Digitizing Ibadi Libraries in Jerba and the Jebel Nafusa

November 07, 2024

Digitizing Ibadi Libraries in Jerba and the Jebel Nafusa

Episode 191

Digitizing Ibadi Libraries in Jerba and the Jebel Nafusa

In this podcast, Paul Love talks about his work digitizing Ibadi libraries and collections in Djerba and the Jebel Nafusa (northwest Libya). Through these projects, Love evokes broad debates within critical cultural heritage studies. He discusses challenges in terms of preservation and conservation, such as preventing human misuse and regulating human activity in relation to historical manuscripts and other documentation, while sharing anecdotes of successful projects that illuminate the relationships that can be built through these efforts. Throughout the podcast, he raises questions about who gains from digitizing resources, the strengths and challenges of "democratizing" information, and larger directions in digital humanities.

Paul Love is Associate Professor of North African, Middle Eastern, and Islamic History at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane (Morocco). He is also currently director of the Mohammed VI Library at the same institution. His research interests revolve around the history of Ibadi Muslim communities in Northern Africa, especially the social history of manuscripts and libraries. For the past several years, he has also worked in collaboration with colleagues in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and France to document and to protect manuscript collections across the region.

This podcast was recorded via Zoom on the 5^th of September 2023, at the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT).

Download the podcast: Feed / iTunes / Podbean / Spotify

We thank Hisham Errish, a music composer and an Oud soloist, for his interpretation of “When the Desert Sings” in the introduction and conclusion of this podcast.

Production and editing: Lena Krause, AIMS Resident Fellow at the Centre d’Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT).

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Bibliographie suggérée

Boujdidi, Ali, and Paul M. Love. "Preserving Endangered Archives in Jerba, Tunisia: The al-Bāsī Family Library Pilot Project." Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 3, no. 1 (2018): 215-219. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mns.2018.0009.

"The Jerba Libraries Project: Preserving Endangered Manuscripts and Early Arabic Print Materials in Private Libraries in Jerba, Tunisia (EAP1216)." https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP1216.

Kropf, Evyn. “Will that surrogate do? Reflections on material manuscript literacy in the digital environment from Islamic manuscripts at Michigan” Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 1 (Spring 2016): 52-70. available online.

Love, Paul M., Jr., Ali Boujdidi, and Imen Souid. "Exhausting but Not Boring—and Rather Exciting: The Process and Politics of a Documentation and Digitization Project in Jerba, Tunisia." Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 8, no. 2 (2023): 282-306. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mns.2023.a916131.

Mestaoui, Soufien and Paul Love. "Libraries of the Nafusa. A pilot project to document and digitize material heritage in the Jebel Nafusa, Libya", LibMed, ed., Sébastien Garnier (2023): https://libmed.hypotheses.org/146.

Pfeiffer, Athina and Mathias Ghyoot. "Beit El Bennani." Arsheef. 2024. https://www.arsheef.org/beit-el-bennani

Scheele, Judith. "Coming to Terms with Traditions: Manuscript Conservation in Contemporary Algeria." In Graziano Krätli and Ghislaine Lydon (ed.), Trans-Saharan Book Trade: Manuscript Culture, Arabic Literacy and Intellectual History in Muslim Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2011).

Rafii, Raha. "Digitizing Manuscripts and the Politics of Extraction." In Neil Brodie, Morag Kersel, and Josephine Munch Rasmussen (eds.), Variant Scholarship: Ancient Texts in Modern Contexts (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2023): 235–48.

Um, Nancy. "Yemeni Manuscripts Online: Digitization in an Age of War and Loss." Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 5, no. 1 (2020): 1-44. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mns.2020.0006.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

A manuscript text copied in 1904 by 'Ali b. Ramadan al-Nafusi, whose family relocated to Djerba with others from the Jebel Nafusa (Libya) following the Italian invasion of Ottoman Trablus al-Gharb in 1911. The manuscript is today owned by the descendants of the copyist, who have since changed their surname."

_____________________________________________________________________________________