webPulaaku
History. Culture. Islam

Louis Brenner
West African Sufi
The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal

University of California Press
Berkeley & Los Angeles. 1984. 215 p.

Abbreviations

ANM.

Archives Nationales du Mali, Bamako.

ANS.

Archives Nationales du Sénégal, Dakar.

BN.

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Arabic manuscripts cited are from the department of Manuscrits Orientaux.

CEDRAB.

Centre de Documentation et de Recherche Historique, Ahmad Baba, Timbuktu, Mali.

CHEAM.

Centre de Hautes Etudes sur l'Afrique et l'Asie Modernes, formerly the Centre de Hautes Etudes d'Administration Musulmane.

IFAN.

Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire.

JM.

jawahir al-Ma'aanii by 'Alii, Haraazim.

MAMMP.

Malian Arabic Manuscript Microfilming Project, Yale University.

Rimaah.

Rimaah hizb al-rahiim 'alaa nuhuur hizb al-rajiim by al-Hajj 'Umar b. Sa'id al-Fuutii.

TB.

Tierno Bokar, le Sage de Bandiagara by Amadou Hampaté Bâ and Marcel Cardaire.

VE.

Vie et Enseignement de Tierno Bokar, le Sage de Bandiagara by Amadou Hampaté Bâ

Note on orthography

The conventions of orthography employed in this book are necessarily something of a compromise between the demands of precise scholarship and simplification of presentation.
Proper names have been written according to their spoken versions using the system of transcription now common in West Africa. This results in Amadu rather than the French Amadou or the Arabic Ahmad, and in Umar rather than Oumar or 'Umar, etc. Precise Arabic transcriptions of names have been given when these will aid in identifying a personality in the Arabic literature.
The transcription of Fulfulde words also been simplified. This has resulted in the suppression of the symbols for the implosives: bh, dh, and yh. Therefore kabbe has been written as kabbe, and Fulbhe as Fulbe. Pullo, the singular form of Fulbe, has been retained. The c in Cerno and Cam is pronounced like ch in “church.”

Note. — Brenner's book was published in 1984, i.e. 18 years after the Bamako Conference of Experts that standardized the alphabet of the Pular/Fulfulde. Instead of ignoring it, UCLA Press should have complied with that UNESCO-recommended writing system. — Tierno S. Bah