Papers of R.S. O'fahey at Bergen, Norway
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
H-IslamInAfrica Papers of R.S. O'Fahey at Bergen, Norway Discussion published by Neil McHugh on Wednesday, January 31, 2018 Professor Emeritus Rex Sean O'Fahey of the University of Bergen has asked me to post the following note concerning his papers (chiefly on Darfur). Neil McHugh 17.1.18 R.S. O’FAHEY’S PAPERS AT BERGEN A Preliminary Description & Current Status By R.S. O’Fahey Background The papers that I gave to the University of Bergen (UoB) upon my retirement in 2013 are housed in the University of Bergen Library and are in the process of being catalogued and scanned. This is necessarily a long-term process, but the papers, and my library (to be deposited at a later date), are freely accessible to all interested researchers without restriction. Brief Autobiography and Background After studying (1962-66) African and Middle Eastern history at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, I was awarded a doctoral scholarship to write a history of pre-colonial Darfur under the supervision of the late P.M. Holt. In 1967, I took up a lectureship at the University of Khartoum, where I taught for three years (1967-70). After a year at Edinburgh University, I moved to the University of Bergen, where I remained until my retirement. While waiting for a full catalogue, I thought it would be useful to give a brief description of the Papers together with some estimate of their number and the main categories into which they fall together with the current status of the transfer. There still remains a considerable amount of work to be done. I assume that researchers who physically come to Bergen will able to consult the collection while the process of cataloguing is continuing (this has been the case so far). Citation: Neil McHugh. Papers of R.S. O'Fahey at Bergen, Norway. H-IslamInAfrica. 01-31-2018. https://networks.h-net.org/node/835449/discussions/1282322/papers-rs-ofahey-bergen-norway Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-IslamInAfrica Apart from my collection of books and pamphlets (about 2,000 items) and my research, reading and field notes, the bulk of the papers are mimeographs or photographs of originals in private or public collections. These mimeographs, predominantly in Arabic, almost certainly constitute the largest body of indigenous Sudanese material now in a public collection outside the Sudan. They were collected and copied during the course of my professional career (1966-2013). Since much of the material is published or described in articles by myself and others, I have listed most of my writings and other relevant sources in the second part of the present note. If I can end this section on a personal note; researchers of my generation who went into African studies in 1960s were usually forced to become their own archivists in the sense of first needing to find the sources, whether written or oral, before they could begin to write. By choosing to write on Darfur in the Sudan, I inadvertently chose a country where the national archives, set up in the early 1950s by my teacher, P.M. Holt, and my mentor in Khartoum, the late Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim, Holt’s successor as Director of the National Records Office, was a haven for researchers both in terms of sources and not least in encouragement. PART ONE: CATEGORIES OF MATERIAL a. Darfur material The Darfur materials were collected in the course of my research on Darfur’s pre-colonial history both for my Ph.D. (which I never published as such) and beyond. My main fieldwork was carried out in 1969, 1970, 1974 and 1976, and resulted in five books and numerous articles (see Part Two). The most important material I collected are the 350 pre-colonial documents I photographed in the field in 1970, 1974 and 1976. The UoB Library has a detailed catalogue of these as well as positive prints and negatives. In addition, UoB has files containing my notes on the Arkell Papers (see “Publications List”, no. 23) as well as reading notes. I should note that I went through the Arkell Papers privately (Tony Arkell simply let me borrow them from him). While I was in Khartoum, he died and the papers ended up in the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, where they were catalogued by P.M. Holt. In my many citations of the Arkell Papers (the single most important source on Darfur’s history and ethnography — about 2,500 pages of notes) in my writings, I used the Holt numbering. They were subsequently recatalogued by SOAS, using a quite different numbering system. A further category are the original notes I made from the British province archives in al- Fashir in the summer of 1970, when the archives were still intact. Sadly, the province archives were subsequently moved and destroyed by rain. My Darfur and the British (London: Christopher Hurst, 2016) offers an annotated selection from this material, but my notes include unpublished material from Khartoum, al-Fashir and Kutum. Still to come in this category are my fieldnotes, which are still with me. These will be deposited at UoB together with my library. Citation: Neil McHugh. Papers of R.S. O'Fahey at Bergen, Norway. H-IslamInAfrica. 01-31-2018. https://networks.h-net.org/node/835449/discussions/1282322/papers-rs-ofahey-bergen-norway Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-IslamInAfrica (b)Sufism This category of material arises from my research (and that of researchers affiliated to UoB; see below) on Ahmad ibn Idris (d. 1837), his students and their students. The Idrisi tradition gave rise to a number of orders that were and are influential in the history of Muslim Africa and southeast Asia; among them are the Idrisiyya, Rashidiyya, Dandarawiyya, Sanusiyya, Salihiyya, Khatmiyya, Isma’iliyya, Ja’fariyya, Idrisiyya/Sanusiyya (Malaysia), and others. This category includes about 2,500 items (mimeographs, publications, especially pamphlets, etc), of which about 1,000 are photographs of ms. material made by Professor Albrecht Hofheinz in the course of his doctoral research on the Majadhib holy family. Other researchers who contributed to, used and published on the Idrisi tradition include Ali Salih Karrar, Mark Sedgwick, Fred De Jong, Anne K. Bang, Knut S. Vikør, Berndt Radtke and others. The material in UoB Library remains incomplete inasmuch as the printed Sufi material is still in my library. (c)Arabic Literature of Africa (ALA) This category of material arises from research leading to ALA, vol. 1 The Writings of Eastern Sudanic Africa to c. 1900, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994 and ALA, vol. 3A, The Writings of the Muslim Peoples of Northeastern Africa, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2003. ALA was a project begun by the late J.O. Hunwick and myself in Cairo in 1980 to produce a multi-volume bio-bibliographical reference work on the Arabic writings of Muslim Africa, although increasingly local languages were included. Hunwick and I edited altogether four vols. published by E.J. Brill. The material collected in connexion with ALA 3A is now in the possession of Professor Anne K. Bang, who also has the relevant material and a preliminary draft ofALA 3B, The Writings of the Muslim Peoples of Eastern Africa, for which publication she has assumed responsibility. The precise structure of ALA 3B has yet to be decided. This leaves probably about 5 to 600 items that (printed and mimeograph) that were collected by me in connexion with ALA 1. Again the printed material is still in my library. This latter category comprises largely literary works and is very heterogeneous in character. Among the items I will mention are a collection of microfilms (about fifteen reels) which I copied from my friend, the late J.O. Hunwick. There are six microfilms comprising most of the Arabic mss. originally held in the Jos Museum in Kaduna, the originals of which are apparently no longer accessible. There are papers and the copy of an Arabic book concerning the career of Satti Majid Suwar al-Dhahab (d. 1963) in the USA between 1904 and about 1930 (see further below no. 96). These are of considerable interest for the early history of Islam among African Americans. Likewise, there is material on the Sudanese scholar, Ahmad Muhammad al-Surkitti (d.1943), who was an important figure in Indonesian Islamic modernist thinking (see no. 53). (d)Miscellaneous Items Citation: Neil McHugh. Papers of R.S. O'Fahey at Bergen, Norway. H-IslamInAfrica. 01-31-2018. https://networks.h-net.org/node/835449/discussions/1282322/papers-rs-ofahey-bergen-norway Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3 H-IslamInAfrica In the CMI Library, there are some hundred boxes of offprints and Xeroxes (mainly nineteenth century European travel literature) collected over the years by Anders Bjørkelo and myself. These boxes also contain items in Arabic, some of which are actually manuscripts. There is also a collection of internal and public documents from UNAMIS, United Nations Mission to the Sudan, arising from my period in 2005 serving in Khartoum as a consultant on Darfur. These are supplemented by similar documents from a World Bank mission in Darfur in 2006, to which I was an advisor. PART TWO: PUBLICATIONS There is much information and research based on the materials in Bergen to be found inSudanic Africa. A Journal of Historical Sources, published in sixteen volumes under the editorship of Knut S. Vikør between 1990 and 2007.