The fourth volume of Arabic Literature of Africa deals with the scholarly and literary production of authors from Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Niger, and Ghana, from earliest times to the present day. The work is arranged both regionally and chronologically, and writers are grouped within chapters according to ethnic, scholarly, or religious affiliations. A biography of each author is given where possible, before the list of his or her writings. For each author is given a list of known writings, with details of existing manuscript copies, published editions and translations. There are indexes of...

From the ninth to the early 20th century, probably as many black Africans were forcibly taken across the Sahara, up the Nile valley, and across the Red Sea, as were transported across the Atlantic in a much shorter period. This work provides an introduction to this other slave trade.

West Africa is defined as the area south of the Sahara between the Atlantic and Lake Chad, encompassing the Sahel zone, tropical forests, and pasturelands. West Africans speak languages belonging to three major families: Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Afro-Asiatic, as well as the official languages, French and English, introduced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The language of scholarship and learning has been Arabic since the seventh century, when Arab merchants, soldiers, and missionaries came south and established major trade routes. Timbuktu became a center of commerce and...