John Owen Hunwick (Table Mountain, March 2004, Courtesy of Tombouctou Manuscripts Project) Islamic Africa 7 (2016) 1-3 Islamic Africa Brill.Com/Iafr

John Owen Hunwick (Table Mountain, March 2004, Courtesy of Tombouctou Manuscripts Project) islamic africa 7 (2016) 1-3 Islamic Africa brill.com/iafr

John Owen Hunwick 1936–2015

Charles C. Stewart University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of History Northwestern University, Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa [email protected]

Our paths first crossed in the spring of 1962 when we both attended a confer- ence at Legon that may have been one of the first meetings of West African researchers dedicated to recovering Arabic manuscripts. It had been put together by Thomas Hodgkin, the new director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana and included all the luminaries of the day: Thomas, Ivor Wilks, Vincent Monteil (from ifan in Dakar) and Charles Smith from Zaria and Kaduna. Another participant from Nigeria was a second year Arabic lecturer from Ibadan, John Owen Hunwick, only three years out from his 1st class honors degree in Arabic from London. I was but a junior-year abroad undergraduate, drinking it all in, mesmerized to be in such august com- pany, but I remember John, even then, as a figure somewhat larger than life. He was, by far, the best-trained, most nimble Arabist in the room, a role he com- manded in most rooms he entered for the next 50 years. It was the next spring that he launched the Bulletin of the Centre for Arabic Documentation at Ibadan, the first of a long string of academic units and journals that he founded – including Sudanic Africa, the predecessor of this one – as well as book series to promote the discovery and study of Arabic-script materials across sub-Saharan Africa. Insofar as one can ever attribute to one career the emergence of an entire field of study, John’s career comes very close to that description. As the son of a Methodist minister growing up in Somerset, John’s preoccu- pation with matters of religion may have formed early. The genesis of his pas- sion for things African and Arabic can probably be traced to his time serving as a 2nd lieutenant in The King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, then with the Somailand Scouts, all before beginning his Arabic degree at soas in 1956. On graduation three years later, his first position was a brief stint teaching English at Ahfad School for Boys in Omdurman, but his career really began when he joined the University of Ibadan in 1960 as an Arabic instructor. By 1964 he was chairing the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies there. Readers of the