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The Haroun Ould Sidia Collection of Arabic Manuscripts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

C. C. Stewart
C. C. Stewart*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
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Extract

In a previous number of this journal, a note on the development of a computer-based Arabic manuscript finding aid described its application to a manuscript microfilming project in Boutilimit, Mauritania. The filming of that collection was then (at the time the note was written in the spring of 1989) in its second phase, and the work was concluded in December of that year. Thanks to the technology developed for the finding aid to that collection, the catalog was completed six months later, and it is now possible to do database searches on that material (and soon on other collections now being entered in the same format). This note comes as a description of the Boutilimit collection, the film of which is now available to researchers at the University of Illinois Archives, in the University Library.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 18 , 1991 , pp. 349 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1991

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References

Notes

1. Stewart, C. C. and Hatasa, Kazumi, “Computer-Based Arabic Manuscript Management,” HA, 16 (1989), 403–12.Google Scholar

2. Massignon, Louis, “Une Bibliothèque saharienne: la bibliothèque du Cheikh Sidia au Sahara,” Revue du monde musulman, 8 (1909), 409–18.Google Scholar

3. Harun b. Sidiyya Baba, “Kitab al-Akhbar,” a manuscript in 62 school copybooks, currently being prepared for publication by Baba ould Harun; funded in part by the Association for the Publication of African Historical Sources NEH Grant #RL-21280-88. One-third of the manuscript has now been prepared (about 800 pp. typescript), which consists mainly of copies of correspondence and poetry collected by Harun on the subject of his family.

4. For the catalog of the collection see Stewart, C. C., Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts Among the Ahl Shaykh Sidiyya ([xerox], Urbana, 1990)Google Scholar forthcoming (1991) in a microfiche series with InterDocumentation, Leiden, Arabic Manuscripts in the Western Muslim World.

5. Stewart, C. C., Islam and Social Order in Mauritania (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar provides biographical treatment of Sidiyya; see also idem., “A New Source on the Book Market in Morocco in the 1830s and Islamic Scholarship in West Africa,” Hespéris-Tamuda, 11 (1970), 209-50, for an account of eary accessions in this collection.

6. Studies devoted to aspects of the Kunta story include the dissertation of Whitcomb, Thomas, as well as his “New Evidence on the Origins of the Kunta,” BSOAS, 38 (1975), 103–23, 407–17Google Scholar; Batran, A. A., “Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti and the Recrudesence of Islam in the Western Sahara and the Middle Niger,” Ph.D., University of Birmingham, 1971Google Scholar; Zebadia, Abdelkader, “The Career and Correspondence of Ahmad al-Bakkay of Timbuctu, From 1847 to 1866,” Ph.D., University of London, 1974.Google Scholar A useful recent synthesis of material on the Kunta appears in McDougall, Ann, “The Economics of Islam in the Southern Sahara: The Rise of the Kunta Clan,” Asian and African Studies, 20 (1986), 45–60Google Scholar; reprinted in Levtzion, Nehemia and Fisher, H. J., eds., Urban and Rural Islam in West Africa (Boulder, 1987).Google Scholar

7. See note 3 above; an edition of the work should be prepared by 1994.

8. This number excludes two early lithographed works, each exceeding eight volumes which, were they included with these manuscripts, would bring this number to 1000 records.

9. Stewart, C. C., Salim, Sidi Ahmed ould Ahmed, and Yahya, Ahmad ould Muhammad, General Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts in Mauritania, I, Collection of the Institut Mauritanien de Recherche Scientifique (Urbana/Nouakchott, 1990) 3 vols. (forthcoming, 1991 in microfiche, from InterDocumentation, Leiden).Google Scholar Of equal value is Hamidoun, Mokhtar ould and AHeymowski, dam, Catalogue Provisoire des manuscrits mauritaniens en langue arabe preservê en Mauritanie (Photocopy, Nouakchott/Stockholm, 1965–1966).Google Scholar

10. As an example, some 57 records—only two exceeding two pages in length—have been classified under Sidiyya al Kabir's name, as dealing with economic matters, from blood money matters to indebtedness, from the redemption of slaves to the division of assets.

11. A description of the computer program, AMMS, utilized in this project appears in Stewart/Hatasa, “Computer-based Arabic Manuscript Management.” A manual for the program and demo diskette (for AT-compatible PCs equipped with EGA color monitor) are available on request.