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The writing systems of Africa refer to the current and historical practice of writing systems on the African continent, both indigenous and those introduced.In many African societies, history generally used to be recorded orally despite most societies having developed a writing script, leading to them being termed "oral civilisations" in contrast to "literate civilisations".
The manuscripts are written in Arabic and several African languages, in the Ajami script; this includes, but is not limited to, Fula, Songhay, Tamasheq, Bambara, and Soninke. [3] The dates of the manuscripts range between the late 13th and the early 20th centuries (i.e., from the Islamisation of the Mali Empire until the decline of traditional ...
Monastic tradition ascribes the gospel books to Saint Abba Garima, said to have arrived in Ethiopia in 494. [3] Abba Garima is one of the Nine Saints traditionally said to have come from Rome, and to have Christianized the rural populations of the ancient Ethiopian kingdom of Axum in the sixth century; and the monks regard the Gospels less as significant antiquities than as sacred relics of ...
The majority of manuscripts are in Ge'ez, the ancient liturgical language of Ethiopia. Catalogues and Online Resources. Catalogues of individual collections were written in the nineteenth century, with a key work for the disposition of Ethiopian MSS more widely prepared in 1995 and published by Robert Beylot and Maxime Rodinson. [4]
The best-known is the Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings" from the 14th century AD. [1] Another well-known book is the Garima Gospels, one of the oldest known surviving bibles in the world, written in Ge'ez around 500 AD. [2] A common theme during the colonial period is the slave narrative, often written in English or French for western audiences.
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Ajami (Arabic: عجمي , ʿajamī) or Ajamiyya (Arabic: عجمية , ʿajamiyyah), which comes from the Arabic root for 'foreign' or 'stranger', is an Arabic-derived script used for writing African languages, particularly Songhai, Mandé, Hausa and Swahili, although many other languages are also written using the script, including Mooré, Pulaar, Wolof, and Yoruba.
Old Nubian is one of the oldest written African languages and appears to have been adopted from the 10th–11th century as the main language for the civil and religious administration of Makuria. Besides Old Nubian, Koine Greek was widely used, especially in religious contexts, while Coptic mainly predominates in funerary inscriptions. [ 2 ]