Dismissed by Arab and European Conquerors, an Ancient Writing

By art Jahnke Lost dismissed by Arab and european conquerors, an ancient writing system holds the To determine the literacy rate of the literature, Hausa people in the history, west-central African country of Niger, and census takers trek even medicinal from village to village counting the people cures of who read and write many African the country’s official language: French. In cultures Language Senegal, they visit the schools of the Wolof people, tallying all who can read French. And in Guinea, the Fula people, whose native tongue is Pular, people use a centuries-old writing that deal with religion and try to teach are questioned about system that applies modified Arabic us how to be a good person. And there their proficiency in — script to a phonetic rendering of their are poems that are more secular, like French. language, be it Hausa, Wolof, Pular, thoughts about a beautiful woman. The findings of Swahili, Amharic, Tigrigna, or Berber. You have historical documents that the census workers The language is called Ajami, and it describe things that happened a long invariably discourage is used in written communication time ago, and you have tales and stories Western-trained in many countries across a swath of and even texts on pharmacopoeia — educators in Africa’s Islam-influenced sub-Saharan Africa. what to do if you are bitten by a snake urban centers. In Virtually unknown to most or how to heal children with a speech 2005, UNESCO put Westerners, Ajami has a rich history: disorder, stomachache, or rheuma- the literacy rate in it was created centuries ago by Islamic tism. The amazing thing is, we don’t Niger at 18.7 percent. teachers to disseminate the religion even know what’s in most of these In Senegal, it was to the African masses, and it became, texts, because they have never been 42.1 percent. And in in the twentieth century, the chosen translated.” Guinea, it was 41.1 language of anticolonial nationalist Translating Ajami texts, and percent. But curiously, resistance. Today, says Senegal native more important, equipping the next in the rural villages of Fallou Ngom, who came to Boston generation of scholars with the skills Niger and Senegal and University last fall as a College of to translate the texts, are two goals Guinea, the people Arts & Sciences associate professor Ngom has set for the African Language are untroubled by the of anthropology and director of the Program at BU, which is the first UNESCO numbers; African Language Program, it’s a key language program in the country they know that almost that can unlock the African perspective to incorporate Ajami in a language all villagers are pretty on centuries of history, as well as curriculum. good readers, albeit literature, religion, and even medicine. James McCann, a CAS professor of a language that “This is a form of writing whose of history and the director of BU’s happens not to be documents are as varied as all knowl- African Studies Center, read Ngom’s French. Instead, the edge,” says Ngom. “There are poems work on Ajami scripts and urged him to 38 BOSTONIA Summer 2009 Employed in the twelfth century to spread the word of God, Ajami was used in the twentieth century to preach resistance to occupying European powers. come to BU from Western Washington the elite writers of Arabic, McCann “You see the problem?” Ngom asks. University, where he was an associate adds. Take the history of Timbuktu. There are, it seems, both good and professor in the department of modern Everything that’s known about the bad reasons for the dearth of Ajami and classical languages. Malian city is written in Arabic, but readers. Practically speaking, Ajami “Ajami is an important key to in 2000, more than 500 pages of is a difficult writing system to learn. understanding the daily transactions Tamashek Ajami documents dating A reader must know, at a minimum, of a culture,” says McCann. “It’s in from the tenth to the sixteenth cen - both the Arabic script and the spoken Ajami that you read things that say, tury were found in a private library in language of a particular African ‘I lend you this money for this horse.’ the area. culture. And to really understand what Those are the transactions that help The discovery of the hidden history is written, says Ngom, one should us understand the inner workings of of Timbuktu and other Muslim cities have a good understanding of the a society.” in Africa is a frustrating subject for culture. But the main reason so few Ajami texts include a wide range of African scholars like Ngom. Today, non-Africans read Ajami, or have even sociological, historical, and cultural nine years later, only a handful of those heard of it, is that the two cultures that information that wasn’t captured by documents have been translated. dominated sub-Saharan Africa — Arabs PHOTographs by Vernon DOUCETTE Summer 2009 BOSTONIA 39 and Europeans — were convinced and says Ngom’s program expansion way that would fit their social context,” that whatever African wisdom was would make “an enormous contribu- he says. “Things like wearing a veil preserved in the hybrid writing system tion to understanding Africa.” were not even part of the discussion.” could not possibly have any value. Ngom’s research, published in the By the eighteenth century, says From the perspective of Islamic International Journal of the Sociology of Ngom, many Muslim villages in sub- conquerors, says Ngom, Ajami was a Language, the Journal of Multilingual Saharan Africa had a learning center, tool to spread the word, but it was a and Multicultural Development, and the language used to disseminate tool that served the subliterate masses. Language Variation and Change, and the teachings of the Koran and other “And when the Europeans arrived,” African Studies Review, among other texts was Ajami. By that time, he he says, “recognizing the existence academic journals, argues that Ajami says, Ajami had become a reliable of an African intellectual history has done more than fix a record of indicator of a community’s cultural was tantamount to purposefully African cultures — it has helped to loyalty. Those Islamic communities undermining the agenda of the shape them. who perceived their heritage as colonial administration. Ajami was put to religious use as coming from the Middle East chose Web extra The African had early as the twelfth century, Ngom to write and read Arabic, while more Watch a slide show of Fallou to be portrayed as says, when Muslims made their way to Afrocentric communities relied on Ngom talking intellectually challenged, sub-Saharan Africa and urged native Ajami. Even today, he says, the use about the with a history that be- peoples to study the Koran. Intended of Ajami signals a village whose first writing system gan with the arrival of to spread Islam to African people who allegiance is to a black African culture. Ajami at Europeans.” couldn’t read the religious texts in “Without Ajami,” says Ngom, www.bu.edu/ bostonia. “People have a general Arabic, Ajami did that, albeit with a few “Africa would be very different; you impression of Africa as convenient twists. Ngom says the many would probably have a lot more ani- a continent with an oral history, but versions of Islam that were planted in mism and more religions similar to an illiterate continent,” says Jeremy sub-Saharan countries were altered those of Native Americans.” Berndt (UNI’98), an expert on Islamic and Africanized to meld with existing Naturally, in anticolonial move- African studies, who holds a Ph.D. in animist religions. Those Africanized ments of the twentieth century, the African history from Northwestern types of Islam simply chose to ignore tool that was created by jihadists to University. “In fact, there is a literary many strictures that were culturally spread the word of God was put to tradition that dates back centuries. incompatible, such as those that re- new purpose: to spread the word of Pretty much wherever there were quire women to hide their faces and resistance and self-reliance. Muslims, there was Ajami.” those that forbid physical contact be- “In Senegal,” says Ngom, “Ajami was Berndt describes Ajami scholarship tween unmarried men and women. used to disseminate among the Murids as “a field where a lot needs to be done” “They interpreted the Koran in a the teachings that the people could 40 BOSTONIA Summer 2009 Saved by ajami Fallou Ngom, director of the African Language Program, hopes to build an Ajami center at BU to teach The writing below is excerpted the complex writing system to from “Reward to the Grateful: anthropologists, historians, and On the Way to the Ocean,” a other researchers. poem by Serigne Moussa Ka about the deporta tion by the French of the Sufi leader Bamba (1895-1902). It is one of the many anticolonial poems and stories that have been preserved More than sixty years after that in Ajami script. poem was written, Ngom finds himself in a position to help the Western world Muusaa, Khaadimul finally come to know the contributions Khadiim,/the one who of the colonized people. In his first has surpassed oth- year here, he has taught four students ers, said/to you who how to translate Ajami texts written asks the reasons for in two languages: Wolof and Pular. the celebration/of The African Language Program now the departure of our teaches both the Latin-based script leader Khadiim (Bam- and Ajami script in Wolof, Fuuta Jalon ba)/from his home of Pular, and Hausa. In the next few Mbakke-Baari./“On years, he says, he dreams of building the instructions of make it by themselves, that they didn’t an Ajami-focused teaching center the Creator,/I left on need the French and they didn’t need that would work with anthropologists, Saturday the 18th/to the Arabs.” historians, literary scholars, and fulfill the divine work In Fuuta Jalon in the highlands of medical experts to unlock the secrets in in the month of Safar.”/ French-occupied Guinea, for example, the Ajami literatures of Africa.

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