire manuscripts where the primary text is in an African language written in Arabic script — these were relatively rare before the late nineteenth century, although later on they gained much wider popularity. Far more common are Arabic texts with systematic interlinear annotations or translations into local languages, as well as more occasional marginal glosses. Finally, there is a large group of esoteric or healing manuscripts where Ajami appears alongside Arabic in amulets, charms, and similar texts.

Many of the annotated manuscripts, especially Qur’anic manuscripts with space left for glossing, reflect structured pedagogical practices in Islamic education. Others contain only scattered notes, likely tailored to individual needs.

Local languages played a crucial role in traditional Islamic education.

Can you give us an idea of the extent of Ajami writing in West Africa? Which African languages were written in this way?

One of the big surprises has been just how widespread and varied Ajami writing is. In our cataloguing, we have so far identified thousands of manuscripts with Ajami texts or annotations in languages including Songhay, Soninke, Fulfulde, Bamana, Tamasheq, and others in Mali. In Nigeria, we find Ajami particularly in Kanuri, Old Kanembu, Hausa, Nupe, and Yoruba; in Senegal, in Wolof, Fulfulde, Soninke, and Mandinka, among others. These findings make clear that Ajami is a transregional, multilingual phenomenon spanning most of the West African Sahel and adjacent regions.

On average, about ten percent of the manuscripts in major West African collections contain some form of Ajami writing, though in annotated form rather than as primary text. This volume and diversity demonstrate that writing in local languages was not the exception but a routine and widespread intellectual practice.

How did people in the past refer to these passages in their own manuscripts? Is ‘Ajami’ a contemporary academic term or something scribes themselves used?

The term has historically shifted in usage. In West Africa, it specifically refers to local languages written using the Arabic script. Our research has shown that in some communities, scribes themselves would indicate a switch to the local language with notes or markings such as ‘Ajami’ or similar abbreviations, especially in the margins or between lines. However, this self-labelling is not found universally across all manuscript traditions or regions; in many cases, the presence of Ajami was left unmarked. Where it does appear, it reflects an active awareness of multilingualism and the complex identities of both writers and readers.

What does your research reveal about literacy and education in West Africa?

Arabic was the language of religious and scholarly authority, but the presence of Ajami glosses and commentaries in manuscripts shows that local languages played a crucial role in traditional Islamic education, not only in speaking but in writing. Teachers and students interacted with Arabic texts by way of translation and annotation in Ajami. They also composed poetry in Ajami and then translated these ‘vernacular’ texts into Arabic. Far from being passive recipients of Islamic tradition, African scholars appropriated and adapted it, shaping unique scholarly practices where linguistic boundaries were fluid and oral and written cultures intertwined.

You have recently reached a milestone in your research project, completing the first six out of twelve years and entering a new funding phase. What research directions are you now focusing on, after the initial cataloguing work?

With a much clearer understanding of where Ajami manuscripts are held and how they are distributed, we now focus on in-depth research into particular types and genres, especially those that have been little studied before. This includes, for example, the unexpectedly high number of esoteric and healing manuscripts, which often blend Arabic and local languages in complex ways, and to poetic genres as well. Geographically, fieldwork and analysis are extending to Senegal and to Nigeria. Current research tackles the history and linguistics of these texts, their role in education or religious practice, and broader questions of multilingualism, metalinguistic awareness, and the transmission of knowledge.

Finally, what do you see as the long-term significance of the Ajami project? What do you wish to have achieved when it’s done?

The most enduring legacy of this research is to show the conscious and creative strategies African scholars used to shape their written cultures. Ajami manuscripts are not just teaching aids, but sites of critical engagement, religious and linguistic innovation, and the emergence of new literary registers. By strengthening Ajami studies as a recognised field, we aim to make the rich, multilingual manuscript cultures of West Africa visible in global history and scholarship. Importantly, the project also sets new standards in the documentation, digitalisation, and accessibility of these materials, ensuring they are preserved and studied by future generations, both in Africa and internationally.