Teaching about Ajami in Africa

Why Teach about Ajami?

Teachers: you will be interested in teaching about Ajami if you teach about:

  • The spread of Islam
  • Medieval West Africa 
  • Islamic cultures, literacy, and science (e.g. Timbuktu, etc.)
  • Global networks of trade and interconnectedness with Europe and Asia, and between North Africa & Africa South of the Sahara.
  • Literacy in Africa

High School Lessons

What is Ajami? A lesson on Language, Literacy and Islam in Africa for 8th through 12th grade by Elsa Wiehe, Ed.D

Upper Elementary and Middle School Lessons

Read more about Ajami and access more lessons for elementary and middle school in Issue 2 of Bouctou, an Africana Magazine for Teachers and Students by Howard University Center for African Studies.

 

Research & Resources

New Ajami Readers and Multimedia Tools: The Readers in Ajami project has developed three African Ajami Readers – of over 600 pages of instructional materials. The Wolof, Mandinka, and Hausa Ajami Readers offer a comprehensive multimedia learning experience in combination with the interactive project website. These resources provide a comprehensive learning experience, containing digitized manuscripts, photo images, video interviews, and interactive exercises in Wolof, Mandinka, and Hausa Ajami, accompanied by Latin-script transcriptions and English translations. These tools to learn about Ajami as it is embedded in multiple cultures bring greater visibility to African literatures written in Ajami, addressing the historical gap in access to this wealth of knowledge about Africa’s history, politics, and cultural traditions. Other recent activities of our team included the publication of a double special issue in Islamic Africa.

The Boston University National Endowment for the Humanities Ajami Project led by Dr. Fallou Ngom and colleagues. Access texts, translations and further resources in Wolof, Mandika, Hausa, and Fula.

Africanists Prof. Fallou Ngom and Dr. Daivi Rodima-Taylor co-edited a special issue in Islamic Africa (vols. 14.2 and 15.1), titled “Ajami Literacies of Africa: The Wolof, Mandinka, Hausa, and Fula Traditions” (with David Robinson and Rebecca Shereikis). The double special issue situates African Ajami studies within participatory multimedia and digital archiving approaches and centers around the knowledge generated through the African Ajami research project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The articles of the special issue establish important historical dimensions of the role of Ajami literacy in mediating grassroots communities that have not yet been systematically studied. They enable unique comparative perspectives on Ajami use in four major West African languages, contributing to the interpretive and contextual analysis of Ajami literacies and their social role. The special issue articles draw on the materials in our African Ajami collections, analyzing various manuscripts and topics and situating them socially and temporally in their communities of origin. They also explore the role of digital technologies and archival methods in studying and preserving African Ajami texts.

For more info, please see the Pardee School news article about the special issue here  and the blog article on the project’s website here