52,000 pages of West African Arabic and Ajami manuscripts are now free online

Boston University researchers led by anthropologist Fallou Ngom have digitised more than 52,000 pages of Arabic and Ajami manuscripts from Guinea and Senegal, with support from the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme. The two-year effort is described as the largest digital collection of its kind in the world. It includes a 230-year-old copy of the Jawahir al-Ma'ani, a 400-year-old Quran, and poems, prayers and historical documents from the Imamate of Fuuta Jalon, an Islamic state founded in the 1720s that declined under French colonial rule. The team worked with local experts to locate and photograph documents threatened by water, fire and decay, donated equipment to institutions in Guinea and Senegal, and trained local researchers in digital preservation. Why it matters: the intellectual record of West African Muslim societies is now open to everyone, and the capacity to care for it stays in the region.

This is a QeRN summary by Ahmed Qerni. Read the original at Boston University: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2026/fragile-manuscripts-hold-hundreds-of-years-of-african-and-islamic-history.