Ajami script (Arabic adapted to African languages)
Escritura ajami (árabe adaptado a lenguas africanas)
- Date
- c. siglos XI-XVIII · confidence low
- Place
- Kano, Kano State, Nigeria
- Credited to
- Muslim scholars (Hausa, Fulani, Swahili, Mandinka)
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
An adaptation of the Arabic script with added signs to write Hausa, Fulani, Swahili, Wolof and other sub-Saharan languages. It enabled a vernacular literature — poetry, chronicles, law — centuries before the colonial printing press.
There is no single invention date: the oldest evidence for Sahelian languages is Quranic glosses of disputed dating, and dated Swahili texts begin in 1711 (the Kilwa letter of 1711, the Utendi wa Tambuka of 1728). Kano is used as a symbolic focus.
What it led to
- a literature of reform and resistance (Usman dan Fodio)
- preserved genealogies, chronicles and medical treatises
- the basis of Muslim literacy in the Sahel and on the Swahili coast