Scribes and Scribal Practices in the ‘Timbuktu Archive’
Individual Research Project
Recent scholarship on the manuscripts of Timbuktu and West Africa more generally has emphasised the prevalence of copies in the archive, sometimes resulting in an assessment of the archive as a ‘derivative,’ containing ‘mere’ copies of original works composed elsewhere or multiple copies of the same manuscripts. I contend that copying needs to be understood as a generative practice: a long-preferred mode of knowledge preservation, transmission, and production. However, little is known about those responsible for producing the manuscript copies and the scribal practices and procedures particular to this region. This project focuses on the figure of the scribe or copyist – untangling modes of copying and scribal practices of professional scribes, students, and scholars. This enhances our understanding of regional and localised textual and visual sensibilities as well as processes of manuscript production, thus highlighting some of the ‘originalities’ of West African manuscript culture.
I am working with what I call the ‘Middle Niger’ manuscript collections from Timbuktu (IHERI-ABT and SAVAMA-DCI), Djenné, and Ségou, collectively framed as the ‘Timbuktu archive’ to highlight the complexity of their collection histories and to underscore the changing and evolving narratives of this archive in public discourse and their mutual co-production. In addition to the core manuscript sources, the project is enriched and complemented by contemporary oral testimony and an analysis of the praxis of practicing copyists and scribes from the Middle Niger.
Scribal practices: One of the central challenges of the project is to untangle the different scribal practices of students, scholars, and copyists of manuscripts. Scholarly commentaries, extensive Arabic and Ajami marginalia and interlinear glosses, which demonstrate advanced and intermedial stages of transmission of traditional Islamic learning by scholars and students, have already been studied in some regions and elucidated. How do these differ from scribal practices aimed at the reproduction of manuscripts for sale for example, or those manuscripts reproduced for devotional purposes? Can we identify ‘professional scribes’ and their scribal practices in different periods from the work of students and scholars at different phases of their training?
Visual language: Another central focus of the project is the visual language of manuscripts, especially those that exhibit substantial ornamentation and decorations, which have not received much attention in this region. One aspect of this focus area is an analysis of different characteristics of the visual language itself (types of decorations, patterns, motifs etc), while another focuses on the scribal practices that can be elucidated from an analysis of these types of texts. What inspired the ornamental motifs in these manuscripts? Are there links with the visual language of other material objects from the region? If decorations and ornamentation were created by the same scribes that wrote the text (and produced the leather covers), how were the manuscripts designed and produced?
Material elements: Previous studies have rightly focused on the provenance of the paper for the manuscript production, I will concentrate on other neglected items such as qalams (reed pens), inks, ink pots, and leather covers and satchels. Can we find mention of these elements in the manuscripts? What are the scribal materials in use today, where do they come from, how are they made, and how have they changed over the last 100–150 years? What material innovations can we trace to different periods?