7 Ajami Literacies of West Africa

Shaykh [Bamba], you made us erudite until we rival Arabs and compose poems in both Arabic and Ajami.

—Moor Kayre, Wolof Ajami poet, 1869–1951.

Ajami (the tradition of writing African languages with the modified Arabic script) is an old tradition found around the Muslim world. Recent evidence indicates that Ajami practitioners around the world continue the tradition that once engendered the Arabic alphabet. Using a limited corpus of pre-Islamic Arabic-language inscriptions dated from 328 and 568 c.e., Daniels shows how the Nabataean Arabs modified the ancient Aramaic script with diacritics to represent the sounds of their language that did not exist in ancient Aramaic. Ajami practitioners in Africa and around the world have been perpetuating this tradition as they continue to enrich the Arabic script to write their languages in the same way the Nabataean Arabs previously enriched the Aramaic orthography to write their tongue (Daniels 2014, 25–39).

The spread of Ajami around the world naturally follows the global expansion of Islam. Most scholars believe that Ajami was initially used for devotional and didactic religious purposes before it expanded into nonreligious domains. Numerous Ajami materials have existed for centuries in Africa. Mumin provides an incomplete list of over 80 African languages with attested use of Ajami (Mumin 2014, 41–78). People who first embraced Islam produced the oldest Ajami documents. In West Africa, it is believed that Old Tashelhit or Medieval Berber, Songhay, and Kanuri were the first languages to have been written in Ajami, between the tenth and the sixteenth century, followed by Fulfulde, Hausa, Wolof, and Yoruba (Sanni 2001, 31–48; Tamari 2005, 839–840; Hunwick 2006, 4–5; Bondarev 2006, 113–114; Bondarev 2014a, 108; Bondarev 2014b, 115; Mumin 2014, 41–62; Lüpke and Bao-Diop 2014, 3; Ngom 2016, 8–9). In East Africa, the Swahili Ajami tradition is well known (Knappert 1999; Zhukov 2004, 1–15; Mugane 2015, 176–191). Mutiua shows the significance of Ajami literacy in northern Mozambique (Mutiua 2014). In Madagascar, there is an important corpus of less studied Ajami texts called Sorabe, which means ‘great writing’ in Malagasy (Beaujard 1998, 2007). In South Africa, Muslim Malay slaves wrote some of the first documents of Afrikaans in Ajami, locally called “Arabic-Afrikaans,” in the 1830s (Haron 2001, 1–14; Versteegh 2014, 365–380).

More recently, Green uncovered Urdu Ajami texts in Nairobi, Kenya, and Durban, South Africa, which provide religious and historical information on Muslim and non-Muslim settlers from South Asia in the colonial and postcolonial eras (Green 2012, 173–199). Africans enslaved in the Americas also produced some Arabic and Ajami texts (Reichert 1970; Dobronravin 2004; 2009; Turner 2007). Şaul provides a profile of several literate West African Muslim slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Abu Bakr al-Siddiq. Abu Bakr kept the account of his employer in Jamaica in English Ajami, i.e. English spelt in Arabic letters (Şaul 2006, 18–20).

Despite the scope of Ajami in Africa, there is no census of Ajami literates across the continent. However, the small existing census conducted in Labé, Guinea Conakry indicates that over 70% of the population are literate in Fuuta Jalon Fula Ajami (including 20%–25% of women); in Diourbel, Matam, and Podor in Senegal, about 70% are believed to be literate in Ajami; and in Hausa-speaking areas of Niger and Nigeria, over 80% of the population are believed to be Ajami literates (Easton 1999, 3; Cissé 2007, 77–78). Dual literacies in Arabic and Ajami have spread in West Africa through Islam and its Quranic education system, proselytizing, and the circulation of people and texts.

African Ajami literacies are primarily acquired as a by-product of acquiring literacy in Arabic script in Quranic schools in Africa (Lüpke and Bao-Diop 2014, 20–21). For centuries, West African Quranic schools have produced what might be called Quran-derived dual literacies: Literacy in the Warsh-based classical Arabic and Ajami scripts. West African Ajami orthographies are primarily based on the Warsh recitation of the Quran commonly used in North and West Africa. This Warsh-based writing system contrasts with the one based on the Ḥafs recitation of the Quran found in other parts of the Muslim world.¹ The most salient features that distinguish the Warsh from the Ḥafs-based Arabic orthography include the way they represent the letters f and q. While the two letters are respectively written as ڢ (with one dot below) and ڧ (with one dot above) in the Warsh orthography, they are represented in the Ḥafs orthography as ف (with one dot above) and ق (with two dots above). The overwhelming majority of West African Arabic and Ajami texts are written based on the Warsh orthography. The use of the Ḥafs orthography in West African Ajami texts is limited. The first challenge facing those who are only literate in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is based on the Ḥafs orthography, and outsiders who attempt to decipher West African Ajami texts (including those found in the Americas) is to understand both the Warsh-based Arabic orthography and its modifications by West African Ajami users.

Despite some variations, West African Muslim communities largely share the same Islamic education system, curriculum, methods, and objectives. The system consists of two major phases. The first, which is more widely known, is Quranic Education, which entails memorizing and learning reading and writing in Arabic script. The second phase, which is less understood, is for advanced students. It is the phase that Kane refers to as Higher Islamic Studies (Kane 2016, 10–13). The West African Islamic education system typically involves the key phases found in Murid communities of Senegal. The first phase of Islamic education in Murid communities is called Njàngum Daara (Wolof: ‘Quranic education’). It involves five steps. The first two steps focus on teaching students reading skills. In the first step called Dal or Fer Ijji (Wolof: orthography learning), students are taught the individual nonvocalized Warsh-based Arabic orthography found in the Fātiḥa (the Opening chapter of the Quran). Each ethnolinguistic community in Muslim West Africa has developed its own orthographic pedagogy with names of each of the 28 letters of the Arabic orthography. Some names of the letters are carefully constructed to serve as mnemonic devices that facilitate students’ learning and retention. For example, the Arabic letter shīn (ش) is called siin gu tooy in Wolof (‘wet siin’) because the three dots above the letter resemble drops of water.²

After the first step, students move to the second step, called Boole (Wolof: ‘putting together, assembling’). In this phase they learn the diacritics for vocalization and how to read different combinations of vocalized Arabic letters. After this step, they move to the third step, called Mokkal (Wolof: ‘mastery through memorizing’). In this step they learn short chapters of the Quran and move gradually to the longer ones until they can recite from memory (Wolof: tëri) the entire Quran. The primary goal of the first phase of Islamic education (Quranic education) is to ingest the word of God (the Quran) in the heart and the body of students through memorization so that each of them becomes what Ware calls a Walking Quran, i.e. a moral and spiritual exemplar taught by the Quran and epitomized by Prophet Muḥammad (Ware 2014).

For this reason, though memorization does not represent the entire Islamic education system, it is its pivotal component. After the memorization phase, Quranic students move to the fourth step, called Beqi (Wolof: ‘supervised writing’). In this phase they are assigned Quranic texts to copy on their wooden tablets with the right punctuations and vocalizations on the Arabic letters. As students read, memorize, and copy their Quranic lessons on their wooden tablets, they increasingly master the Warsh-based Arabic orthography of the Quranic texts. Thus, before West African Quranic students graduate, they have mastered the Warsh-based Arabic orthography of the Quran. While they do not speak Arabic at this stage, they can comfortably read and write in the Warsh Arabic orthography. At this level, the teacher regularly reviews their writings and gives them feedback. When they have demonstrated their ability to write flawlessly each assigned Quranic text, their wooden tablets are washed and another Quranic lesson is written on them. Students continue this process of supervised writing until the teacher is confident that they are capable of producing a handwritten copy of the Quran from memory with the appropriate diacritics, punctuations, internal divisions, and so on. People who reach this level in the traditional Quranic education system are common among the Kanuri, Fuuta Jalon Fula, Hausa, Fulfulde, Mandinka, Jakhanke, and Wolof, to name only these predominantly Muslim ethnolinguistic groups.

After the Beqi (Wolof: ‘supervised writing’) comes the final fifth step of Quranic education called Bind kaamil (Wolof: ‘writing a perfect copy of the Quran’). Only the crème de la crème who have already memorized the entire Quran (Arabic: ḥāfiz) advance to this level. At this stage, students are given papers and asked to write a full copy of the Quran from memory free of errors. They have to pay particular attention to details such as the correct diacritics on each letter, vocalizations, punctuations, and internal divisions of the Quran. Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba (1853–1927), the founder of the Muridiyya Sufi order of Senegal, promoted decorative arts, calligraphy, and colorful illuminations of the Quran, and he required his disciples to include them in their handwritten copies of the Quran.³ To make sure that the students’ handwritten copies of the Quran are acceptable, the teacher evaluates them carefully (as in Figure 7.1). This evaluation process is referred to as Toppaat (‘double-checking, evaluation’) in the Wolof tradition. After the teacher’s evaluation, a committee of Quranic experts evaluates the quality of the students’ handwritten copies of the Quran.⁴

Numerous copies of the Quran with colorful decorations and geometric figures written by Quranic school graduates can be found in many West African Muslim communities (Figures 7.2 and 7.3). Among the Murids, male and female students continue to write copies of the Quran. The tradition of educating women is not new in West Africa. Women have become Quranic teachers and Sufi guides in many clerical families in West Africa (Babou 2007, 150; Kane 2016, 71–73; Hill 2010, 389; Mack and Boyd 2000; Ware 2014, 175). Handwritten copies of the Quran are jealously preserved in Daaray Kaamil, also known as Bibliothèque Cheikhoul Khadim (the central library of the Murids in Touba, Senegal), and in Murid families in the region of Diourbel. The students in the women’s school called Daara Mame Diarra Bousso in Porokhane, Senegal, which is named after the mother of Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba, continue to write copies of the Quran as their male counterparts do (as in Figure 7.4).⁵ When the students have demonstrated an unquestionable mastery of the entire Quran (through memorization, flawless recitation, and their own handwritten copies of the Holy Book with all the diacritics and minutiae), they bring great honor to their families. Festivities are organized to celebrate their outstanding achievements. Candidates who pass their test with distinction acquire important symbolic and tangible rewards.

The stage of producing a handwritten copy of the Quran marks the end of the five-step Quranic education system and the beginning of what Kane (2016, 10–13) refers to as Higher Islamic Studies. This advanced phase of the West African Islamic education system is called in Wolof communities Njàngum Xam-xam (Wolof: ‘Knowledge Studies,’ i.e. Studies of Islamic Sciences). At this stage students continue their advanced studies in different domains of Islamic sciences, including exegesis of liturgical texts, Ḥadith (traditions of Prophet Muḥammad), Mālikī jurisprudence (which dominates in West Africa), Sufism, Arabic language and grammar, poetry, Islamic medicine, astrology, and numerology, among other subjects.

Although Ajami literacy is not formally taught in Quranic schools, students acquire the local form of Ajami literacy through socialization with minimal tutoring. This is because they have already learned in Quranic school the Warsh-based Arabic orthography of the Quran, which is the basis of their local Ajami orthography.⁶ Through Ajami materials that routinely circulate in their families and communities (devotional and didactic texts from different writers, personal correspondence, family records, and so on), traditional Quranic school graduates in West Africa acquire Ajami literacy easily. This is largely why grassroots Ajami literacy is widespread in many West African Muslim communities. Because of the pervasiveness of Quranic education and socialization in communities where grassroots Ajami literacy is prevalent, millions of West African Muslims have acquired dual literacy in Warsh-based Arabic and Ajami scripts. Many people who reach advanced levels of Islamic education (i.e. have pursued Higher Islamic Studies) use their dual literacy skills to produce learned materials in both Arabic and Ajami. These materials include religious and didactic texts in prose and poetry, genealogies, local histories, biographies, medical manuals, and translations and commentaries of key Islamic documents in Ajami for wider dissemination. Some become professional scribes, calligraphers, manuscript decorators, and so forth.

Throughout the initial phase of Quranic education, students are gradually introduced to the pillars of the Islamic faith. They are taught how to perform correctly the five mandatory daily Islamic prayers, the rules of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, how to take the purifying shower after sexual intercourse, hagiographies of prophets and saints, Islamic metaphysics, eschatology, and so on. Many West African Muslims decide not to pursue Higher Islamic Studies and therefore drop out from Quranic school (before or after completing its five steps). However, before they drop out, they have generally learned the Warsh-based Arabic orthography and the basic knowledge they need to perform their religious rituals. Ajami is usually the default writing system of these people. They use it effectively in their personal letters, financial transactions, and various kinds of ephemeral texts. Because of the limited resources of local governments and sometimes family resistance to Western education, Quranic schools have been the most important educational institutions in West African Muslim communities for centuries.

The introduction of private Islamic and Arabic schools in West Africa in the 1980s did not significantly affect the enduring impact of traditional Quranic education. Many of the new schools benefited from petrodollars and sought to promote the Arabic language, Arabic-speaking intellectuals, and Islamic values (Kane 2016, 118–122). Most of them are private. These schools emphasize religious studies, Modern Standard Arabic, and in some cases vocational training. Some, like the Al Azhar school system in Senegal, founded by Sëriñ Murtalaa Mbakke (1927–2004), include the teaching of foreign languages (French and English) and vocational training in their program. However, when compared to traditional Quranic schools, the impact of these modern Islamic schools is minimal. They educate a very small portion of Muslims in West Africa, partly because they are often private and require fees that many average Muslim families cannot afford.

In 2015, the Senegalese government, realizing the significance of Quranic schools in the formation of local Muslim identities, attempted to modernize them in order to improve the painful lives of begging Quranic students locally called Taalibe. The government proposed a three-phase education system for its proposed modern Quranic schools. The first phase consisted of a three-year Quranic education. Phase two consisted of an additional two-year Quranic education and the first year of Western-style (French) elementary education. Phase three consisted of three years of Western-style elementary education.⁷ But the government had to suspend its project of modernization of Quranic schools across the country because of the strong resistance the project generated from powerful religious leaders and the national organization of Quranic school teachers, who saw in the government’s plan a Western plot against Islam and their centuries-old Islamic education system. This development highlights the significance of Quranic schools among West African Muslims. The existing trends suggest that West African Muslims’ attachment to Quranic schools will endure. Thus, dual literacies in Arabic and Ajami can also be expected to continue to expand in West Africa.

Ajami has expanded in many West African Muslim communities also because of the efforts of local scholars who have used it as a mass proselytizing tool. They use Ajami to translate religious edicts into African languages. They have composed extensive devotional and didactic poems and prose texts to disseminate their religious teachings among their peoples. Their works continue to be read, recited, and chanted in their communities. Muslim scholars who belong to important ethnolinguistic groups such as Kanuri, Fulɓe (especially Fuuta Jalon speakers in Guinea and Fulfulde speakers in northern Nigeria), Hausa, Mandinka, and Wolof have used their languages (in both spoken and written Ajami forms) as pivotal means of spreading Islam among the masses.

The most famous examples of such scholars include Usman ɗan Fodiyo (1754–1817) and his family, who are credited for having elevated their Fulfulde mother tongue to the status of Islamic language by making it the language of the Muslim elite and second only to Arabic in religious discourse (Brenner 1985, 432–446). Usman ɗan Fodiyo and his family (including his daughter Nana Asma’u, 1793–1864) also fueled grassroots Hausa Ajami literacy as they used Hausa Ajami poetry to reach out to the Hausa masses for their Sokoto Jihad in the nineteenth century (Boyd and Mack 1997; Mack and Boyd 2000). In Guinea, the renowned Fuuta Jalon scholar Cerno Samba Mombeyaa (1755–1852) expanded Ajami literacy by using it as a mass-proselytizing tool to reach out to Fulɓe people of castes, herders, farmers, women, and youth.

In Senegambia, Mandinka and Wolof have been used as Islamic languages to spread Islam among the masses of first-language and second-language speakers. Mandinka scholars spread Islam in the southern Casamance region of Senegal (including among the Joola Fooñi people who live in the northern part of Casamance), the Gambia, and Guinea Bissau. The converted Joola Fooñi people were culturally and linguistically influenced by the Mandinka Islamic culture and language. Some of them have acquired Islamic education and literacy from their Mandinka teachers.⁸ Similarly, the use of Wolof as a mass proselytizing tool in Senegambia has facilitated the spread of Islam, the Wolof language, and its Ajami writing, called Wolofal among Wolof masses and second-language speakers. Murid Ajami poems have attracted to the Muridiyya many Bawol-Bawol Seereer people who speak Wolof as a second language (Ngom 2015, 353–354).⁹

However, the use of Ajami as a proselytizing tool had detractors. As some local scholars sought to elevate their African languages to the status of Islamic languages by treating their Ajami traditions as valid Islamic proselytizing tools, they faced opposition from some of their colleagues. Cerno Mombeyaa had to defend his use of Ajami as a legitimate proselytizing tool when he encountered the opposition of the Senegalese Tijaniyya leader Al-Hajj Umar Taal (1797–1864). Taal opposed the use of Ajami and advocated the exclusive use of Arabic for Islamic discourse (Robinson 1982, 251–261; Salvaing 2004, 112).

In Senegambia, the Murid Ajami poet Muusaa Ka (1889–1963) had to write a defensive poem titled Taxmiis bub Wolof (Wolof Takhmīs) to oppose his local colleagues who looked down upon him for dedicating his life to produce proselytizing poetry in Ajami. Muusaa Ka and his supporters ended up making Wolof Ajami their badge of identity and their preferred means of mass communication. Ka fought important battles in defense of Ajami. He adopted a polyglossic (pluralist) ideology of language grounded in the belief that God is multilingual and that all ethnolinguistic groups are equal before Him. He defended the rights of African Muslims to use their native tongues to convey the message of God, and rejected the notion that Arabic was superior to his mother tongue of Wolof or any other human language. In so doing, he challenged the monoglossic ideology of language held by his adversaries, who emphasized the exceptional sanctity of Arabic and contended that it was the only legitimate language of Islamic discourse. Proponents of the polyglossic ideology of language such as Muusa Ka have significantly contributed to the spread of Islam and Ajami literacy in West Africa (Ngom 2016, 59–67).¹⁰

Music-based proselytizing (i.e. the recitation and chanting of devotional and didactic Islamic texts) has also contributed to the spread of Ajami literacy in West Africa. The recitation and chanting of religious texts written in Warsh-based Arabic and Ajami orthographies in Murid communities of Senegal have resulted in the phenomenon I have termed music-derived literacy. Besides Quranic school education and socialization in communities where Ajami texts are routinely used, some people acquire Warsh-based Arabic and Ajami literacy through recited and chanted devotional and didactic poems in their communities. These recited and chanted materials have expanded both Wolof and its Ajami tradition in Senegambia (Ngom 2015, 354; Ngom 2016, 32–34). The images (Figures 7.5 and 7.6) highlight the international dimension of Ajami and music-based proselytizing that continue to facilitate the spread of Ajami literacy in West African Muslim communities.

The final factor that has helped to boost Ajami literacy in West Africa is technological. Many devotional and didactic materials in Arabic and Ajami script in West Africa have recorded, recited, or chanted complements. These materials have evolved following technological advances. For example, the Murids of Senegal initially proselytized using unrecorded recitations and songs of handwritten texts in Warsh-based Arabic and Ajami scripts in rural villages. Now they use digital technology, printing presses, and recording studios to produce and reproduce in bulk their Arabic and Ajami texts and their accompanying recitations and songs. Their verbalized proselytizing texts were at first recorded in cassette, CD, DVD, and MP3 files. Now, many are available online on multimedia websites and YouTube. In some of their digital materials online, the texts are time-aligned with their recitation and chanting so that one can listen to and read the materials simultaneously. Such digital proselytizing materials continue to foster dual literacy in Warsh-based Arabic and Ajami writing systems in West Africa.

West African Muslims from different ethnolinguistic groups share many traditions because they have interacted, communicated, and exchanged knowledge, books, and handwritten documents for centuries. Wherever the Fuuta Jalon Fula, Hausa, Jula, Kanuri, Mandinka, and Wolof Muslims (to name only these groups) travel, they bring along their Islamic faith, knowledge, language, and dual literacy in Arabic and Ajami. In Guinea, Fuuta Jalon scholars have interacted for centuries with their Mande colleagues (Susu, Jakhanke, Jula, and Eastern Maninka scholars) and with their other colleagues in Senegambia. The interactions between West African Muslim scholars explain the similarities between the diacritics they use to modify the Warsh-based Arabic orthography in order to produce their Ajami texts in their respective tongues (Ngom 2016, 254–255). In northern Nigeria, the leadership of Kanuri scholars in Quranic education and their long connections to Hausa scholars left enduring traces on the Hausa language. Hausa-Fulani scholars from northern Nigeria who migrated to the south helped to fuel the Yoruba Ajami tradition (Jawondo 2010, 36–50).¹¹

The mobility of West African Muslim scholars continues to this day. Some Muslim scholars travel to new places (including urban areas) for family reasons or to pursue their careers as Quranic teachers and merchants. Other scholars conduct short- and long-term visits in the region. Thus, it is common to find a West African Muslim family hosting a visiting or traveling scholar from a different ethnolinguistic group. These visits can last for days, weeks, and sometimes months. The visiting scholars generally offer paid services (Wolof: weexal). These services may include making protective and good-luck amulets, praying for the sick, the jobless, and men and women seeking spouses, praying for couples who cannot have children, divination services, and so forth. During their visits, the guests and hosts often discuss and exchange various materials written in Arabic and Ajami.

In cases where the host and the guest do not speak each other’s language, the local lingua franca they share is generally their default language of oral communications. However, when the guest does not speak the lingua franca, his native language or that of his host may be used in their oral communications. Because such encounters and exchanges are old and very important, many West African Muslims have a vested interest in developing multilingual skills. The mobility of advanced students engaged in peripatetic studies in the region further fosters multilingualism and the acquisition of dual literacy in Warsh-based Arabic and Ajami orthographies in West Africa. These advanced Quranic students in search of knowledge travel throughout the region to study with renowned masters who may or may not be from their own ethnolinguistic group. These students generally learn the languages of their esteemed teachers (Jawondo 2010, 36–50). Trade and education have brought many West African Muslim scholars and families from different countries and ethnolinguistic groups together. Marriages resulting from such interactions are not uncommon. Some satisfied teachers offer their daughters to students who have earned their trust and lived up to their moral and spiritual standards.¹²

However, the language of oral communication between teachers and students and between hosts and visiting scholars is not always the language of their written communication. The language of written communication is generally Warsh-based Arabic, if the two interlocutors are learned. Otherwise, each person uses the writing system they are more comfortable with to keep their personal records. Thus, a Bawol-Bawol Seereer who is literate in Wolof Ajami hosting a visiting Fuuta Jalon scholar from Guinea may communicate orally with his guest in Wolof (if the guest speaks this Senegambian lingua franca) or in Fuuta Jalon Fula. However, when keeping his own written records, he may do so in Wolof Ajami, the only writing system he knows. The Fula visiting scholar may keep his written records in Warsh-based Arabic or Fuuta Jalon Ajami orthography.¹³

Through these centuries-old interactions, West African Muslims have historically valued multilingualism. Many have produced important materials in Arabic and Ajami. Some scholars have even celebrated their multilingual skills as marks of their erudition. The Wolof poet Moor Kayre, for example, celebrates his multilingual skills by chanting that his spiritual leader, Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba, made him and his colleagues erudite until they rival Arabs and are capable of composing poems in both Arabic and Ajami (Ngom 2016, 219). For these West African Muslim scholars, Arabic and Ajami literacies are complementary.

The trade of books and manuscripts written in a variety of calligraphic styles by local scribes has also been an important factor in the spread of Islamic knowledge and its accompanying dual literacies in Arabic and Ajami in Muslim West Africa. Some of the early Arabic materials in West Africa were acquired through the trans-Saharan trade (Kane 2016, 44–50). Pilgrims who traveled to North Africa and Arabia acquired others (Krätli and Lydon 2011). Today, the West African Islamic book market is large and vibrant. Hausa trade networks spread Islamic knowledge, the Hausa language, and Ajami literacy in many parts of West Africa, including in northern Ghana. Similarly, Fuuta Jalon speakers from Guinea are well-known merchants and shopkeepers in West Africa. Many shopkeepers, merchants, and Islamic scholars in West Africa are immigrants from Fuuta Jalon. They are locally respected for their Quranic erudition, Islamic knowledge, and dual literacies in Arabic and Ajami. Most Fula shopkeepers in West Africa who only attended Quranic school use their Fuuta Jalon Ajami writing system to effectively run their businesses and to correspond with relatives scattered in the region. Through their trading activities and mobility, they have helped to spread Islamic knowledge, their language, and Ajami literacy (especially among their descendants) in their host countries.

The trade networks between West African Muslims from different ethnolinguistic groups continue to facilitate the circulation of their works as well as the spread of Arabic and Ajami literacy. West African Muslim scholars continue to produce abundant religious and nonreligious texts in Ajami tailored to the needs of the masses. The texts that Hunwick (1995, 7–8) referred to as “market editions” are available in Warsh-based Arabic and Ajami orthographies in many local markets and bookstores in West Africa. Because these texts deal with the religious and nonreligious preoccupations of the masses and are reasonably priced, most interested people can afford them. These texts continue to expand grassroots dual literacies in Arabic and Ajami in West Africa.

Several recently created digital repositories illustrate the significance of Ajami literacy in Africa. The Ajami documents in these repositories are as diverse in forms and contents as the preoccupations of West African Muslims,¹⁴ and they represent only a very small sample in the vast ocean of Africa’s Ajami sources. Only the authors and trained practitioners can fully understand the content of some of the Ajami materials. This is because many writers deliberately omit some information. Such omissions have the same functions that modern-day passwords have; they are security measures to prevent unauthorized access to the insights (Ngom 2015, 359–360).

Wherever Islam has traveled, it has brought along its Quranic education system and Arabic orthography, which have engendered various forms of literacies in Arabic and Ajami. While Ajami literacies in other parts of the world (such as Persian, Pashto, and Urdu) are well known, their African counterparts have received little scholarly attention. Despite their historical depth, wide distribution, and diverse forms and contents in many parts of Africa, their significance remains underappreciated. The neglect of Africa’s Ajami literacies is ascribable to several factors. These include the traditional overemphasis on oral traditions and colonial sources in the studies of Africa in the humanities and social sciences and the treatment of literacy in sub-Saharan Africa as the ability to read and write in European languages, the Latin script, or Arabic. These traditions have excluded millions of Ajami literates in official literacy statistics.

Additionally, the lack of standardization of Ajami orthographies and the methods Ajami writers use to segment their phrases and sentences have made their texts virtually impenetrable for many outsiders. People often emphasize the lack of standardization of African Ajami writing systems as a major problem and evidence of the inadequacy of the Arabic script to write African languages. However, their perspectives require nuance. In reality, the lack of standardization of Ajami writing systems is only a major problem for uninformed individuals. This is because Ajami practitioners generally know the local orthographic variations and can predict the intended vowel, consonant, or word in their local Ajami texts. In many ways, just as people with grammatical knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) can predict appropriate vowels in nonvocalized standard Arabic texts, African Ajami practitioners can predict the intended vowels, consonants, words, and structures in texts produced by local writers.

Another major hurdle that outsiders often face when attempting to decipher African Ajami texts is the tendency to use European models and categories. For example, using French- or English-language segmentation systems, which break sentences into grammatical units (nouns, verbs, adjectives, articles, and so forth), to study African Ajami texts does not work. This is because Ajami writers use a different approach. Using the categories of European languages and their orthographic rules to study Ajami texts is analogous to using the same European norms to study Chinese texts. It does not work. To penetrate African Ajami texts, just as with Chinese texts, the scripts and the manuscripts must be treated as representing different epistemologies with their own internal norms, assumptions, and worldviews. As the recited and chanted Ajami texts demonstrate, Ajami practitioners treat oral and written literature and Arabic and Ajami literacy as complementary and forming continua, rather than neatly separated domains. Similarly, they treat the visible world and the invisible world not as unconnected realms but as interlaced.

For many African Ajami users, the important units in a sentence are not necessarily the nouns, verbs, adjectives, or prepositions. The segmentation of their sentences is often based on what they deem important units of thought and prosody. Thus, a noun, verb, or adjective or an entire verb phrase, noun phrase, or prepositional phrase can be combined and written as a single structure in African Ajami texts (Vierke 2014, 333–334). This challenge facing outsiders is further compounded by the idiosyncratic insights embedded in Ajami texts. These insights include references to local events, historical actors, cultural beliefs, and maxims and metaphors drawn from the local flora and fauna. Thus, an in-depth ethnographic knowledge of the local culture is necessary to make sense of African Ajami texts.

Finally, African Ajami literacies have been invisible to many scholars due to what Lüpke and Bao-Diop call “the observer’s paradox.” They show how the presence of a European female researcher with a young female Cameroonian Christian assistant triggered negative local responses regarding the use of Ajami and the reach of Quranic schools. However, by making appropriate methodological changes, she and her team were able to gain the trust of key people and to have access to documents in Fulfulde and Hausa Ajami (Lüpke and Bao-Diop 2014, 11–12). Overcoming these hurdles so that scholars can directly access local knowledge systems and perspectives recorded in Africa’s Ajami texts on both religious and non-religious subjects requires an interdisciplinary approach. This is the approach of the emerging field I have called Ajami Studies, the comprehensive and systematic study of Ajami texts that result from Quranic education, mass proselytizing, and the circulation of people and texts in Muslim Africa and beyond (Ngom 2016, 247–251).

This letter begins with the official contact information in Arabic and French. It starts and ends with a standard Islamic formula as customary in Muslim letter writing. The rest of the text is in Wolofal (Wolof Ajami). The letter highlights the significance of Ajami in the Murid bureaucracy. Murid Caliphs typically acknowledge officially in Ajami receipt of donated funds and goods, regardless of their size. The size of the donations can range from hundreds to hundred thousands of dollars from Murids at home and the diaspora. Murid leaders also write letters in Ajami when they want to call to action their disciples. Such letters are generally copied, distributed, and verbalized (read out loud) in local radio stations for wider dissemination. Murids are known to respond to such calls of their male and female leaders collectively and swiftly.