A Timbuktu bibliophile between the Mediterranean and the Sahel: Ahmad Bul'arāf and the circulation of books in the first half of the twentieth century

Abstract

This essay focuses on the role of Ahmad Bul'araf in the circulation of books – in their manuscript and their printed forms – from his place of residence in Timbuktu for about 50 years, in the first part of the twentieth century. In this endeavour of a lifetime, he communicated with people involved in the book business in a number of locations across a wide expanse, from Beirut and Cairo in the East, to Algiers and Fes in the North; Dakar in the West, and Kano to his southeast. Here is a case of how a network was kept going and animated through the concern with an object central to the life of learning, the book. His activity is one example of the ways in which contacts and connections were cultivated across spaces in and on the edges of the Sahara.

Keywords:

• Timbuktu
• books
• libraries
• copying
• communication

Notes

1. These and other biographical details in this article are from Mahmud bin Muhammad Dadab, Ma'lūmāt an khizānah usrah Bularrāf limuqayyidihu wa jami'ahu, unpublished manuscript, 20pp. The author of this ms was a student of Bul'arraf's son and this eulogistic essay was given ‘authorisation’ by the son.

2. Senegal, Soudan Francais, renamed and conjoined into L'AOF (Afrique Occidental Française).

3. Written information from the Mauritanian historian, Dr. Elemine Mustafa, Nouakchoutt, Mauritania, Email dated March 2014.

4. Information from the historian Dr. Elemine Mustafa.

5. Two major sufi groups, the Qadiriyyah and the Tijaniyyah, had scholarly adherents who produced critiques of one another's sufi teachings. Bul'araf himself was keen to collect critiques of the Tijaniyyah. The catalogues of the Timbuktu libraries reveal several scholars who wrote such works.

6. See entry on Muhammad Salim al-Walati, in Izalat al-rayb.

7. Later to be declared part of L'Afrique Occidental Française (AOF) which was the same administration but under a different name.

8. Dālī, Introduction, ‘Izālat al-rayb, 14. These volumes were possibly from the standard European edition of Sibawyhi, Le live de Sibawaihi edited by H. Derenbourg, Paris 1881–89. There is no indication of how he acquired this work.

9. Aḥmad Bul‘arāf al-Taknī, ‘Izālat al-rayb wa al-shakk wa al-tafrīt fī dhikr al-mu'alafin min ahl al-takrūr wa al-sahrā’a wa ahl shinqīt, ed. by Al-Hādī al-Mabrūk Al-Dālī (n.d., n.p.; Introduction gives place as Tripoli and year 2000). It is based on three mss: the main ms in from the copy made by Mahmoud Dadab, 176pp.; Ms copy 2, in Iheri-Ab-T collection, , Ms 3, in archives in Libya.

10. Akansus was a well-known scholar himself born in the Sūs in 1796 but went to Fes by the time his was 20 years old where presumably he joined the Tijaniyyah brotherhood. See also Hunwick, Arabic Literature of Africa, vol 4, p120, item 6.

11. Oral information from Dr Mahmoud Zouber, first Head of the Cedrab. Bamako, August 2013.