Arabic Language Study

With the generous support of an Abbasi Program Graduate Student Grant, I undertook training in reading, transcribing, and translating West African Arabic legal manuscripts through the Qasid Language Institute in Amman, Jordan during Summer 2020. However, due to the COVID Pandemic, all instruction took place online. My studies concentrated on a number of manuscripts dating from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century I uncovered during previous research in Senegal and Mali. With the guidance of my instructor—an expert in Maliki fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence)—I also began examining the digitized collections of the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme in Djenné, Mali, which has already made over 3,000 Arabic manuscripts available online.

The training I undertook during Summer 2020 gave me a solid linguistic foundation for my future dissertation research. My proposed project focuses on the history of “informal” legal institutions in Francophone West Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most legal histories of the region exclusively center on the generation of French courts during the colonial period, overlooking how many Africans preferred to take their disputes to religious leaders, including qadis (Islamic judges). Using documents beyond the colonial archive, such as Arabic manuscripts, I intend to detail the diffuse paths to justice that were, and in many cases still are, available to ordinary West Africans.

This project has real implications for the present day. Several recent studies by legal reform organizations have noted the prevalence of “informal justice” in West African societies. As formal courts remain expensive and procedurally opaque, many Africans still turn to religious leaders to resolve their social disputes. The first step to understanding today’s reality is a careful examination of the past. I hope to better understand the legal landscape on the ground through attention to locally produced sources. My language training at Qasid has provided a fundamental step in accomplishing this goal.