Prayer, Protection and Plant Medicine: West African Composite Manuscripts from the Wellcome Library
2023–2025
RFH06
This project analyses a corpus of six West African manuscripts kept in the Wellcome Library, London. Aligning with the general theme of the collection, these manuscripts fit into the topic of ‘healing’ or ‘medicinal’ manuscripts, more specifically into the genre of texts often headlined Fawāʾid (Ar. ‘usefulness, useful [note]’, sg. Fā ʾida). These Fawā ʾid have only in very recent times begun to garner interest and have historically been subsumed with other kinds of manuscripts. Nonetheless, they merit a closer look due to their separate and unique characteristics and agency.
The aim of this project is threefold: Firstly, to provide a linguistic and textual study of a clearly delimited corpus West African Fawāʾid manuscripts. Since the manuscripts come from two different, but clearly identifiable, linguistic and cultural regions of West Africa (Senegambia and Central Western Nigeria), this also permits a comparative view on this genre of manuscripts in the wider region. Secondly, to investigate in detail the material aspects of these manuscripts, focussing especially on the writing supports. Concerning those, an analysis of the watermarks of the papers used for the production of the manuscripts is envisaged, with an additional focus on possible ‘re-uses’ of lined and pre-printed papers, which suggests contacts of the authors to the colonial forces present at the time of the manuscripts’ production. Thirdly, the project undertakes an inquiry into the provenance of these six manuscripts, which, despite forming an artificial conglomerate for the sake of this investigation, came to the collection on their own separate trajectories, from different sources, and at different times.
People
Project lead: Jannis Kostelnik