Issue on Swahili ManuscriptsNew Issue of 'manuscript cultures' published

31 January 2022

Photo: CSMC

Volume 17 of the journal 'manuscript cultures' is out now. This edition contains the proceedings of the conference 'One Text, Many Forms – A Comparative View of the Variability of Swahili Manuscripts'. Like all previous editions, it is available as open access.

Ancient texts in Swahili written in Arabic script have attracted considerable interest among scholars since the end of the 19th century. To this day, however, there are no established conventions of codicological research from which any clear generalisations about all genres of Swahili manuscript culture can be made.

The contributions to the new issue of manuscript cultures seek to dig deeper into history before practices of printing and reading fostered by Western school education introduced in colonial times left their imprint on Swahili manuscript culture and on other co-existing textual practices.

The new issue is the result of a workshop with the title ‘One Text, Many Forms – A Comparative View of the Variability of Swahili Manuscripts’ that was held at the Sonderforschungsbereich 950 ‘Manuskriptkulturen in Asien, Afrika und Europa’ and within the scope of CSMC at Universität Hamburg on 21 and 22 April 2017.

In the editorial, Ridder H. Samson and Clarissa Vierke, the editors of this issue, write: 'The papers demonstrate that codicological and manuscriptological methods of analysing Swahili manuscripts can be on a par with the arts of literary criticism, linguistics, history and other social sciences that are needed to answer the question of what role Swahili manuscripts in Arabic script once played – and still play today – in the transfer of knowledge in Swahili society.'

Like all previous editions of manuscript cultures, this volume is available as open access and can be downloaded from our website.