Mauro Nobili
Biographic Data
| ID | 5445152 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mauro Nobili |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mauro |
| FAMILY NAME | Nobili |
| SIGNATURE | NOBILI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3144-3897 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 21 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Hidden Repository of Arabic Manuscripts from Mali
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Islamic Scholarship in Africa
I was among the participants in the conference ‘Texts, Knowledge, and Practice: The Meaning of Scholarship in Muslim Africa’ at the Harvard School of Divinity (February 2017), but was not able to attend the follow-up conference in October of the same year, ‘New Directions in the Study of Islamic Scholarship in Africa’. That loss has been richly compensated by the experience of reading Islamic Scholarship in Africa. The book’s sixteen chapters, de…
West Africa Seen from Moroccan Manuscript Archives
The Area Studies paradigm that emerged in the United States in the late 1950s surely fostered research on parts of the world that had traditionally been neglected in academia, such as the African continent. However, this paradigm also had its shortcomings. Among these shortcomings, there is the tendency to disconnect North Africa from the rest of the continent. Recent works on trans-Saharan connections are a testimony of the potential of studying…
Introduction. The Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi
The economic historian Marlon Johnson observes that prior to the 19th century, [t]he interior delta of the Niger with its floodlands, river and creeks and the area of sand dunes and lakes between the delta proper and the Niger, together form a region which would seem to have met the necessary conditions for the heartland of a centralized state: easy communications by water; a surplus of foodstuffs beyond the needs of their producers; a position a…
Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith
The Tārīkh al-fattāsh is one of the most important and celebrated sources for the history of pre-colonial West Africa, yet it has confounded scholars for decades with its inconsistences and questions surrounding its authorship. In this study, Mauro Nobili examines and challenges existing theories on the chronicle, arguing that much of what we have presumed about the work is deeply flawed. Making extensive use of previously unpublished Arabic sour…
Reinterpreting the Role of Muslims in the West African Middle Ages
Recent research points to a renewed scholarly interest in the West African Middle Ages and the Sahelian imperial tradition. However, in these works only tangential attention is paid to the role of Muslims, and especially to clerical communities. This essay tackles theoretical and historiographical insights on the role of African Muslims in the era of the medieval empires and argues that the study of Islam in this region during the Middle Ages sti…
New Reinventions of the Sahel
The Arts and Crafts of Literacy
During the last two decades, the (re-)discovery of thousands of manuscripts in different regions of sub-Saharan Africa has questioned the long-standing approach of Africa as a continent only characterized by orality and legitimately assigned to the continent the status of a civilization of written literacy. However, most of the existing studies mainly aim at serving literary and historical purposes, and focus only on the textual dimension of the …
Arts and Crafts of Literacy
Muslims beyond the Arab World
The Manuscripts that Never Were
This article presents a fieldwork report conducted by the authors to locate certain manuscripts – namely copies of the chronicle titled Tārīkh al-Fattāsh – listed in recent catalogues of Islamic manuscripts from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana published by the al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation and prepared by Bābā Yūnus Muḥammad. Unfortunately, after ten days of enquiry in the two countries, it became evident that the catalogues are inaccurate and th…
“Letter on the appearance of the twelfth caliph” (Risāla fī ẓuhūr al-khalīfa al-thānī ʻashar). Edition of the Arabic Text with English Translation
In the edition of the text, I have standardized some features of West African script styles.Fā’, qāf, nūn and yā’ are written in the edited text in their standard modern form instead of the peculiar form they take in manuscripts produced in the western part of the Islamic world (fā’ and qāf respectively with one dot at the bottom and at the top of the letter; final fā’, qāf, nūn and yā’ without any dot). I also standardized the hamzas that do not…
A propaganda document in support of the 19th century Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi
The Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi, located in the modern Republic of Mali, was founded by Aḥmad Lobbo in 1818 and left behind a huge corpus of Arabic correspondence and dispatches that is mainly unexplored by historians. This corpus, composed of documents related to the internal administration of the state as well as its relations with other contemporary political entities, is the result of the extensive spread of literacy in Arabic in the territories …
A Short Note on Some Historical Accounts from the Ifan Manuscripts Collection
The IFAN manuscript collection, including several fonds , is a very rich repository of mostly Arabic materials coming from different regions of the former Afrique Occidentale Française. Notwithstanding some of these manuscripts have been explored by historians since the colonial period, the potential of this collection is still untapped. This note focuses on some historical accounts from the Fonds Brevié, Fonds Vieillard, and Fonds Gaden
Towards a New Study of the So-Called Tārīkh al-fattāsh
This article advances a new theory about the composition of the chronicle generally referred to as Tārīkh al-fattāsh. The Tārīkh al-fattāsh , allegedly written in the sixteenth-seventeenth century, is one of the most famous chronicles on which scholars have relied for information about West Africa’s pre-colonial history. However, there are still many puzzling issues and unsolved problems associated with this work, as edited by Octave V. Houdas an…
In the City of the Marabouts
In the City of the Marabouts: Islamic Culture in West Africa by Geert Mommersteeg is the latest of several revised editions and translations of the author's In de stad van de marabouts, first published in Dutch in 1998. The work is based on Mommersteeg's PhD thesis defended at the University of Utrecht in 1996, which is in turn mainly grounded in two long fieldwork terms in Djenne from October 1985 to October 1986, and June 1987 to January 1988. …
Central Sudanic Arabic Scripts (Part 2)
This article describes and analyzes barnāwī, the Arabic script of Borno (northeastern Nigeria) and most ancient prototype of what we define as the Central Sudanic family of scripts. Barnāwī shows paleographic features that clearly set it apart from some other West African Arabic scripts, thereby confirming the inadequacy of the label sūdānī, which often surfaces in literature to collectively brand a variety of scripts used in different regions of…
Arabic Scripts in West African Manuscripts
Arabic scripts employed in West African manuscripts have not been fully explored in scholarly literature. The aim of this paper is twofold: to discuss the literature available on this issue and to advance a classification of West African writing styles. This classification is based on the case study of the “de Gironcourt” collection of Arabic manuscripts, gathered in the modern states of Mali, Niger, and Nigeria at the beginning of the twentieth …
Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith
The Tārīkh al-fattāsh is one of the most important and celebrated sources for the history of pre-colonial West Africa, yet it has confounded scholars for decades with its inconsistences and questions surrounding its authorship. In this study, Mauro Nobili examines and challenges existing theories on the chronicle, arguing that much of what we have presumed about the work is deeply flawed. Making extensive use of previously unpublished Arabic sour…
Towards a New Study of the So-Called Tārīkh al-fattāsh
This article advances a new theory about the composition of the chronicle generally referred to as Tārīkh al-fattāsh. The Tārīkh al-fattāsh , allegedly written in the sixteenth-seventeenth century, is one of the most famous chronicles on which scholars have relied for information about West Africa’s pre-colonial history. However, there are still many puzzling issues and unsolved problems associated with this work, as edited by Octave V. Houdas an…
Reinterpreting the Role of Muslims in the West African Middle Ages
Recent research points to a renewed scholarly interest in the West African Middle Ages and the Sahelian imperial tradition. However, in these works only tangential attention is paid to the role of Muslims, and especially to clerical communities. This essay tackles theoretical and historiographical insights on the role of African Muslims in the era of the medieval empires and argues that the study of Islam in this region during the Middle Ages sti…
Arabic Scripts in West African Manuscripts
Arabic scripts employed in West African manuscripts have not been fully explored in scholarly literature. The aim of this paper is twofold: to discuss the literature available on this issue and to advance a classification of West African writing styles. This classification is based on the case study of the “de Gironcourt” collection of Arabic manuscripts, gathered in the modern states of Mali, Niger, and Nigeria at the beginning of the twentieth …
The Manuscripts that Never Were
This article presents a fieldwork report conducted by the authors to locate certain manuscripts – namely copies of the chronicle titled Tārīkh al-Fattāsh – listed in recent catalogues of Islamic manuscripts from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana published by the al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation and prepared by Bābā Yūnus Muḥammad. Unfortunately, after ten days of enquiry in the two countries, it became evident that the catalogues are inaccurate and th…
A propaganda document in support of the 19th century Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi
The Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi, located in the modern Republic of Mali, was founded by Aḥmad Lobbo in 1818 and left behind a huge corpus of Arabic correspondence and dispatches that is mainly unexplored by historians. This corpus, composed of documents related to the internal administration of the state as well as its relations with other contemporary political entities, is the result of the extensive spread of literacy in Arabic in the territories …
A Short Note on Some Historical Accounts from the Ifan Manuscripts Collection
The IFAN manuscript collection, including several fonds , is a very rich repository of mostly Arabic materials coming from different regions of the former Afrique Occidentale Française. Notwithstanding some of these manuscripts have been explored by historians since the colonial period, the potential of this collection is still untapped. This note focuses on some historical accounts from the Fonds Brevié, Fonds Vieillard, and Fonds Gaden
Central Sudanic Arabic Scripts (Part 2)
This article describes and analyzes barnāwī, the Arabic script of Borno (northeastern Nigeria) and most ancient prototype of what we define as the Central Sudanic family of scripts. Barnāwī shows paleographic features that clearly set it apart from some other West African Arabic scripts, thereby confirming the inadequacy of the label sūdānī, which often surfaces in literature to collectively brand a variety of scripts used in different regions of…
Arabic Scripts in West African Manuscripts
Arabic scripts employed in West African manuscripts have not been fully explored in scholarly literature. The aim of this paper is twofold: to discuss the literature available on this issue and to advance a classification of West African writing styles. This classification is based on the case study of the “de Gironcourt” collection of Arabic manuscripts, gathered in the modern states of Mali, Niger, and Nigeria at the beginning of the twentieth …
Central Sudanic Arabic Scripts (Part 2)
This article describes and analyzes barnāwī, the Arabic script of Borno (northeastern Nigeria) and most ancient prototype of what we define as the Central Sudanic family of scripts. Barnāwī shows paleographic features that clearly set it apart from some other West African Arabic scripts, thereby confirming the inadequacy of the label sūdānī, which often surfaces in literature to collectively brand a variety of scripts used in different regions of…
In the City of the Marabouts
In the City of the Marabouts: Islamic Culture in West Africa by Geert Mommersteeg is the latest of several revised editions and translations of the author's In de stad van de marabouts, first published in Dutch in 1998. The work is based on Mommersteeg's PhD thesis defended at the University of Utrecht in 1996, which is in turn mainly grounded in two long fieldwork terms in Djenne from October 1985 to October 1986, and June 1987 to January 1988. …
Towards a New Study of the So-Called Tārīkh al-fattāsh
This article advances a new theory about the composition of the chronicle generally referred to as Tārīkh al-fattāsh. The Tārīkh al-fattāsh , allegedly written in the sixteenth-seventeenth century, is one of the most famous chronicles on which scholars have relied for information about West Africa’s pre-colonial history. However, there are still many puzzling issues and unsolved problems associated with this work, as edited by Octave V. Houdas an…
“Letter on the appearance of the twelfth caliph” (Risāla fī ẓuhūr al-khalīfa al-thānī ʻashar). Edition of the Arabic Text with English Translation
In the edition of the text, I have standardized some features of West African script styles.Fā’, qāf, nūn and yā’ are written in the edited text in their standard modern form instead of the peculiar form they take in manuscripts produced in the western part of the Islamic world (fā’ and qāf respectively with one dot at the bottom and at the top of the letter; final fā’, qāf, nūn and yā’ without any dot). I also standardized the hamzas that do not…
A propaganda document in support of the 19th century Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi
The Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi, located in the modern Republic of Mali, was founded by Aḥmad Lobbo in 1818 and left behind a huge corpus of Arabic correspondence and dispatches that is mainly unexplored by historians. This corpus, composed of documents related to the internal administration of the state as well as its relations with other contemporary political entities, is the result of the extensive spread of literacy in Arabic in the territories …
A Short Note on Some Historical Accounts from the Ifan Manuscripts Collection
The IFAN manuscript collection, including several fonds , is a very rich repository of mostly Arabic materials coming from different regions of the former Afrique Occidentale Française. Notwithstanding some of these manuscripts have been explored by historians since the colonial period, the potential of this collection is still untapped. This note focuses on some historical accounts from the Fonds Brevié, Fonds Vieillard, and Fonds Gaden
The Arts and Crafts of Literacy
During the last two decades, the (re-)discovery of thousands of manuscripts in different regions of sub-Saharan Africa has questioned the long-standing approach of Africa as a continent only characterized by orality and legitimately assigned to the continent the status of a civilization of written literacy. However, most of the existing studies mainly aim at serving literary and historical purposes, and focus only on the textual dimension of the …
Arts and Crafts of Literacy
Muslims beyond the Arab World
The Manuscripts that Never Were
This article presents a fieldwork report conducted by the authors to locate certain manuscripts – namely copies of the chronicle titled Tārīkh al-Fattāsh – listed in recent catalogues of Islamic manuscripts from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana published by the al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation and prepared by Bābā Yūnus Muḥammad. Unfortunately, after ten days of enquiry in the two countries, it became evident that the catalogues are inaccurate and th…
New Reinventions of the Sahel
Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith
The Tārīkh al-fattāsh is one of the most important and celebrated sources for the history of pre-colonial West Africa, yet it has confounded scholars for decades with its inconsistences and questions surrounding its authorship. In this study, Mauro Nobili examines and challenges existing theories on the chronicle, arguing that much of what we have presumed about the work is deeply flawed. Making extensive use of previously unpublished Arabic sour…
Reinterpreting the Role of Muslims in the West African Middle Ages
Recent research points to a renewed scholarly interest in the West African Middle Ages and the Sahelian imperial tradition. However, in these works only tangential attention is paid to the role of Muslims, and especially to clerical communities. This essay tackles theoretical and historiographical insights on the role of African Muslims in the era of the medieval empires and argues that the study of Islam in this region during the Middle Ages sti…
Introduction. The Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi
The economic historian Marlon Johnson observes that prior to the 19th century, [t]he interior delta of the Niger with its floodlands, river and creeks and the area of sand dunes and lakes between the delta proper and the Niger, together form a region which would seem to have met the necessary conditions for the heartland of a centralized state: easy communications by water; a surplus of foodstuffs beyond the needs of their producers; a position a…
Islamic Scholarship in Africa
I was among the participants in the conference ‘Texts, Knowledge, and Practice: The Meaning of Scholarship in Muslim Africa’ at the Harvard School of Divinity (February 2017), but was not able to attend the follow-up conference in October of the same year, ‘New Directions in the Study of Islamic Scholarship in Africa’. That loss has been richly compensated by the experience of reading Islamic Scholarship in Africa. The book’s sixteen chapters, de…
West Africa Seen from Moroccan Manuscript Archives
The Area Studies paradigm that emerged in the United States in the late 1950s surely fostered research on parts of the world that had traditionally been neglected in academia, such as the African continent. However, this paradigm also had its shortcomings. Among these shortcomings, there is the tendency to disconnect North Africa from the rest of the continent. Recent works on trans-Saharan connections are a testimony of the potential of studying…
A Hidden Repository of Arabic Manuscripts from Mali
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
History (15 works) · History (14 works) · African Studies and Geopolitics (11 works) · Ancient history (11 works) · African history and culture analysis (10 works) · Archaeology (9 works) · Islam (8 works) · Arabic (7 works) · Art (7 works) · Linguistics (7 works)