![]() ![]() In 1999, John Hunwick published a scholarly translation with notes that covered the 28 of 35 chapters most relevant to Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire. Houdas (Sa’dī 19a) published the Arabic text and a French translation. (1) The Tārīkh al-Sūdān (TS) by al-Sa’di (1594-1655+ CE) focuses on the history of the Songhay Empire from the mid-fifteenth century until 1591 and then the Moroccan invasions and subsequent administration down to 1655. ![]() tewarikh - composed by Islamic scholars in West Africa. The fall course will focus primarily on two histories - tarikh, pl. The Tārīkh al-Sūdān and the Tārīkh al-Fattāsh That said, individuals will be able to use the Github versioning history to document what they have done and to create hybrid publications that contain their own accounts of what they did and what critical decisions they needed to take. We are supporting a collaborative model of authorship that may be familiar to readers from Wikipedia. We are, however, managing the sources in Github and so each particular contribution is recorded in the versioning history. Such a license is not suitable for publications that seek to represent a particular scholarly voice at a particular time. The larger goal of this class and the larger project that it represents is to create openly licensed digital materials that are not only of immediate use but that also can be modified and, wherever possible, reused under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. The goals are to create exhaustive annotations, included translations aligned at the word and phrase levels, for (1) a small but extensible set of passages and (2) sets of sentences that allow readers to trace the meaning of Arabic words which cannot properly be translated. I will be using tools such as the suite of Arabic natural language processing tools developed by the CAMeL Lab at New York University Abu Dhabi to extend my (not very advanced) knowledge of Arabic. I am hoping this summer to resuscitate my own Arabic and to see how far that helps me with the language of these Islamic scholars from Timbuktu. The basic requirement would be an ability to read English carefully but there are also clearly opportunities for those with knowledge of French, of various aspects of Computer and Data Science, and of Classical Arabic. There are a number of ways to contribute that match a range of skillsets. If others are interested learning more and in possibly contributing, they should contact me. Any students taking both would receive 4 credits.ĭuring the summer, I will also be working on the digital edition of these two histories and of other sources. The Arabic reading group would be 1 credit (vs. This will can be taken as an optional addition to the Monday class or as a separate class. We will also offer a weekly reading group for those who wish to go over sections of the Arabic. Space allowing, we hope to see students from other institutions participate, whether by direct cross-registration or by getting credit through a directed study authorized by a faculty member at their own institution. ![]() The course itself will meet during Tufts’ fall semester Monday evenings from 6:00-8:30. The development site for this is Beyond Translation and will be augmented between now and the fall semester.įigure 1:Conclusion of an unpublished historical source in Arabic from Mali, preserved by Yaro family collection and hosted by the British Library – one of more than 2,000 West African manuscripts that the British Library has made available. We will begin publishing sections of these sources in the new version of the Perseus Digital Library that we are developing with support from the NEH. In particular, we will exploit techniques by which we can begin to make the Arabic source text itself accessible to a general audience. Students will have an opportunity to explore emerging, digitally enabled methods by which global audiences can begin exploring the human record. Our goal is not just to learn about the Mali and Songhai empires but to use what we learn to create openly licensed, digital sources of various kinds that will help others explore a major historical period that has attracted far too attention in the teaching and research. While we will consider Arabic sources produced outside of West Africa and accounts of European travelers, we will focus primarily on two different historical sources from West Africa istself: the Tārīkh al-Sūdān and (what has traditionally been called) Tārīkh al-Fattāsh. At Tufts University, the course on Classical Historians (Classics 141 - details in the departmental course booklet) will focus on Classical Arabic sources composed in, and about, pre-colonial West Africa. ![]()
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