Pupil at Alpha Issa Kanta’s Koran school, with the wooden tablets on which verses of the Koran are copied in Arabic.

HOT OFF THE PRESSES!
The Final report for the British Library's Endangered Archives Project no 269, published here in an abridged version, with the permission of the BL.

Djenné, the Unesco World Heritage listed town with its magnificent mud mosque was historically an important Sub- Saharan centre of learning and of commerce founded about a thousand years ago. The town has potentially as rich a deposit of Arabic Manuscripts as Timbuktu. Even today a tradition of copying Arabic text continues in the numerous Koran schools of Djenné, where young boys, (talibés) learn to write on wooden tablets. There are about fifty Koran schools in Djenné, and many of the Marabous, or the Koran Masters in charge of these Koran Schools, are owners of manuscripts which have often been handed down from father to son through many generations. Some of the texts in these MSS are intended to be read aloud at the Koran schools at collective readings during the Islamic year. The Djenné Manuscripts also include secular works, and many collections are kept in private homes not connected to Koran Schools.