Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T04:20:56.237Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nana Asma'u's Instruction and Poetry for Present-day American Muslimahs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Beverly Mack
Beverly Mack*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1995 I whined to Dave Henige about the difficulties involved in producing a 753-page volume of 383 pages of translated poetry (each including a work number, language of the original, source of the text, an historical introduction, and related text section) containing three orthographies, four languages, 947 footnotes, 241 pages of barely-arranged Arabic-script (but not all Arabic language) facsimiles, six maps, three glossaries, two works cited lists (published and unpublished), two appendices, and an index – all without a copy editor, and for a press demanding camera-ready copy from two novices an ocean apart who had access only to primitive email (remember CompuServe?) that would scramble poetic verse and jumble margins. When I finally took a breath, he smiled. Dave loves a challenge, and loves even more, passing one on. “Write about it,” he said. Suddenly I found myself signed up for the “Technical Problems in Preparing Text and Translations for Camera-Ready Copy” Historical Texts Panel at ASA's 1996 meetings. But that was not enough for Dave. He also expected an article, which I duly produced: “This Will (Not) Be Handled By the Press: Problems and Their Solution in Preparing Camera-Ready Copy for The Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo 1793-1864” for History in Africa 25 (1998). In fact, it was Dave who rained on our anticipated title, “The Complete Works…,” dryly inquiring, “How can you be sure?” So it was “Collected Works…” instead.

Type
Literacy, Feedback, and the Imagination of History
Information
History in Africa , Volume 38 , 2011 , pp. 153 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Badawi, Jamal, Gender Equity in Islam (Plainfield IN, 1995).Google Scholar
Barlas, Asma, Believing Women in Islam (Austin, 2002).Google Scholar
Boyd, Jean, “The Fulani Women Poets,” in: Admau, Mahdi, and Kirk-Greene, Anthony H.M. (eds.), Pastoralists of the West African Savanna (Manchester, 1986), 127–142.Google Scholar
Boyd, Jean, The Caliph's Sister (London, 1989).Google Scholar
Boyd, Jean and Mack, Beverly. The Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman dan Fodiyo 1793-1864 (East Lansing MI, 1997).Google Scholar
Curtis, Edward E. IV, Islam in Black America: Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African African Thought (Binghamton NY, 2002).Google Scholar
Gomez, Michael A., Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African American Muslims in the Americas (New York/Cambridge, 2005).Google Scholar
Mack, Beverly, “This Will (Not) Be Handled By the Press: Problems and Their Solution in Preparing Camera-Ready Copy for The Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo 1793-1864” History in Africa 25 (1998), 161–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mack, Beverly, and Boyd, Jean, One Woman's Jihad (Bloomington IN, 2000).Google Scholar
Marable, Manning, and Aidi, Hishaam D. (eds.) Black Routes to Islam (New York, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muhammad, Amir Nashid Ali, Muslims in America: Seven Centuries of History 1312-2000 (Beltsville MD, 2001).Google Scholar
Wadud, Amina, Qur'an and Woman (Oxford, 1999).Google Scholar