The purpose of this essay is to provide a convenient introduction to the Arabic literature composed in Nigeria and the immediately adjoining areas in the period before the commencement of the Fulani jihād. That far-reaching movement of political and religious reform, initiated in 1804 under the leadership of Shehu Usuman dan Fodio (in Arabic texts ‘ b. Fūdī, often surnamed Nur al-zamdn and Mujaddid al-isldm) clearly marks off the division between the early and the modern period in the Arabic literature of this area. As is well known, the standard bibliographical work of reference, Brockelmann's encyclopaedic Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, however full its coverage of the writing of the Arabic-speaking world at large, represents only scantily the West African writers of Arabic.

Abī Manṣur al-Tha'ālibī devotes twenty pages of Yatīmat al-dahr to selections from al-qaṣīda al-sāsāniyya of Abū Dulaf al-Khazraji, the fourth century A.H. poet, who prided himself on being a member of the ‘world brotherhood’ of beggars and impostors known by the ‘royal’ name of banū sāsān. This group of people used a special jargon, munākāh, a considerable part of which is preserved in this poem of Abk Dulaf's.

Among the many unpublished works of the Shehu ‘Uthmān dan Fodio three have come to my notice which are of interest in that they illustrate the development of a tradition of reform which, having remote origins in the Almoravid movement of the eleventh century A.D. achieved literary expression in the Muslim empire of Songhay, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and which was continued in the Habe kingdoms almost three centuries later. They also illustrate the continuity of social custom in the Sudan over this period. The works are:

While engaged on Desert Locust Survey work, Mr. Walford came across the rock-drawings reproduced here, at a place he calls Thor es Sellim lying near the junction of the Wadi Kutne (Philby, Kutne) and the Wadi Hurjab (Philby, Harjab) which is clearly al-Hamdānī's Hirjāb, in the district (long. 42°–43°; lat. 19°–20°). The Wadi Hirjab is a tributary of the Wādī . The-drawings were discovered by Mr. Walford on the under side of an overhanging rock projecting into the wādī-bed, but his work unfortunately rendered it impossible for him to take more particulars than those given here. A second group of figures was found on another rock at a short distance from, and to the right of the first. As he states in a letter, ‘there were many groups of lettering of the fairly common South Arabian type on other rocks in the area, and perhaps more drawings’.

The chapter about innovations in mosques in al-TurtŪshī's Kitāb al-hawādith wa-'l-bida‘ contains a remarkable tradition about the building of the mosque of the Prophet in Medina which deserves special attention. This tradition, not included in the orthodox collections of hadith, is of considerable importance: it seems to belong to a large body of early traditions omitted by later collectors of hadīth, and it may throw some light on an attitude of the Prophet which was later ignored by Muslim scholars. This tradition may help us to understand the views and opinions of the early Muslim scholars.

This word is not very frequent in its occurrence, and its usage is restricted to the Vedic literature. It is obviously derived from pājas- which occurs more often and in usage is restricted to the ijgveda. The meaning assigned to the former is ‘belly’, and the latter has been variously interpreted as ‘brightness’, ‘form or appearance’, ‘shining form’.

Professor O. Maenchen kindly draws my attention to a paper by B. Staviskiy (Soobščeni'a Gostidarstvennogo Ermitaža, xx, 1961, 54–6) on a hitherto unpublished Kushan-type seal with a cursive inscription in Bactrian. It consists of a single word:

In the preface to his edition of the Kulliyāt i Qāsim i Anvār (printed at Tehran, 1337/1958–9, p. 112) Professor Sa‘‛d Nafīsī alludes to the difficulty he has encountered in establishing the text of four of the poems (pp. 406–8) which the Persian poet wrote, playfully as it seems, either completely or partly in Turkish. Although the editor had ten manuscripts at his disposal, he has to admit himself (in a footnote on p. 406) that the Turkish of the four poems in their present form is largely incomprehensible. He consoles his readers on this point with the promise of an improved edition of the Kulliyāt, proposed for some future date.

The Old Persian phrase artācā brazmaniy does not seem yet satisfactorily explained, in spite of numerous attempts, and although much headway has been made towards its complete elucidation.