Traces of the Medieval Islamic West in Modern East AfricaAndalusi and Maghribi Works in the Horn of Africa

Abstract

While the main vehicle for the spread of Andalusi and Maghribi intellectual pro-duction in space and time was the circulation of books and the mobility of schol-ars, scholars outside the Maghrib also played an important role by commenting on, expanding or refuting works produced in the Islamic West. In this paper I will concentrate on the presence of this sort of intellectual production in the Horn of Africa, using the materials catalogued for the project Islam in the Horn of Africa: A Comparative Literary Approach. Thousands of Arabic manuscripts and other types of writings from different locations, mainly produced between the 18th cen-tury and the 20thcentury in the Horn, were catalogued between 2014 and 2018, and have been classified according to genre, content, author, title, place of crea-tion, etc. I already discussed the presence of Andalusi and Maghribi works in the region in a 2015 paper on the Andalusi texts and authors found in the Arabic col-lection of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. Two years later, I came across a com-mentary to the work of the Andalusi author Ibn Farḥ/Faraḥ (d. 699 H/1300 CE), Qaṣīda ghazaliyya fī alqāb al-ḥadīth. The commentary, entitled Zawāl al-taraḥ,was written by Ibn Jamāʿa (d. 819 H/1416 CE), but in the Ethiopian manuscript it was attributed to an Ethiopian author. Since then I have been able to locate many more scholars and works from the medieval Islamic West after examining othercollections of manuscripts. My aim in this paper is to expand and revise the in-formation given in previous publications, asking what the particular conditions were that fostered the spread of such texts, and why they aroused interest within the Horn of Africa.