The following is a brief description of a collection of Arabic materials deposited by John Paden at the Herskovits Africana Library, Northwestern University. The collection includes 424 numbered volumes of which about half enclose manuscript materials while the other half enclose published books and pamphlets, most of them privately printed in Kano, Zaria, or Cairo. The collection altogether (and especially so among the pamphlets) includes a substantial proportion of works of West African authorship. However, the classical Muslim/Arabic literature, and especially the basic jurisprudential treatises and the better known diwans of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, are well represented in the collection.

This summary is made up of three parts, beginning with a few words on the classical Muslim/Arabic works in the collection. The second part is concerned with the unusual manuscript materials and includes a listing and description of these materials. Finally, the third part will be concerned with individual West African authors whose works are well represented in the collection. In most cases, these authors are represented by privately printed materials or by manuscripts of which copies generally tend to be found elsewhere.

In the references to specific manuscripts below, no attempt will be made to describe the calligraphy, the size of pages, etc. The purpose is to call attention to the availability of the sources under consideration, especially since they are scheduled to be microfilmed by the Cooperative Africana Microform Project soon.

Though mostly represented by manuscript copies, the diwans of Arabic poetry present little interest since they tend to be recent copies of works long ago published in numerous printings and editions elsewhere.