THE KITĀB AL-TURJUMĀN: A TWENTIETH-CENTURY HISTORIOGRAPHICAL (RE)MAPPING OF THE SOUTHERN SAHARA AND SAHEL

Abstract

AbstractNumerous tārīḫs (chronicles) were written in Timbuktu and its surrounding world from the seventeenth to the twentieth century CE. They constitute the Timbuktu tārīḫ tradition. The tārīḫs were embedded in different political projects, which became possible and necessary only under certain historical conditions. Hence, tārīḫs do not all belong to one single genre of historical literature. A chronicle that belongs to the Timbuktu tārīḫ tradition is the twentieth-century Kitāb al-turjumān. It sheds light on history writing in the Sahel during a crucial time, namely European colonial rule and the political realities it gave birth to thereafter. One of modern historians’ most important tasks is precisely to identify, describe, and analyse the different genres within the tārīḫ tradition. We attempt to do that in the case of the Kitāb al-turjumān.