African Manuscript Cultures Award Lecture

An Overview of the Study of Ethiopian Arabic and Ajami Manuscripts and Manuscript Cultures

Muna Abubeker

While scholars have been studying Ethiopian Ge’ez manuscripts since the 1600s, research into Ethiopian Arabic and Ajami manuscripts is much newer. The field began in the 1930s with Italian scholar Enrico Cerulli and grew over the decades through the work of scholars like Ewald Wagner and Hussein Ahmed. A major leap forward happened recently with the ‘Islam in the Horn of Africa’ project, which massively improved how these texts are documented and critically examined. Another significant milestone was the creation of a Philology unit at Addis Ababa University in 2005. For the first time, Ethiopian scholars were formally trained to study their own Arabic and Ajami texts, leading to flourishing in local graduate research.

This presentation looks back at a century of this progress. It covers the types of manuscripts that exist, how they are physically made (codicology), and the state of manuscript collections. It also highlights the Ajami tradition — local languages written using the Arabic alphabet — and explores the important, often overlooked role of women in this space. While Ethiopian Arabic manuscripts are still under-researched, this presentation shows just how far the field has come.