Hausa Ajamī, the use of Arabic alphabet for non-Arabic language writing, has been developed as a form of discourse by Islamic clerics in Hausa city states since the large-scale introduction of Islam in the region through Malian cleric merchants in the 14th century.

Ajami (Arabic: عجمي ‎, ʿajamī) or Ajamiyya (Arabic: عجمية ‎, ʿajamiyyah), which comes from the Arabic root for 'foreign' or 'stranger', is an Arabic-derived script used for writing African languages, particularly Songhai, Mandé, Hausa and Swahili, although many other languages are also written using the script, including Mooré ...

Since the beginning of the 17th century, Hausa has been written with a version of the Arabic script known as ajami. Most of the early writing in Hausa was Islamic poetry or on Islamic themes. Ajami is still used, mainly to write poetry, but also for at least one newpaper and some books.

Hausa (/ ˈ h aʊ s ə /; [2] Harshen / Halshen Hausa listen ⓘ; Ajami: هَرْشٜىٰن هَوْسَا) is a Chadic language spoken primarily by the Hausa people in the northern parts of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin and Togo, and the southern parts of Niger, and Chad, with significant minorities in …

Feb 11, 2025 · Hausa. Hausa is an Afro-Asiatic language widely spoken throughout West Africa. In terms of numbers of speakers, Hausa rivals Swahili as the most important language on the African continent. It is the pre-eminent language of Northern Nigeria, and is widely spoken in the neighboring countries as well as in other parts of West Africa.

By producing Ajami readers in Hausa, Wolof, and Mandinka and a rich multimedia educational companion website, Project RIA provides a template and a methodology that can be replicated for other languages of Muslim Africa with dual literacy systems (Ajami and Latin script) such as Somali, Kanuri, Yoruba, Oromo, Tigrigna, Kiswahili, and Fula.

Readers in Ajami – funded by the U.S. Department of Education to develop specialized Ajami readers in Hausa, Wolof, and Mandinka (three major African languages with rich written Ajami literatures) with a multimedia companion website

HAUSA AJAMI LITERATURE AND SCRIPT: COLONIAL INNOVATIONS AND POST COLONIAL MYTHS IN NORTHERN NIGERIA NIKOLAI DOBRONRAVINE The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the modern view on Hausa Ajami literature and script is based on the colonial reinterpretation of the earlier written tradi tion.

The Arabic alphabet, when used for writing Hausa, is referred to as ajami. Learned people have written Hausa in ajami since at least the early 19th century, when it was pressed into use primarily to write Islamic poetry in praise of Allah and the Prophet and to expound Islamic doctrine.

Nov 6, 2024 · This writing system, called Ajami, dispelled the false notion peddled by European colonialists that large swaths of communities in sub-Saharan Africa were illiterate, with no native written languages of their own.