Precolonial manuscripts from the Gbodofu family collection in Ilọrin, western Nigeria, 18th to 19th century.

Precolonial manuscripts from the Gbodofu family collection in Ilọrin, western Nigeria, 18th to 19th century. 

Although the manuscript libraries of Timbuktu are by far the most famous of West Africa, there are many other locations in the region that were home to precolonial manuscript centers as well. Ilọrin, in western Nigeria, is one of those places. Ilọrin was originally founded in the 15th century as a Yoruba town, becoming a provincial military headquarters of the Oyo Empire and was ultimately incorporated into the Sokoto Caliphate as an Islamic emirate after the overthrow of its last non-Muslim Yoruba ruler Afọnja in the 1820’s. Ilọrin grew into a cosmopolitan city, home to a mixed population of warriors, scholars, traders, artisans and slaves, of many different origins. Fulbe, Hausa, Kanuri and Nupe migrants in particular introduced older scholarly traditions from adjacent regions to Ilọrin. The Gbodofu family, of Nupe origin, was one of these important 19th century scholarly families active in the city.  

Over the course of the 19th century, members of the Gbodofu family, as did other scholarly families in the city, produced manuscripts of their own, copied existing manuscripts and collected older manuscripts from other regions. The oldest dated manuscript known in Ilọrin for example, had been written in 1736, in Birnin Gazargamo, the capital of Bornu.

A wide range of topics are discussed in these manuscripts, which besides Quranic manuscripts, cover topics such as short texts and poems related to the basic doctrine of faith, prose texts and poems on ethics and admonition, works on prophetic tradition, Sufi texts, Arabic poetry including pre-Islamic poems as well as poems in praise of the Prophet and Sufi poetry, general didactics, Islamic law, arithmetic and numerology, prayers and texts on special qualities of certain suras of the Quran, and finally grammar.

Texts were written in the Arabic language, as well as in the Hausa and Nupe languages using adaptations of the Arabic script (Ajami). Even texts written in Yoruba ajami are known. Interestingly, the Gbodofu manuscripts were often written on Italian paper, imported via trans-Saharan trade routes.