Mali Stories
HMML Stories — Mali
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Nasheeds from West Africa: Uniting Texts and Sound
“All of Timbuktu’s family libraries that were digitized by HMML include numerous compositions that...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
A Scribble of Scribes: Men, Women, and Children Copyists Across Mali’s Manuscript Collections
“...each manuscript is an artistic production and requires physical labor performed by a single individual—the scribe...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
Why so Many Fragments? Incomplete Manuscripts in the Timbuktu Collections.
“A large amount of the manuscripts digitized in Timbuktu, Mali, that we at HMML have cataloged are fragments...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
A Book You Would Love to Read...
“A book you would love to read is lost, altered, destroyed, buried, hidden, left unpublished, unwritten, banned.”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh and Margaret Bresnahan
ʻUmar al-Turūdī’s List of Unreliable Books
“ʻUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Turūdī, was a scholar from Kebbi, present-day northern...”
- Dr. Paul Naylor
Where We’re Working: Mali
“In the spring of 2012, the desert city of Timbuktu in northern Mali was attacked and...”
- Father Columba Stewart
Smoking in the Desert — Between Supporters and Opponents of Tobacco
“The use of tobacco in the Sahel, whether smoking, chewing, or taking as snuff, was widespread and...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
The Story of the Talking Camel and the Exploits of Ali Genre in West Africa
“While some elements of the story are fiction, others are clearly inspired by real events in Khaybar.”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
Tracing Folktales in Magic Texts — The Story of Umm al-Ṣibyān
“Despite having been contested in Islamic history by powerful groups rejecting them as illegitimate practices, magic and...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni
Travelers and Texts Crossing the Sahara
“Mobility was a central feature of individuals, societies, and texts within Muslim West Africa’s...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
Medical Texts From Timbuktu — Local Pharmacological Remedies with Qur’anic Verses
“In West Africa knowledge of the Qur’an was often combined with local pharmacological traditions to...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
Yeɗi Sanba Ɓooyi, a Fulani Scholar and Poet
“Yeɗi Sanba Ɓooyi was a scholar who belonged to the Fulani, a traditionally nomadic people who...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
Creating Cataloging Standards for Regional Names
“Yeɗi belonged to the Fulani people, one of West Africa’s many ethnic groups, which...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
Postscript — A Fāʼidah
“Along with the direct physical resistance to this unjust trade, the text shows...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
Database Partnership Expands Access to West African Manuscripts
HMML is now in partnership with the West African Arabic Manuscript Database
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor