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US OPEN '13: A hole-by-hole look of Merion Golf Club
ARDMORE, Pa. – A hole-by-hole look at Merion Golf Club, site of the 113th U.S. Open to be played June 13-16:
No. 1, 350 yards, par 4: For guests, this can be one of the most intimidating opening tee shots in golf because the teeing ground is right next to the clubhouse patio, where the clinking of tea cups goes to dead silence when a player stands over his shot. Maybe not for the U.S. Open. This likely will be an iron off the tee, which leaves a wedge to the green. A sycamore tree to the right might keep players from trying to drive the green. A dozen bunkers line the final 100 yards into the green. It's a gentle opening hole.
No. 2, 556 yards, par 5: The fairway has been shifted to the right to tighten the landing area, and it brings in out-of-bounds to the right. The left side features some of the thickest rough on the course. For the second shot, players can try to reach the green or lay up short of a cross bunker about 35 yards in front of the green. The putting surface is relatively flat. A good tee shot brings birdie or even eagle into the equation.
No. 3, 256 yards, par 3: Two tee boxes will be used, measuring 219 yards and 256 yards. The green slopes severely from back left to front right, and it is surrounded by bunkers. One of them short and right of the green is one of the deepest at Merion. The toughest recovery is anything left of the green.
No. 4, 628 yards, par 5: The U.S. Open last year at Olympic didn't have a par 5 until the 16th hole. This year at Merion, the par 5s will be out of the way after four holes. It's the eighth time in nine years the U.S. Open has had a hole of at least 600 yards. A new tee box brings the fairway bunkers into play. It will be tough to keep the drive in the fairway because the landing area slopes from right-to-left. For the second shot, players can't see over a cross bunker. The green is fronted by a creek, increasing the risk of going for the green in two. The putting surface slopes from back left to front right.
No. 5, 504 yards, par 4: One of the most demanding driving holes, it bends hard to the left with a stream running down the left side of the entire hole, and the fairway slopes to the left. The approach can be bounced onto the green, which is the most severely sloped on the course. The worst place to be is right of the green, for that leads to exceptionally fast putts.
No. 6, 487 yards, par 4: Another long par 4 features a partially blind tee shot over a crest to a bowl-shaped fairway. The green is pitched from back left to the front, and the tricky part is a false front. The options are to run the approach onto the green or fly it to the middle of the green.
No. 7, 360 yards, par 4: This starts a stretch of five holes that are all under 375 yards and could be the place to pick up birdies. Most players will opt for a long iron off the tee to a partially blind, angled landing area. A tee shot too far to the right will flirt with out-of-bounds and overhanging trees. The large green is slightly elevated and has three levels, with a sharp drop-off to the left that will make for a tough up-and-down.
No. 8, 359 yards, par 4: This will be another long iron or fairway metal to a curved landing area with thick native grass on both sides of the fairway. That leaves a wedge to a small green protected by deep rough and a large bunker in the front. The green has several contours and slopes from back left to front right. Par is difficult for those missing the green. The tees could be moved up one round to give players a risky option of driving the green.
No. 9, 236 yards, par 3: This plays downhill to a green shaped like a kidney, with ragged bunkers on both sides and water in front and to the right of the green. It could be about a 6-iron for front hole locations, and long irons to carry the left bunker when the hole location is back and to the left.
No. 10, 303 yards, par 4: This has been a reachable par 4 dating to Bob Jones winning the 1930 U.S. Amateur during his Grand Slam season. Every player can reach the green, but the tee shot must be shaped severely from right-to-left to get around the corner. The safe play is a mid-iron to a narrow fairway. Any shot that misses the green to the left will wind up in deep fescue that could make it tough to get the next shot on the green.
No. 11, 367 yards, par 4: Another long iron off the tee, and utterly important to find the fairway, which drops from the tee box to create a blind shot and is flanked by Baffling Brook on the left. Anyone missing the fairway might have to play short of the brook, which hugs the front, right and rear of the teardrop-shaped green. This could be the ultimate birdie-or-bust hole at Merion.
No. 12, 403 yards, 4: This sharp dogleg right features a fairway that slopes severely to the right. The right side of the fairway leaves a more level lie, though it is framed by extremely penal rough on the right. The green slopes from back left to front right, making it tough to save par on any shot that is long or left.
No. 13, 115 yards, par 3: This defines the extreme difference at Merion — all the other par 3s are over 200 yards, and this is a sand wedge. The oval-shaped green might be the smallest on the course with challenging contours. The view of the green is obscured from the tee by a huge bunker in front of the green.
No. 14, 464 yards, par 4: This is where some players might find out if there is any rust on the driver. There are bunkers in the landing area and high native grass to the left. The second shot will be a mid-iron to a large, contoured green. Anything missing the green to the left could bounce off the closely mown knoll and flirt with out-of-bounds.
No. 15, 411 yards, par 4: Players can hit whatever they want off the tee, though it's an intimidating shot with a long iron or driver. The hole bends to the right, with three deep bunkers protecting the right side and out-of-bounds on the left. Going into the bunkers makes it tough to get onto the green. The putting surface features some of the most severe slopes at Merion.
No. 16, 430 yards, par 4: A fairway metal likely will be the choice on the famous "Quarry Hole" to stay short of the hazard. The green features a pronounced depression in the front night. This might be the last realistic chance at birdie.
No. 17, 246 yards, par 3: Players will face tee shots of 246 yards and 195 yards, a dramatic hole with amphitheater seating. The hole is slightly downhill to a green that has a deep ridge in the front that must be carried from the tee. The slopes feed balls to the back right portion of the green. Front hole locations are the most difficult and will be used with the forward tee.
No. 18, 521 yards, par 4: Despite hosting only four U.S. Opens, Merion has one of the most famous 18th holes because of Ben Hogan and his 1-iron on the 72nd hole of the 1950 U.S. Open. The drive is partially blind over the quarry to a landing zone that pitches downhill and steeply to the left at 300 yards. To lay back off the tee leaves a longer iron but a more level lie. The longer driver leaves a shorter iron and a downhill, side hill lie. The green is dome-shaped, and it's better to be long than short.


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Sting in Manchester...
Well, the night I had been waiting for so very long finally arrived. I hadn't seen Sting play live since 30 November 1996 so you can imagine how excited I was, and thanks to the advance ticket ordering service organised by Outlandos I managed to acquire two front row seats. After much hard work by the stage and instrument crew the stage was set and the atmosphere was exhilarating. All of a sudden there he was, looking younger than ever and full of energy. The set list was much the same as many concerts already reviewed, all the songs being performed to perfection with the whole band looking as though they were enjoying themselves as much as the audience certainly were. Sting's voice was sublime, Dominic super cool as usual, fingers flying, Manu doing an animated rap in French, Jason and Kipper both excelling on keyboard (I think Kenny would have approved) and Chris on trumpet. Chris was just something else - his contributions were elegant and even his quiet atmospheric parts were vital.
The high points for me where 'When The World Is Running Down' with a dynamic jamming session in the middle, 'Fields Of Gold' because it's my husband Mick's favourite and 'Fragile' which is absolutely exquisite. I am always thrilled and grieved at the same time when Sting performs this beautiful song - thrilled because it is one of my all time favourite pieces and grieved because it signals the conclusion to a superb evening. Can't wait till the next time!
(c) Carol Dewhurst for Sting.com


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Jeannetta J. Bauer
Monday, June 17, 2013 1:16 PM
Jeannetta Jean Bauer, 89, of Huntington, IN, died Monday, June 17, 2013, at 2:05 a.m. at The Heritage of Huntington.
Mrs. Bauer was a homemaker. She was a member of SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, in Huntington, the Rosary Sodality, Daughters of Isabella and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary.
She was born Aug. 1, 1923, in Greenwood to Phillip Henry and Jennie Pearl Perkins Possman. She married Donald J. Bauer on Dec. 1, 1945, at SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, in Huntington. He preceded her in death on Jan. 10, 1989.
Survivors include a son, Richard (Robin) Bauer, of Huntington; a daughter-in-law, Ann Bauer-Myers; 10 grandchildren, Tina Feller, April Bauer, Fawn White, Jeremy Bauer, Tammy Meinert, Trina Kramer, Doug Kramer, Kelsey Bauer, D.J. Bauer, and Jennifer Vigar; and 14 great-grandchildren.
Calling is Tuesday, June 18, 2013, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at McElhaney-Hart Funeral Home, 715 N. Jefferson St., Huntington. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held on Wednesday, June 19, 2013, at 10 a.m., with calling one hour prior to Mass, at SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, 860 Cherry St., Huntington. Rev. Ron Rieder will officiate.
Memorial gifts may be made to Parkview Hospice in care of McElhaney-Hart Funeral Home, 715 N. Jefferson St., Huntington, IN 46750.
Online condolences may be made at www.mcelhaneyhartfuneralhome.com.


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West African Manuscripts in Arabic and African Languages and Digital Preservation
Summary and Keywords
West African manuscripts are numerous and varied in forms and contents. There are thousands of them across West Africa. A significant portion of them are documents written in Arabic and Ajami (African languages written in Arabic script). They deal with both religious and nonreligious subjects. The development of these manuscript traditions dates back to the early days of Islam in West Africa, in the 11th century. In addition to these Arabic and Ajami manuscripts, there have been others written in indigenous scripts. These include those in the Vai script invented in Liberia; Tifinagh, the traditional writing system of the Amazigh (Berber) people; and the N'KO script invented in Guinea for Mande languages. While the writings in indigenous scripts are rare less numerous and widespread, they nonetheless constitute an important component of West Africa's written heritage. Though the efforts devoted to the preservation of West African manuscripts are limited compared to other world regions, interest in preserving them has increased. Some of the initial preservation efforts of West African manuscripts are the collections of colonial officers. Academics later supplemented these collections. These efforts resulted in important print and digital repositories of West African manuscripts in Africa, Europe, and America. Until recently, most of the cataloguing and digital preservation efforts of West African manuscripts have focused on those written in Arabic. However, there has been an increasing interest in West African manuscripts written in Ajami and indigenous scripts. Important West African manuscripts in Arabic, Ajami, and indigenous scripts have now been digitized and preserved, though the bulk remain uncatalogued and unknown beyond the communities of their owners.
Keywords: Ajami, Arabic, archive, digital, indigenous, Islamic, manuscript, preservation, script, West Africa
- Without writers, the charted paths would fade away.
- Without orators, knowledge would be less widespread.
- Without lecturers, the masses would be snoring.
- And they would never wake up until it is too late.
—Muusaa Ka, Wolof Ajami poet, 1889–1963
Besides sources that result from the colonial encounter (those in European languages and African languages written in Roman script),1 the overwhelming majority of West African manuscripts uncovered to date consist of documents written in Arabic and Ajami (African languages written with the modified Arabic script). The term "Ajami" comes from the Arabic word ʿajam, which initially denoted improper Arabic, foreign, or Persian. In the 21st century, the term references literary traditions in various languages spanning Africa but also including Persian, Pashto, and Urdu as well as the historical traditions of Islamic Spain (al-Andalus).2
West African Arabic and Ajami manuscripts resulted from the spread of Islam in West Africa. Arabic has served as the language of the Muslim intelligentsia since the advent of Islam in the continent. It served as "the Latin of Africa," to borrow Hunwick's words, over the past millennium as Latin did in Europe in the Medieval era.3 Thus, West African Muslims wrote most of their manuscripts in Arabic and Ajami scripts derived from it. Just like early Nabataean Arabs modified the ancient Aramaic script to write their Arabic tongue, African Muslims modified the Arabic script to devise Ajami orthographies for their own languages.4
Though the scripts used in many manuscripts from Mali, Senegal, and the Gambia show influences of the Maghribī script, some recent evidence suggests there are other distinct regional scripts such as the Kanawī and Barnāwī scripts used in northern Nigeria.5 Besides the rich corpus of Arabic manuscripts uncovered in West Africa, there is a large body of Ajami manuscripts in Dagbani (Dagomba), Fulfulde (the Eastern variety of Fula spoken in Nigeria), Fuuta Jalon (the Guinea variety referred to as "Pular"), Hausa, Kanuri, Mande languages (Eastern Maninka, Western Mandinka, Jula, Jakhanke, Soninke, Susu, and Bambanankan), Songhay, Tamasheq, Wolof, Yoruba, Zarma, and Zenaga.6 Ajami manuscripts complement Africa's Arabic sources. Together they constitute the "Islamic Library of West Africa," to borrow Ousmane Kane's words.7 However, the phrase "Islamic Library of West Africa" should not be taken to mean that West African manuscripts only deal with Islamic religious subjects. The phrase is simply intended to reflect the West African Arabic and Ajami manuscripts' authors' Muslim identity, which they often highlight in their works with opening and closing Islamic doxologies.
West African manuscripts in Arabic and Ajami are not substantially different in form and content from those found in other parts of the Muslim world. While they flourished in religious contexts and contain significant religious materials in poetry and prose, they equally deal with various secular and intellectual matters relevant to the communities of the scholars who wrote them. The existing print and digital collections held in Africa, Europe, and the Americas offer unique insights into the secular and religious contents of West African manuscripts, the intellectual traditions that have produced them since the 11th century, and their significance in the studies on sub-Saharan Africa across the humanities and social sciences.
West African manuscripts deal with a range of religious and nonreligious subjects. They deal with Islamic sciences and rituals, incantations, literature, poetry, Sufism, theology, translations and commentaries of the Quran, and jurisprudence. They include official correspondence, private letters, business records and discussions on labor and agriculture, slave trade and freedom, gold and currency, and divination and geomancy. Some deal with Arabic language and grammar, African languages, dialectology, logic, astrology, law, politics, pharmacology and medicine, alchemy, philosophy, ethics, sociology, history, diplomacy between European and African rulers in the pre-colonial era, political economy, chemistry, geography, government legislations, and astronomy.
Archives with West African Manuscripts in Africa
Important collections of manuscripts in Arabic and Ajami dating from the pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial eras are found in many West African countries, including in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.8 Thus, though many examples are from Senegambia, there are rich and equally important manuscript collections in many other West African communities. Of all the manuscripts that bear testimony to the rich intellectual written traditions that emerged in West Africa, those in Timbuktu, Mali, are obviously the best known, thanks to the pioneering work of John Hunwick and other subsequent scholars, and the media coverage of both their significance and endangered nature. Some of the most significant Timbuktu manuscripts are kept in public and private libraries. These include the Institut de Hautes Études et de Recherches Islamiques Ahmed Baba (IHERIAB) and the Bibliothèque Mamma Haidara de Manuscripts led by Abdel Kader Haidara. Haidara leads the nongovernmental organization (NGO) called Association pour la Sauvegarde et la Valorisation des Manuscrits pour la Défense de la Culture Islamique (SAVAMA-DCI), which collects, catalogues, and preserves manuscripts from Malian libraries and private collections.9 Ségou, Gao, Kayes, Mopti, Kidal, and the city of Djenné in Mali have many Islamic manuscripts.10
In Niger, the Institut de Recherche en Sciences Sociales (IRSH) at the Université Abdou Moumouni in Niamey holds a collection of over three thousand manuscripts produced by local Muslim scholars. Some of them are written in Arabic and in Hausa and Tamasheq Ajami.11 Nigeria is another West African country with rich collections of manuscripts. The University of Ibadan, the National Archives of Kaduna, the Lugard Hall Library in Kaduna, the Northern History Research Scheme of Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, the Arewa House in Kaduna, and the Jos Museum host collections of manuscripts.12 These archives include Arabic, Hausa, and Fulfulde Ajami manuscripts in poetry and prose produced by local scholars. The manuscripts deal with a variety of subjects, including jurisprudence, logic, astrology, pharmacology, alchemy, grammar, philosophy, ethics, correspondence, sociology, political economy, Sufism, chemistry, history, geography, Islamic sciences, and government legislations and treaties.13 At the University of Ghana, there is a collection of photocopies of Islamic manuscripts written by local scholars.14
In addition to these collections, other West African manuscripts gathered by European colonial officers such as Henri Gaden (1867–1939) and Gilbert Vieillard (1899–1940) are held at the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Dakar, Senegal. The IFAN collections include the Fonds Gilbert Vieillard, Fonds Gaden, Fonds Shaykh Muusaa Kamara, Fonds Philip Curtin, and Fonds Amar Samb. These collections contain manuscripts written by some renowned West African scholars. The manuscripts encompass works of Fuuta Jalon scholars from Guinea and those of their Senegambian colleagues.15 The IFAN archives hold manuscripts in Arabic and Ajami of the famous Fulani scholar, Shaykh Muusaa Kamara (1864–1945), and works of one of the most renowned Wolof scholars of the 19th century, Xaali Majaxate Kala (1835–1902, also known as Khaly or Cadi Madiakhaté Kala in French sources).16
Bibliothèque Cheikhoul Khadim in Touba, Senegal (locally known as Daaray Kaamil), founded by Abdul Ahad Mbakke (1914–1989), the third caliph of the Murīdiyya Sufi order, holds a large number of Arabic manuscripts, including numerous decorated copies of the Quran and poems of Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba (1853–1927), the founder of the Murīdiyya. Many of the manuscripts were produced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the early days of the Murīdiyya. The manuscripts include colorful illuminations, calligraphies, and geometric decorative patterns, which Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba emphasized in his pedagogy (see Figure 2).17
The aesthetic tradition of producing handwritten copies of the Quran with colorful illuminations, geometric decorative figures, and calligraphies endures in some Murīd schools in Senegal. Many of the manuscripts at Bibliothèque Cheikhoul Khadim in Touba are kept in colorful decorated leather bookcases. The illuminations, decorative arts, and leather bookcases exemplify some aesthetic dimensions of the "Ajamization" of Islam in West Africa, that is, the blending of Islamic arts with local African traditions. Ajamization of Islam transcends the orthographic modifications of the Arabic script made by Muslims who live beyond the geographical boundaries of Arabia. It extends to the various tangible and subtle enrichments of Islamic traditions by local ones reflected in the texts and practices of Muslims around the world, as the faith adapts to new aesthetic, epistemological, cultural, linguistic, political, and social ecologies. It does not assume a loss of value of a pristine Islamic faith and its traditions outside of Arabia that the concept of "syncretism" usually suggests. Naturally, when scrutinized, West African manuscripts in Arabic and Ajami reflect facets of Ajamization.18
In addition to the large corpus of Arabic manuscripts at the library written by Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba and his followers since the birth of the movement, there are plenty of other Arabic and Ajami manuscripts in the homes of the followers of the Murīdiyya. There are equally numerous manuscripts in the homes of members of the Tijāniyya and Qādiriyya followers in Senegambia. Some of the oldest and most precious collections of West African manuscripts are found in Boutilimit, Chinguetti, Nima, Wadan, Walata, and Tchitt in Mauritania. The oldest work found in the Mauritanian manuscripts dates back to the 10th century and is written in gazelle skin.19 The world's only known complete manuscript of a work on grammar by the Spanish-Arab physician and philosopher Ibn Rushd, known as Averroës, was found in Boutilimit in Mauritania.20 Institut Mauritanien de Recherche Scientifique (IMRS) in Nouakchott, Mauritania, holds about seven thousand items in its collection.21
While West African manuscripts in many public archives are generally accessible to scholars, access to some is restricted. For example, contrary to the intent of its founder, Abdul Ahad Mbakke, access to the manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Cheikhoul Khadim in Touba is restricted. The library is now treated as more of a "devotional library" open to the faithful, curious visitors, and individuals with networks within the community than a "didactic library" designed for study and research. Many learned West African Muslim families possess old and new manuscripts, which they sometimes guard jealously as part of their family heritages. Some of these West African manuscripts have circulated in the region for centuries because many Muslim scholars and their students have traveled throughout the region for family, peripatetic learning, or commercial reasons. Thus, Fuuta Jalon manuscripts produced in Guinea can be found in Senegambia, Mali, and in other West African countries. The circulation of manuscripts also results from the relocation of some scholars to new areas in the region. More recently, the manuscript collection efforts of organizations such as the Ahmad Baba Institute and the Mamma Haidara Library of Timbuktu brought together manuscripts from different parts of Mali and beyond, including from Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Senegal, and Mauritania.22
Besides these West African manuscripts, the Arabic and Ajami works that Hunwick labeled "market editions" (i.e., works that have been reproduced by offsetting manuscripts in some way and enclosed in paper covers for sale in the market place) circulate in the region. As Hunwick notes, these market editions, which generally consist of lithographic, photographic, or xerographic reproductions of manuscript copies destined for sale in market places, form a half-way house between the manuscript tradition and printing proper.23 Because these market editions circulate widely in the region, Fuuta Jalon market edition booklets in Arabic and Ajami produced by Guinean scholars can be purchased in Bamako, Mali, just as a colorful decorated Hausa copy of the Quran made in Kano, Nigeria, can be purchased in a local market in Bamako, Mali.24
The bulk of West African manuscripts remain unidentified and uncatalogued. Due to their usual poor preservation conditions—the climate, fire, termites, water, mice, and other hazards—the oldest and most valuable ones in public and private collections are often in danger of being lost. Additionally, conflicts in the region have put some manuscripts in danger, as exemplified by those destroyed in 2013 in Timbuktu by members of the militant Islamist group Ansar Dine. Thus, the large-scale efforts of the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), a joint initiative between the British Library and ARCADIA, must be commended for funding several West African manuscript digital preservation projects. The EAP's recently published volume illustrates the significance and research potential of the manuscripts preserved through the program.25
Archives with West African Manuscripts in Europe and the Americas
Besides the collections of West African manuscripts held in archives in Africa, there are other important ones in a few European countries and America. Those in Europe include the manuscripts in the Fonds Archinard and Fonds Gironcourt. Louis Archinard (1850–1932) created the former. His collection contains documents of the Fuuta Tooro Tijāniyya leader, Al-Hāj Umar Taal (1797–1864), who led a jihad of the sword in West Africa. The manuscripts were confiscated during the takeover of Ségou, Mali, in 1890.26 The French colonial civil agricultural engineer George de Gironcourt (1878–1960) created the latter. His collection contains 142 manuscripts he gathered in several West African countries at the beginning of the 20th century. It includes one of the oldest copies of the 17th-century Tārīkh al-Sudān.27
The French ethnographer and colonial administrator Maurice Delafosse (1870–1926) also documented Fuuta Tooro Arabic manuscripts.28 The French colonial archives at Aix-en-Provence contain a few scattered but important pages of West African texts. Though most of the archives are in French, some documents in Arabic and Ajami are included. The archives contain a bilingual French-Wolof Ajami treaty negotiation of 1817 between the king of France, Louis XVIII, and his Senegambian counterpart, the king of Bar. The document begins with the common Muslim opening doxology in Arabic and continues in Wolofal, the name for the Wolof Ajami writing system. Though the document starts with an Islamic formula, the content is not religious but purely secular. It is a business negotiation between two sovereign rulers concerning the appropriate payment for a construction of a trading post in the northern bank of the Gambia River. This treaty negotiation is the oldest Wolof Ajami document uncovered in Senegambia to date. It shows that Wolof Ajami once served as a valid diplomatic language in pre-colonial Senegambia, though its practitioners have now been treated as illiterate in official literacy statistics subsequent to the colonial experience.29
Besides the archives in France, a few European institutions in England, Germany, and Ireland hold some West African manuscripts. The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London maintains old Kanem Bornu manuscripts. Leipzig University Library; the Centre for Manuscript Cultures at Universität Hamburg in Germany; and Trinity College at the University of Durbin, Ireland, hold some West African manuscripts in their collections.
The largest print archive of West African manuscripts in North America is the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University. It hosts manuscripts in four collections: the 'Umar Falke Collection, the John Paden Collection, the John Hunwick Collection, and the University of Ghana Collection. The manuscripts in these collections include original copies of the Quran, market editions, and other documents. Most of the manuscripts are in Arabic, though some are written in Hausa, Fulfulde, Wolof, Dagbani, and Gonja Ajami scripts, and in other unidentified languages. The manuscripts include works of authors from Northern Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal produced in the late 19th and early 20th century. The Paden Collection includes works by Shaykh Uthman Dan Fodio (1754–1817) and some of his family members. The West African manuscripts at the Herskovits Library deal with a broad range of subjects, including poetry, Arabic grammar, history, theology, Sufism, law, astronomy, numerology, and medicine and healing. They include chronicles, lists of kings and imams, and letters that provide insights on the history of Northern Ghana.30 Additionally, Yale University holds a collection of market editions of Hausa, Fulfulde, and Wolof Ajami materials. The collection includes The Book of Genesis in Fulfulde Ajami used by Christian missionaries for proselytizing purposes.31
The America's Islamic Heritage Museum and Cultural Center in Washington, DC, holds some important West African Islamic manuscripts written in Arabic. Selected pages of these manuscripts are exhibited at the America's Islamic Heritage Museum and Cultural Center. Some African American private collectors also hold important West African manuscripts. While enslaved Africans in America produced some of their manuscripts, they collected or purchased others from Africa. One African American private collector who holds significant West African manuscripts is Baba Kenya, the head of the Living History Heritage Project.32 West African manuscripts produced by slaves in Arabic and Ajami are attested in Brazil and Trinidad.33 These manuscripts are primarily documents produced by enslaved Africans who acquired literacy skills in Africa prior to their enslavement. Some of these materials are held in educational institutions and in public and private collections (see Figures 5 and 6).34
Digital Preservation of West African Manuscripts
Just as digital preservation has now become the optimal means to preserve and transmit West African manuscripts to future generations, microfilm was once regarded as the best method for the same purpose from the 1960s to the 1990s. The microfilm projects focused primarily on the preservation of West African manuscripts in Arabic. They include the project created at the Center of Arabic Documentation at the University of Ibadan, the Malian Arabic Manuscript Microfilm Project (MAMMP), the Oriental Manuscript Resource (OMAR) project, and the Arabic Manuscript Management System (AMMS).
The Centre of Arabic Documentation at the University of Ibadan that John Hunwick started in 1963, when he served as a lecturer in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, made microfilms of Arabic manuscripts in the 1960s. However, the microfilms are currently destroyed.35 The MAMMP, which was created in the 1970s at Yale University, holds a collection of Arabic manuscripts. The microfilm consists of literary, religious, and historical manuscripts; genealogies; biographies; and local histories primarily dealing with Mali, but also related to Senegal.36 OMAR is a digital repository that was created at the University of Freiburg in collaboration with the Information Technology Center of the University of Tübingen in Germany. It has in its database about 2,500 Arabic manuscripts from Mauritania in full text (totaling 134, 000 images), along with the corresponding bibliographical metadata. The images were based on microfilms made by Rainer Oßwald, Ulrich Rebstock, and Tobias Mayer in Mauritania between 1979 and 1997.37
The AMMS, which has been expanded and renamed as the West African Arabic Manuscript Database (WAAMD), has been one of the most significant projects in the documentation and preservation of West African Arabic manuscripts. Charles Stewart created the project. He had produced important microfilms of manuscripts from Mauritania in the late 1980s. These microfilms, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, contain, among other things, a copy of a text and commentary on the Quran and correspondence concerning the acquisition of the text, and over two thousand 19th-century Arabic manuscripts collected from several Mauritanian libraries. The manuscripts in the microfilms deal with a variety of subjects, including literature, law, religion, Arabic language, and history. Subsequently, the microfilms were digitized and placed online.38 The WAAMD is now a unique Arabic-English bilingual database that provides descriptions of the collection of Arabic manuscripts in Mauritania, including descriptions of more than 19,000 manuscripts in eleven different collections. Its descriptions continue to expand with the collaboration of the Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation.39 The WAAMD system has been used to catalogue several other West African collections, including the manuscripts at the IMRS and Northwestern University.40
Digital preservations of West African manuscripts have superseded microfilms since 2000. Recently, several digital projects have focused on the preservation of West African manuscripts. These include the projects at the Library of Congress (LOC), Hill Museum and Manuscripts Library (HMML), African Online Digital Library (AODL), and School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The LOC's digital copies were made in 2003 from the Mamma Haidara Library in Timbuktu and Cheikh Zayni Baye Library in Boujbeha, Mali. Some of the manuscripts exhibited at the LOC date from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The digital copies at the HMML were made between 2013 and 2016 from the collection of SAVAMA-DCI. The manuscripts at the LOC and HMML's digital repositories deal with an array of subjects, including arithmetic, astrology, labor and agriculture, biographies and commerce, disease and cure, ethics and peace, genealogies, gold and currency, Islamic saints, laws of inheritance, literary works, local histories, philosophy, pillars of the Islamic faith, politics in the Songhay empire, slavery, and Sufism.41
The AODL-hosted projects entitled "Saint-Louis: Religious Pluralism in the Heart of Senegal" and "Failed Islamic States in Senegambia" contain some documents in French and Arabic produced by northern Senegalese Muslims, including a digital copy of an excerpt from the famous Fuuta Tooro Fula (Pulaar) Ajami poem of 1,200 verses written by a follower of Al-Hāj Umar Taal, Mohammadou Aliou Tyam. Tyam who lived in the Umarian capital of Ségou, Mali but returned to Fuuta Tooro, Senegal after the French conquest of Ségou in 1890, wrote the poem between 1890 and 1899.42 Additionally, the AODL holds digital copies made through project EAP 231 (Social History of the Gambia: Rescuing an Endangered Archive, Police and Court Records), which was funded by the EAP in 2010. This project digitized important manuscript collections in English and Arabic. The collections include police records in English as well as records of the Gambian Muslim court in Arabic generated between 1927 and 1954. The court records reflect the struggles between elders and young people, elites and commoners, men and women. As the project leaders note, these court records are one of the few places where historians can hear Gambian women's voices.43 At the SOAS, some scholars have created a digital repository that includes over three thousand folios from northern Nigeria, multiple copies of the Quran, and seven other bilingual Arabic and Old Kanembu texts. The SOAS collection spans a period of about five hundred years.44
More recently, the British Library and ARCADIA have deployed remarkable efforts to digitally preserve West African manuscripts. The British Library currently holds the largest digital collection of West African manuscripts. The EAP has funded numerous digitization projects that have preserved a variety of colonial and noncolonial archives across Africa. These include the following West African digital preservation projects: (1) EAP 087: Northern Nigeria: Precolonial Documents Preservation Scheme; (2) EAP 231 (Social History of the Gambia: Rescuing an Endangered Archive, Police and Court Records; (3) EAP 334: Digital Preservation of Wolof Ajami Manuscripts of Senegal; (4) EAP 387: Safeguarding Fulfulde Ajami Manuscripts of Nigerian Jihad Poetry by Shaykh Uthman Dan Fodio and Contemporaries; (5) EAP 488: Major Project to Digitise and Preserve the Manuscripts of Djenné, Mali; and (6) EAP 535: Northern Nigeria: Precolonial Documents Preservation Scheme.45
These digital projects have preserved thousands of pages of West African manuscripts written in Arabic and in Fulfulde, Hausa, and Wolof Ajami scripts produced between the 18th and the 20th century. The Nigerian manuscripts include pre-colonial correspondence of the leaders of Kano and Katsina; poems of Shaykh Uthman Dan Fodio and his daughter, Nana Asma'u (1793–1864); writings of Uthman Dan Fodio's main companions; local chronicles; legal documents; and religious literature. Some of the documents reflect the economic and political history of the Sokoto caliphate and British rule in Northern Nigeria (see Figure 7).46
Because Ajami sources have traditionally been neglected in the studies on sub-Saharan Africa and in preservation efforts of West African manuscripts, despite the fact that many African Muslim scholars have been bilingual or multilingual and have produced works of equal importance in Arabic and their local Ajami writing systems, the African Ajami Library (AAL) was founded in 2011 at Boston University in order to focus on the digital preservation and the study of Africa's Ajami manuscripts. The goals set by the AAL team include complementing the academic works on sub-Saharan Africa based on Arabic and colonial sources by studying, preserving digitally, and making freely available Ajami manuscripts from all the regions of the continent, so that Ajami documents are no longer treated as footnotes but as major African sources of knowledge. AAL currently holds a copy of the Wolof Ajami materials digitized through the EAP 334 project funded by the EAP in 2010.47
The AAL's Wolof collection consists of Ajami manuscripts of the Murīdiyya Sufi order of Senegal. It holds 5,494 pages of Ajami materials written by members of the Sufi order (see Figure 8). The manuscripts encompass copies of works by four Ajami master poets: Moor Kayre (1869–1951), Samba Jaara Mbay (1870–1917), Mbay Jaxate (1875–1954), and Muusaa Ka (1889–1963). These four bilingual scholars initiated the Ajami poetic tradition of the Murīdiyya in order to disseminate among the masses the teachings of their leader, Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba (1853–1927).
The four Ajami poets composed numerous poems in the lingua franca of Wolof. They were designed to be read, recited, and chanted as a mass communication strategy in order to convey to Wolof masses the ethos of the Murīdiyya. These works continue to be used in Murīd communities at home and abroad. The manuscripts in the collection include satirical, polemical, and protest poetry, as well as biographies, eulogies, genealogies, talismanic resources, therapeutic medical manuals, historical records, speeches, instructions on codes of conduct, and a translation with commentaries of the Quran in Wolof Ajami script.48
Additionally, AAL hosts 1,071 digital pages of Hausa Ajami texts (mostly market editions) currently in use in northern Nigeria. Besides the religious subjects in the Hausa collection, the documents include local recipes for wealth, bravery, popularity, good heath, protection from evil spirits, reconciling disputing couples, enhancing women's and men's sexual performance, winning court cases, divination and geomancy, and diagnosis and medicinal treatments of various illnesses. Also included are the Book of Genesis in Hausa Ajami used by Reverend Dantine Garba Malumfashi and his congregation since 2006 and an Ajami version of Muammar Gaddafi's Green Book in which he discusses his social and political vision and rejects capitalism and modern liberal democracy.49
Another collection of 1,216 pages of Ajami materials in Fuuta Jalon Fula (Pular) collected from Guinean immigrant communities in Dakar, Senegal, has been added to the AAL repository. This Ajami collection contains manuscripts, excerpts from a notebook for freights and money transfers of Fuuta Jalon immigrants in Dakar to their relatives in different parts of Guinea, a shopkeeper's notebook with the debts of his customers, a recipe for successful hunting, and a Fula dialectology treatise dealing with the dialects of the Fula language. These materials show that Ajami is a living tradition among the Fuuta Jalon Fula.50
The AAL team is currently working on the preservation of Mandinka Ajami manuscripts of Senegambia. One fascinating Mandinka Ajami manuscript to be included in the AAL's upcoming Mandinka Ajami collection is a poem digitized from the private library of Imam Lamine Cissé. The poem reflects the belief in the binary potency of words in Senegambia. Because of World War II's negative consequences in his community in Sédhiou in southern Senegal, Mamadou Cissé (1897–1993), the father of Imam Lamine Cissé, who was a revered Quranic teacher, wrote the Ajami poem in 1942 as an imprecation designed to cause the death of Adolf Hitler (whom he called Ikileer) and the destruction of his forces. The poem was Mamadou Cissé's war effort.
The poem was an act of danko (from the verb dankaro), the Mandinka word for unleashing of the negative power of words to bring misfortune to an opponent. The word contrasts with duwa ("supplication" from the Arabic du'ā'), which entails the release of the positive energy embedded in words in order to bring blessings or fortune to people. This belief in the binary potency of words is not specific to the Mandinka people. In the Wolof society, the same belief is reflected in the contrastive meaning between the words ñaan (invocation for blessings or fortune) and móolu (cursing for misfortune). Because of the belief in the positive and negative potency of words, children are socialized in many communities in Senegambia to be respectful and avoid offending parents, elders, strangers, and learned and religious people—who are all believed to have the power to use words for both constructive and destructive purposes.
Beyond the West African Ajami manuscripts, an important set of sixty-eight Sorabe manuscripts (Malagasy Ajami) in PDF files (totaling 6,140 pages) dealing with traditional Malagasy Islamic medicine and other unstudied subjects donated by the French anthropologist, Phillip Beaujard, and digital images of Hausa Ajami texts collected by Nikolai Dobronravin will be added to the AAL repository.51
Africa's Sources of Knowledge Digital Library (ASK-DL) at Harvard University has also contributed to the preservation of West African Ajami manuscripts. ASK-DL holds over four hundred pages of recently produced Ajami texts in Wolof, two varieties of Fula (Pular or the Guinean Fuuta Jalon variety and Pulaar/Tukulóor or the Senegalese Fuuta Tooro variety), and Mandinka. The Wolof materials in ASK-DL encompass a notebook with the business transactions of a Wolof shopkeeper and various other manuscripts produced by followers of the Murīdiyya, Tijāniyya, and Laayeen Sufi orders of Senegal. They also include the Mbakke Madina family genealogy, which indicates the first member of Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba's Fulani family who became fully Wolofized and spoke Wolof as a mother tongue. The manuscripts contain a speech that Sëriñ Abdul Ahad Mbakke delivered in 1976 and the last poignant letter a son received from his father before he passed away. The ASK-DL collections contain a manuscript that introduces Ajami users to Arabic grammar, a medicinal manual, and a tribute to the mother of Sëriñ Mustafaa Si, a major Senegalese Tijāniyya figure.52
The Pular materials in ASK-DL include a letter sent by a Fuuta Jalon man who lived in the southern city of Ziguinchor, Senegal, to family members in Côte d'Ivoire to keep them updated about his life and the wedding of his sister.53 These Ajami texts are excellent illustrations of the secular and transnational dimension of Ajami literacy in West Africa. The Fuuta Tooro Ajami materials in ASK-DL were collected in the northern city of Saint-Louis, Senegal. They include a poem in which the writer, a Quranic teacher who lives in Saint-Louis, recalls his Quranic school years and praises his former classmates. The Fuuta Tooro Pulaar Ajami materials include excerpts from a bookseller's record book, which contains an inventory of the books in his shop, their prices, and other financial transactions.54
The Mandinka materials in ASK-DL include a list of customers who sought Islamic divination services (Arabic: Istikhāra) from late Imam Nimbaly Thiam of Casamance, Senegal, who died in the 2015 Mina stampede in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The material documents the names of his male and female customers for a period of over forty years. The list of customers reflects the religious and ethnic diversity of his community. His clients included Muslims, Christians, and followers of indigenous religions from the ethnic groups of the southern Casamance region of Senegal. The Ajami manuscripts from Mandinka scholars in the ASK-DL repository include excerpts from an anthology of devotional poems with commentaries in Arabic.55
Besides the digital preservation efforts discussed above, some West African religious organizations have recently begun to digitize some of the Arabic and Ajami works of their religious leaders (especially works in market editions) for proselytizing purposes. The creators of these digital archives use the Internet for wider dissemination of the teachings of their religious leaders and movements. Such websites include two digital repositories created by the followers of Murīdiyya. Joseph Hill compiled the texts in the digital repository of the Senegalese Tijāniyya branch of Shaykh Ibrahima Ñas (1900–1975). These digital repositories include market edition copies of devotional materials in Arabic and Ajami, published translations in French of some of the Arabic works of religious leaders, and some Latin script transcriptions of some Ajami texts.56
Finally, though the traditions that generated Islamic manuscripts in Arabic and Ajami are older and more extensive, there are other manuscripts written in indigenous scripts in the Western region of Africa. With support from the EAP, Konrad Tuchscherer digitized thousands of manuscripts written in the Bamum script invented in Cameroon. The Bamum manuscripts were produced between 1896 and 1975. Their contents include chronicles of the arrival of the first German military officer and trader, the founding of the Bamum kingdom, the invention of the Bamum religion (which blends Christian, Islamic, and indigenous religious practices), traditional medicine, and even the art of love.57 There are a few other digital archives with manuscripts written in Vai script (invented in Liberia likely in the 1830s to write the Vai language) and Garay script (invented in Senegal in the 1960s to write Wolof).58
Besides these, there are other indigenous scripts in West Africa, including N'KO (invented in Guinea in the late 1940s for Mande languages) and Tifinagh (the traditional writing system of the Amazigh [Berber] people). Though manuscripts written in these scripts are difficult to find, the African Language Materials Archive (ALMA) and ASK-DL hold a few digital copies of published texts in these scripts.59
Conclusion: West African Manuscripts as Key Sources of Knowledge
This non-exhaustive discussion of West African manuscripts illustrates the breadth and depth of the written intellectual traditions that emerged in West Africa prior to the colonial encounter and endure to this day. Beyond tangible corrections to common stereotypes on sub-Saharan Africa, as a land devoid of written intellectual traditions, these manuscripts offer unique opportunities to access the rich sources of knowledge hitherto neglected in the studies on Africa. If they are carefully studied, these manuscripts will enrich the works of many scholars of Africa in the humanities and social sciences, and force revisions of many previously held beliefs and assumptions about sub-Saharan Africa.
While the West African manuscripts archives are varied, they constitute a drop in the ocean of documents that remain unknown outside the communities of their owners. While many Kanuri, Fulfulde, Hausa, and Wolof manuscripts have been preserved and made available to scholars, Ajami manuscripts in Yoruba and Mande languages (including Eastern Maninka of Guinea, Western Mandinka of Senegambia, Jakhanke, Jula, Susu, and Soninke), for example, remain some of the least preserved and least accessible to scholars. Yet as Sanni, Ogunbiyi, Jawondo, Coleman, Giesing and Vydrin, Schaffer, and Tamari show, manuscripts written in Yoruba and Mande languages are key sources of knowledge on the Yoruba and different Mande communities spread across West Africa.60 Because the Yoruba and Mande people are two of the largest West African ethnolinguistic groups with important histories and polities, collecting, cataloguing, and digitally preserving their documents are urgent matters. The Yoruba and Mande written sources are laden with insights that will undoubtedly enrich the works of many anthropologists, historians, Islamicists, linguists, and literary scholars who specialize on West Africa.
However, the digitization efforts must not be restricted to Islamic sources in Arabic and Ajami, colonial sources, and African language sources in Roman script. They should be extended to the manuscripts in indigenous scripts, including those written by the Edo people of Nigeria and Benin's traditional chromatographic system, one of the world's unique and little known color-based writing systems. Though Islamic sources are more widespread and numerous, they are not the only useful sources of African knowledge. As the Bamum manuscripts demonstrate, indigenous scripts form an equally important component of Africa's sources of knowledge. Therefore, whether in current use or not, they must be catalogued, preserved, and cross-pollinated with (1) Islamic sources in Arabic and Ajami, (2) colonial sources and African language sources in Roman script, and (3) oral sources. The cross-pollination of these sources will open access to local knowledge systems and frameworks. African scholars like Muusaa Ka and many of his counterparts emerged from epistemological traditions that appreciate both written and oral traditions, which they treat as complementary, not mutually exclusive or neatly separated dichotomies. Thus, digital technology offers unique opportunities to preserve sub-Saharan Africa's precious manuscripts that bear witness to its age-old and enduring vibrant written traditions. It makes broadly available the primary data needed for a better understanding of African knowledge systems, preoccupations, societies, cultures, and histories in the 21st century.
The author is indebted to Karen Barton (Northern Colorado University, USA), Babacar Dieng (Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis, Senegal), and Sam Niang (Bibliothèque Cheikhoul Khadim, Touba, Senegal) for their invaluable assistance.
Further Reading
Austin, Allen. African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles. New York: Routledge, 1997.Find this resource:
Bondarev, Dmitry. "Old Kanembu and Kanuri in Arabic Script: Phonology through the Graphic System." In The Arabic Script in Africa: Studies in the Use of a Writing System. Edited by Meikal Mumin and Kees Versteegh, 108–142. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014.Find this resource:
Boyd, Jean, and Beverly B. Mack. Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman 'dan Fodiyo (1793–1864). East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997.Find this resource:
Déroche, François. Islamic Codicology: An Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script. London: Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2005.Find this resource:
Hiskett, Mervyn. A History of Hausa Islamic Verse. London: SOAS, 1975.Find this resource:
Hunwick, John. Arabic Literature of Africa, Volume 4: Writings of Western Sudanic Africa. Edited by J. O. Hunwick and R. S. O'Fahey. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003.Find this resource:
Kane, Ousmane Oumar. Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.Find this resource:
Kane, Ousmane Oumar. Non-Europhone Intellectuals. Dakar: CODESRIA, 2012.Find this resource:
Kominko, Maja, ed. From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015.Find this resource:
Krätli, Graziano. "West African Arabic Manuscript Heritage at the Crossroads: Dust to Digital or Digital Dust." Anuari de Filologia Antiqua et Mediaevalia 5 (2015): 41–66.Find this resource:
Krätli, Graziano, and Ghislaine Lydon, eds. The Trans- Saharan Book Trade: Manuscript Culture, Arabic Literacy and Intellectual History in Muslim Africa. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2011.Find this resource:
Limb, Peter. "Islamic Africa: A Selected, Annotated Webography." Islamic Africa 5.1 (2014): 91–102.Find this resource:
Lüpke, Friederike, and Sokhna Bao-Diop. "Beneath the Surface-Contemporary Ajami Writing in West Africa Exemplified through Wolofal." In African Literacies: Ideologies, Scripts, Education. Edited by Kasper Juffermans, Yonas Mesfun Asfaha, and Ashraf Abdelhay, 86–114. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.Find this resource:
Lydon, Ghislaine. "Inkwells on the Sahara: Reflections on the Production of Islamic Knowledge in Bilād Shinqīt." In The Transmission of Learning in Islamic Africa, Islamic Africa, Vol. 2. Edited by Scott S. Reese, 39–71. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004.Find this resource:
Mumin, Meikal, and Kees Versteegh, eds. The Arabic Script in Africa: Studies in the Use of a Writing System. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014.Find this resource:
Ngom, Fallou. Muslims Beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of Ajami and the Muridiyya. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.Find this resource:
Reichert, Rolf. Os Documentos Árabes do Archivo Público de Estato da Bahia. No. 9, Série Documentos Universidade Federal da Bahia. Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais. Rio de Janeiro: Grafíca Olimpica Editôra Ltda., December 1970.Find this resource:
Robinson, David. "Muslim Societies in West Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives in Digital Form." Islamic Africa 5.1 (2014): 103–121.Find this resource:
Salvaing, Barnard. "Colonial Rule and Fulfulde Literature in Futa Jallon Guinea." Sudanic Africa 15 (2004): 111–132.Find this resource:
Schaffer, Matt. ""Pakao Book": Expansion and Social Structure by Virtue of an Indigenous Manuscript." African Languages 1 (1975): 96–115.Find this resource:
Shamil, Jeppie, and Souleymane Bachir Diagne, eds. The Meaning of Timbuktu. Cape Town, South Africa: Human Sciences Research Council, 2008.Find this resource:
Stewart, Charles C., and Sidi Ahmed Ould Salim. The Arabic Literature of Africa, vol. 5 (2 vols). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill 2016.Find this resource:
Tamari, Tal and Dmitry Bondary, eds. Qur'anic Exegesis in African Languages. Journal of Qur'anic Studies 15 (2013): 1–297.Find this resource:
Viera, Pawlikova-Vilhanova. "Debating the Fontes Historiae Africanae Project and the Production of Historical Knowledge in Africa." Asian and African Studies 2.1 (2011): 142–149.Find this resource:
Ware, Rudolph T. The Walking Qurʾan: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.Find this resource:
(1.) The large corpus of West African manuscripts written in English, French, and Portuguese, as well as African language materials written in Roman script, deserve an article. The Endangered Archives Programme has preserved some of these collections.
(2.) For more on the etymology of the word "Ajami," see Fallou Ngom and Alex Zito, "Sub-Saharan African Literature: ʿAjamī," in Encyclopaedia of Islam III, ed. Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Everett Rowson (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2013), 145–152.
(3.) John O. Hunwick, West Africa, Islam, and the Arab World (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006), 53–62.
(4.) For more insights on the origins of the Arabic script, see Peter T. Daniels, "The Type and Spread of Arabic Script," in The Arabic Script in Africa: Studies in the Use of a Writing System, ed. Meikal Mumin and Kees Versteegh (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014), 25–39.
(5.) See Andrea Brigaglia, "Central Sudanic Arabic Scripts (part 1): The Popularization of Kanawī Script," Islamic Africa 2.2 (2011): 51–85; Andrea Brigaglia and Mauro Nobili, "Central Sudanic Arabic Script (part 2): Barnāwi," Islamic Africa 4.2 (2013): 195–223; and Dmitry Bondarev, "Multiglossia in West African Manuscripts: The Case of Borno, Nigeria," in Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field, ed. Jörg B. Quenzer, Dmitry Bondarev, and Jan-Ulrich Sobisch (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 113–155.
(6.) For a list of over eighty African languages with attested use of Ajami, see Meikal Mumin, "The Arabic Script in Africa: Understudied Literacy," in The Arabic Script in Africa: Studies in the Use of a Writing System, ed. Meikal Mumin and Kees Versteegh (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014), 63–76.
(7.) Ousmane Oumar Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 25.
(8.) See Mauro Nobili, "Manuscript Culture of West Africa," Manuscript Culture 5 (2012–2015): 42–51. Nobili provides in his article a comprehensive assessment of the works of individuals and organizations involved in the preservation and study of West African Islamic manuscripts along with the collections, published handlists, inventories, surveys, and catalogues. For more on the production of authors from Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Niger, and Ghana, see John O. Hunwick et al., Writings of Western Sudanic Africa, Vol.4 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003).
(9.) For a fascinating read on Haidara's role in saving some of the Timbuktu manuscripts from al-Qaida in 2012, see Joshua Hammer, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016).
(10.) See Nobili, "Manuscript Culture of West Africa," 43; and Sophie Sarin, "In the Shadow of Timbuktu: The Manuscripts of Djenné," in From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme, ed. Maja Kominko (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015), 173–188. For an electronic copy, see "In the Shadow of Timbuktu: The Manuscripts of Djenné."
(11.) See David Gutelius, "Newly Discovered 10th/16th Century Ajami Manuscript in Niger and Kel Tamasheq History," Saharan Studies Association Newsletter 8 (2000): 6; and Seyni Moumouni and Viera Pawlikova-Vilhanova, eds., Le Temps des Oulèmas: Les Manuscrits Africains comme Sources Historiques (Niamey: Université Abdou Moumouni-Collection Études Nigériennes, Numéro 61, 2009).
(12.) Nobili, "Manuscript Culture of West Africa," 44–45. For a survey of manuscript repositories in Nigeria, see "Report of a Survey Tour to Northern Nigeria, May 3–19, 2007."
(14.) Ivor Wilks copied 485 items from the University of Ghana's collection that he donated to the Herskovits Library at Northwestern University. See "The University of Ghana Collection."
(15.) For the catalogues of IFAN, see Thierno Diallo, Mame Bara Mbacké, Mirjana Trifkovic, and Boubacar Barry, Catalogue des manuscrits de l'IFAN (Dakar: Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire, 1966); El Hadji Ravane Mbaye and Babacar Mbaye, "Supplément au catalogue des manuscrits de l'IFAN," Bulletin de l'IFAN 37.4 (1975): 878–896; and Khadim Mbacké and Thierno Ka, "Nouveau catalogue des manuscrits de l'IFAN," Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara 8 (1994): 165–199. For extensive resources on the lives, cultures, histories, and Ajami works of key Fuuta Jalon pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial scholars, see "WebFuuta/Islam/Pular Ajami."
(16.) For insights on the work of Shaykh Muusaa Kamara and Xaali Majaxte Kala, see David Robinson, "Un Historien et Anthropologue Sénégalais: Shaikh Musa Kamara," Cahiers d'Études Africaines 28.109 (1998): 89–116; and Claudine Guerresh, "Le Livre Métrique Mubayyin al-Ishkāl du Cadi Madiakhaté Kala," Bulletin de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire 36 (1974): 714–832.
(17.) See Perspective Hagiographique de l'Art en Islam et sa Réhabilitation par le Cheikh, (Dakar: Comité Scientifique du Dahira des Étudiants Mourides de l'Université de Dakar, 1991).
(18.) For more on the Ajamization framework and processes, see Fallou Ngom, Muslims beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of Ajami and the Muridiyya (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 19–20 and 247–250.
(19.) See Louis Verner, "Mauritania's Manuscripts."
(21.) See Louis Verner, "Mauritania's Manuscripts." For more on major Senegambian scholars and their works, see Ousmane O. Kane and John O. Hunwick, "Senegambia II: Other Tijani Writers," in Arabic Literature of Africa, Vol. 4: The Writings of Western Sudanic Africa, compiled by John O. Hunwick et al. (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003), 308–395; Ousmane O. Kane, "Senegambia III: Writers of the Murīd Ṭarīqa," in Arabic Literature of Africa, Vol. 4, 396–462.
(22.) See "Tombouctu Manuscript Project."
(23.) See John O. Hunwick, "Catalog of Arabic Script Manuscripts at Northwestern University," Sudanic Africa 4 (1993): 210–211; and John O. Hunwick and R. S. O'Fahey, Arabic Literature of Africa, Vol.2: Writings of Central Sudanic Africa, ed. John O. Hunwick (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1995), 7–8.
(24.) In July 2014, I purchased in a market in Bamako, Mali, several Fuuta Jalon Ajami market edition texts from Guinea and a colorful copy of the Quran made in Kano, Nigeria.
(25.) See Maja Kominko, ed., Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2015).
(26.) See "Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF)—Fonds Archinard." Also for the so-called Petit Fonds Archinard, which is different from the Fonds Archinard at the BnF, see Nobili, "Manuscript Culture of West Africa," 47. For more on Al-Hāj Umar's holy war, see David Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford Studies in African Affairs, 1985).
(27.) For more on the Gironcourt collection, see Mauro Nobili, Catalogue des Manuscrits Arabes du Fonds de Gironcourt (Afrique de l'Ouest) de l'Institut de France (Roma: Istituto per l'Oriente C. A. Nallino, 2013); and Mauro Nobili, "Arabic Scripts in West African Manuscripts: A Tentative Classification from the de Gironcourt Manuscript Collection," Islamic Africa 2.1 (2011): 105–133.
(28.) Maurice Delafosse, Chronique du Fouta Sénégalais, Translated from Two Arabic Manuscripts by Siré Abbâs Soh with Assistance of Henri Gaden (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1913). For many other works from West Africa that have been edited and translated, see Bernard Salvaing, "À propos d'un projet en cours d'édition de manuscrits arabes de Tombouctou et d'ailleurs."
(29.) See Palabre de Traité entre le Roi de France et le Roi de Bar, May 13, 1817, Archives Nationales d'Outre Mer, Sen/IV/1. Also see, Ngom, Muslims beyond the Arab World, 10 and 255; and Fallou Ngom, "Murid Ajami Sources of Knowledge: The Myth and the Reality," in From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme, ed. Maja Kominko (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015), 123.
(30.) See "Arabic Manuscripts from West Africa: A Catalog of the Herskovits Library Collection," 2016.
(31.) See Deftere Futturde—The Book of Genesis in Fulfule Ajami (New Haven, CT: Yale Ajami Collection, n.d.). See also a reference to Saint John's Gospel in Hausa Ajami created in 1899.
(33.) See Nikolai Dobronravin, "Literacy among Muslims in the Nineteenth Century Trinidad and Brazil," in Slavery, Islam and Diaspora, ed. Behnaz A. Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana, and Paul E. Lovejoy (Trenton: African World Press, 2009), 217–236.
(34.) See a non-exhaustive list of works on literate West African Muslim slaves in the Americas and their writings: Allen Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles (New York: Routledge, 1997); Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York: New York University Press, 1988); Michael A. Gomez, "Muslims in Early America," Journal of Southern History 60.4 (1994): 671–710; and Ivor Wilks, "Abu Bakr al-Siddiq of Timbuktu," in Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade, ed. Philip. D. Curtin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 152–169.
(35.) See Graziano Krätli, "West African Arabic Manuscript Heritage at the Crossroads: Dust to Digital or Digital Dust," Anuari de Filologia Antiqua et Mediaevalia 5 (2015): 46; Nobili, "Manuscript Culture of West Africa," 44–45; and "Report of a Survey Tour to Northern Nigeria, May 3–19, 2007."
(37.) See "Oriental Manuscript Resource (OMAR)."
(39.) See Nobili, 44–45. For complete references to the handlists and catalogues of manuscripts in many libraries in Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal published by the Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, see Nobili, 48–51.
(41.) See https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mali/mali-exhibit.html and http://www.hmml.org/the-timbuktu-manuscripts.html; and http://www.hmml.org/the-timbuktu-manuscripts.html. The following collection was brought to my attention, but the link is not working: http://ecollections.crl.edu/cdm4/index_timbuktu.php?CISOROOT=/timbuktu.
(42.) See "Saint-Louis: Religious Pluralism in the Heart of Senegal," and "Failed Islamic States in Senegambia."
(43.) See "Banjul Muslims and Islamic Court," and "EAP 231: Social History of the Gambia: Rescuing an Endangered Archive, Police and Court Records."
(44.) See "Early Nigerian Quranic Manuscripts."
(45.) For the list of digital archives collected from around the world funded by British Library and ARCADIA Endangered Archives Programme, see "View Collections: Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania," See also Djenné.
(46.) See "EAP535: Northern Nigeria: Precolonial Documents Preservation Scheme-Major Project.". Besides the Ajami works of Nana Asma'u, which are widely known thanks to the work of Beverly Mack and Jean Boyd (see the further reading list), there is a limited body of Ajami works by female writers in the Murīdiyya. These include the poetry of the following daughters of Shaykh Amadu Bamba: Soxna Maimuna Kubra Mbakke, Soxna Maimuna Sakhir Mbakke, and Soxna Muslimatu Mbakke. Their manuscripts remain unpreserved and largely unknown to academics.
(47.) See "African Ajami Library" and "EAP 334: Digital Preservation of Wolof Ajami Manuscripts of Senegal."
(48.) For more on the Murid Ajami tradition and the works of the four master poets, see "EAP 334: Digital Preservation of Wolof Ajami Manuscripts of Senegal" and Ngom, Muslims beyond the Arab World, 19–34.
(49.) See "Hausa Manuscripts.". With support from Boston University's African Studies Center, Mustapha Kurfi collected the Hausa materials under the supervision of Fallou Ngom.
(50.) See "Fuuta Jalon Pular Ajami Manuscripts.". With support from Boston University's African Studies Center, Mouhamadou Lamine Diallo collected the Fuuta Jalon Ajami materials under the supervision of Fallou Ngom.
(51.) Thanks to Philip Beaujard and Nikolai Dobronravin for their contribution to the African Ajami Library at Boston University.
(52.) See "Wolof Documents.".
(54.) See "Personal Poems in Pulaar Ajami" and "Business Records of a Pulaar Bookseller.".
(55.) "Mandinka Collection.".
(56.) Peter Limb, "Islamic Africa: A Selected, Annotated Webography," Islamic Africa 5.1 (2014): 98; "Khassida en PDF"; "Drouss.org"; and "Medina Baay Research Association." This last website was down at author's last review.
(58.) For sample Garay and Vai manuscripts digitized by Charles Riley, see https://catalogingafricana.wordpress.com/author/clriley/.
(59.) See http://alma.matrix.msu.edu/alma-authors#indigenous and http://www.ask-dl.fas.harvard.edu/collection. For more on indigenous African writing systems, see Helma Pasch, "Competing Scripts: The Introduction of Roman Alphabet in Africa," International Journal of the Sociology of Language 191 (2008): 65–109; and Tal Tamari, "Literacy and Indigenous Scripts: Precolonial West Africa," in Encyclopedia of African History: Volumes 1–3, ed. Kevin Shillington (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2005), 839–841.
(60.) See Amidu Sanni, "The Indigenization of an Intellectual Tradition: A New Tradition in Contemporary Islam in Yorubaland (Nigeria)," Contemporary Islam 3.2 (Fall 2001): 31–487; Isaac Adejoju Ogunbiyi, "The Search for Yoruba Orthography since the 1840s: Obstacles to the Choice of the Arabic Script," Sudanic Africa 14 (2003): 77–102; Jawondo Ibrahim Abdul Ganiy, "The Role of Ajami Script in the Production of Knowledge in Ilorin Emirate since the 19th Century," Ilorin Journal of History and International Studies 1 (2010): 36–51; Coleman Donaldson, "Jula Ajami in Burkina Faso: A Grassroots Literacy in the Former Kong Empire," Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 28.2 (2013): 18–35; Cornelia Giesing and Valentin Vydrine, Ta:rikh Mandinka de Bijini (Guinée-Bissau): La Mémoire des Mandinka et des Sòoninkee du Kaabu (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007); Matt Schaffer, "'Pakao Book': Expansion and Social Structure by Virtue of an Indigenous Manuscript," African Languages 1 (1975): 96–115; and Tal Tamari, "Cinq Textes Bambara en Caractères Arabes: Présentation, Traduction, Analyse du Système Graphémique," Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara 8 (1994): 97–121.


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Interracial Inception 2 Ivy RoseFavorites [+]
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- Protect your personal and financial data by using high security passwords and let Kee remember them for you
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- Your passwords stay under your control, protected by the respected KeePass Password Safe application
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Kee is powered by the world-renowned KeePass Password Safe (additional installation of this free open-source program is required).
The built-in Firefox password manager will no longer prompt you to save passwords after you install this add-on. Any existing data will not be affected but you are strongly advised to delete any stored passwords from your Firefox password store in order to increase the security of your personal data and to avoid possible confusion in future.
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If you would like to try Kee and it is not working for you, please use the help resources at https://forum.kee.pm/t/help-and-support/24 since requests for support within review comments will most-likely remain un-noticed for months or years.
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Has Lil Kim Done Something Else To Her Face? See How Much Her Face Has Changed
Lil Kim will always be known as the Queen B of Hip Hop. She rose to fame thanks to the Notorious B.I.G. within the ranks of Junior Mafia. When she dropped her first solo album, she went straight to the top of Hip Hop and never looked back.


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Aside from the job interview, the second most stressful day at the office tends to be the day you announce you're leaving. Will you be shown the door instantly, or cajoled to stay? Will you be able to resist reeling off a list of criticisms about co-workers and company policies?
"The central tenet of resigning from a job is: Don't burn bridges," says Andrew Atkins, a former human resources executive at Fidelity Investments and Bank of America who now works at the Boston consulting firm Interaction Associates. "You want to be as professional on your way out as you were on your way in."
Contrast that with the experience of Peter Blacklow, who runs a Waltham-based game development studio for the Game Show Network. A graphic designer with whom he once worked announced his departure by affixing a Post-it note to his computer monitor.
What are the right and wrong ways to give notice? I've asked human resources executives, business owners, and others to share their advice.
Before you start looking for a new job: There's some disagreement about whether you should talk to your manager about being dissatisfied before starting a job search.
"It never makes sense to let them know you're in the market," says Elaine Varelas, managing director at Keystone Associates, a Boston career management firm. "All sorts of things could happen where you wind up in being the position of being first to go" in the event of budget cuts or a reorganization.
But Audrey Lampert, director of human resources at the online jeweler Gemvara, says that you "might be surprised by your manager's willingness" to alter your current job "so that you want to stay." Even if circumstances can't be changed enough to make you a happy camper, Lampert says, managers can point you to companies they know that are hiring, or provide glowing references.
And Blacklow adds that "if you're not challenged, you're not learning, or you feel like there's no career path" you should "always tell your manager that," since they can often address those issues.
Restaurateur Joanne Chang says she doesn't expect employees to stay at her bakeries or restaurant forever.
"It's nice to have a heads-up" when they are starting to hunt for their next job, she says. "That said, I know there are a lot of kitchens where once you say you are looking, you get treated poorly or even asked to leave."
Announcing your resignation: Give as much notice as you can. Blacklow wasn't thrilled when an employee quit on a Wednesday and said Friday would be his last day. "There just wasn't time for an orderly handoff," he says. Chang says that having six months warning before her general manager left gave her plenty of time to find a top-notch replacement and allow the outgoing GM to train the new hire.
Unfortunately, say Chang and others, a final e-mail saying "I'm not coming in today" is too common.
Talk to your manager behind closed doors. What words do you use? Atkins suggests, "I've decided to leave for an exciting opportunity, and I'd like to make sure this transition works as well for both of us as possible."
Discuss how your manager would like to communicate your departure to the rest of the company. Follow the in-person conversation with a written resignation.
Be Honest with your boss
The "stars of organizations go that extra mile to help craft a transition plan," says Patricia Hunt Sinacole, chief executive of First Beacon Group, a human resources services firm in Hopkinton, and a regular contributor to the Globe.
Kathy Robinson of the career coaching firm TurningPoint advises, "Take a moment and document all your major projects and contributions of the past five years, and leave a copy with your boss" — just in case you need to use him or her as a reference in the future.
Be aware that once you resign, "it's kind of out of your hands what happens," Atkins says. "You may get paid for two weeks and asked not to keep coming in. You may not get a goodbye party."
What not to do: Don't update your LinkedIn profile or blast an e-mail to colleagues about your departure before you have spoken with your manager, says Lampert at Gemvara.
"A friend's daughter posted on Facebook about her exciting new job before she resigned," Lampert says. "It was not a good way for her manager to find out."
Your last days at the company are "not the time to throw darts or drop bombs," says Varelas, who is a contributor to the Globe. "If your manager wants to do an exit interview with you, focus on making constructive comments as opposed to getting stuff off your chest."
"Taking vacation or time off during your notice period isn't a good idea," says Elizabeth Famiglietti, senior vice president of human resources at PAN Communications, a Boston public relations firm.
Don't lie. "We had someone leave us by telling us she was taking care of a family emergency," says Chang, who started the local Flour Bakery + Cafe chain. "We needed to get in touch with her because she was the only person who had information on a catering order." After calling her emergency contact number, Chang discovered that she'd made up the whole situation.
"Obviously, maliciously deleting files is not a good idea, but I've seen people do it on their way out," says Atkins at Interaction Associates.
Acting professionally on your way out the door isn't just a way to ensure that you can ask your old employer for a reference at some later date, say Atkins and others. They could wind up being a prospective customer or business partner in the future. Or you might want to go back and work with them again.
"I've rehired several people who left on good terms," says Atkins. "Maintaining your reputation is the key."
Some more tips
Not every employee leaves on good enough terms to get a good recommendation from a former employer. But here's some advice from Boston-area HR executives about how you can avoid burning bridges:
- Tell your manager behind closed doors that you're leaving (not with a mass e-mail to the company).
- Give as much notice as you possibly can.
- Offer to work out a transition plan so you can wrap up projects or hand them off to other employees.
- Discuss with your manager how your departure will be communicated to others.
- Resist the urgetolist all of your gripes.
- But if your manager asks for feedback, offer it when you're not feeling emotional about your decision. Share your new contact info.Scott Kirsner can be reached at email@example.com. Follow him on Twitter @ScottKirsner.


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Feather Quilting Designs
A simple looping back-and-forth motion is all you need to make a feather design on your quilt. Browse our gallery of feather quilting designs for ideas and tips from our machine-quilters.
Radiating Diamonds [1]
To visually connect the light print block backgrounds, Handi Quilter educators Marie Eldredge and Angie Balling machine-quilted continuous designs of feathers in the light blue print and metallic gold swirls (which pick up on the metallic accents in the fabric) in the white and tan prints.
Sailing Ships [4]
Handi Quilter educator Marie Eldredge machine-quilted a cluster of feathers over each circular motif in the outer border. She highlighted the large triangles and small cream triangles in each Lost Ship block with simpler feathers and connected the triangles with stitched arcs.
See How: Feathers [7]
Feathers are a popular quilting motif. We give tips for getting the perfect feather shape and troubleshooting once you are quilting the design.
Pretty. Graphic. [9]
Shelly Pagliai machine-quilted a pattern of horizontal zigzags across the quilt top. She stitched a feathered vine inside the wide rows and filled some narrow rows with circles or wavy lines.
Tone It Down [12]
Natalia Bonner machine-quilted feathered wreaths in the areas outlined by the red, pink, or orange print chains.
Star Formation [15]
Cathy Peters and Lynn Graham machine-quilted a feathered wreath in each block center and filled in the block backgrounds with a small diagonal grid. They stitched a cable design in the sashing rectangles and added a larger diagonal grid in the setting and corner triangles.
Merry-Go-Round [18]
Kaylene Parry machine-quilted small- and large-scale feather designs in the blocks and borders. She stitched a teardrop vine in the sashing strips and a floral motif in each sashing square.
Out of the Blue [21]
Diane Nagle stitched a variety of feather designs in a circle in each block and in a straight line in each sashing unit.


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Update: In comments, below, Miriam has provided a link to raw KIRO 7 helicopter news footage of the suspect being placed in a police car, and the victim being interviewed.
Police arrested an armed robber this afternoon after he attacked a woman on Roosevelt Way Northeast at Northeast 71st Street.
Update: From a Seattle Police news release:
Police arrested a man armed with a knife in Roosevelt Tuesday afternoon after he stole a woman's purse. The arrest comes after a string of similar robberies in nearby North Seattle neighborhoods, and detectives are investigating whether the cases may be connected.
At about 2:20 p.m. today, police received a report that a man in a windbreaker had cut the purse off the woman's arm and ran through the yards of several homes near Northeast 71st Street and Roosevelt Way Northeast. Officers caught up to the man and arrested him.
Detectives were already working five similar robberies reported earlier this month.
The first robbery was reported on February 2nd, by a 91-year-old woman, who said a man armed with a knife had stolen her purse as she was walking up the steps to her home near Northeast 75th Street and 39th Avenue Northeast.
Almost two weeks later, on February 14th, a robber armed with a knife cut open the back pocket of a 77-year-old man and stole his wallet near Northeast 60th Street and 35th Avenue Northeast. After stealing the man's wallet, the robber shoved the man to the ground and fled.
On February 20th, a robber cut the strap off a woman's purse near Northeast 72nd Street and Roosevelt Way Northeast—just a block from the scene of today's robbery.
A half-hour after that incident, a robber armed with a box cutter sliced the strap on a woman's purse near Northeast 65th Street and 35th Avenue Northeast, cutting the woman's hand in the process.
Finally, on February 25th, a man grabbed a woman's purse right off her shoulder as she was walking near Northeast 75th Street and 35th Avenue Northeast, as she was on her way home from the grocery store.
All the robberies, including today's incident, took place between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Robbery detectives are now transporting the man arrested today back to police headquarters, where they will interview him. Again, detectives haven't yet determined whether these cases are connected, but we'll post any additional details about these robberies as we get them.


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Welcome to Turtle Pointe Golf Club in Arkadelphia, Arkansas.
All guests are invited to register to receive the latest news from the club as well as access to our exclusive online specials!
Call to reserve your tee time: (870) 246-6642
or request your tee time online!
Please register below to participate in our eClub. By doing so you will receive a free green fee on your Birthday! Valid up to one week prior and one week after your birthday.
We regularly offer specials and golf promotions to registered members. All information is held in confidence and will only be used to provide you golf specials and promotions.


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(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
Contact us for information about using this image.
This tool, made by the Millers Falls Company of Greenfield and Millers Falls, Massachusetts, is known as a "breast plate hand drill." It is similar to the Bit Brace tool, except that the rotation was created by a crank and gear. The pressure to make the drill cut was created by the driller's body weight leaning on the handle, which was placed against the shoulder. More than 195,000 breast plate hand drills were sent to the war effort from January 1944 to October 1944. Before World War II (WWII), the Millers Falls Tool Company made 2,500 different tools. During the war, the company continued manufacturing all its usual product lines (for example, electric tools, hand tools, hack saw blades, levels, planes, micrometers, etc.).
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See Also...
Bit Brace Drill manufactured by Millers Falls Company
Dyno-Mite WWII newsletter cover from Millers Falls (Tool) Company
Photograph of Millers Falls Companies with WWII losses
Nazi statement from Millers Falls Company employee
"Millers Falls Company Arises From Nash's Mill Ashes" article from Greenfield Recorder-Gazette newspaper
"Making High Grade Tools for Industry Since 1868" Millers Falls Company ad from Greenfield Recorder-Gazette newspaper
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daveganley needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 57 designs submitted by 19 freelance designers.
To design a logo for 'crewmanager' a sailing crew organizer site.
crewmanager, Crew Manager
The logo is for a free site that allows racing yacht owners to manage their crew for each week's races in the season. Who's sailing, who's away etc.
I'm building the site as a personal project as getting crew organized each week is hard work and there must be a easier way than numerous emails flying around and I'm just crew.
The logo will have an influence on step 2 - the site design.
Sites I like, for feel
I like these logoshttp://webdesignfromscratch.com/web-2.0-design-style-guide.php#bold-logos
Possibly a thought in representing crew (for style not content)http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/isolated-objects/5822932-chosen-one.php?id=5822932
- Web 2.0 style
- Maybe reflection
- Simple
- Clean
- Fresh
- Modern
- Old style sailing boat imagery
- Dull colours
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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Welcome event organizers! Thank you for considering an event to benefit the lifesaving work of the Ontario SPCA. Events help to raise funds to support critical Ontario SPCA programs and services.
From BBQs to Garage Sales, Golf Tournaments to Galas no event is too big or too small.
Once you have decided on the event, please register your event by filling out the Event Waiver Form. Send your completed form to Development, Ontario SPCA, 16586 Woodbine Ave. Stouffville, ON L4A 2W3 or scan and email to email@example.com.
You might also consider using a special occasion, such as your wedding or birthday, to share your favourite animal cause with loved ones. Requesting donations instead of traditional gifts is a great way to raise awareness of animal welfare issues.


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Featured News - Current News - Archived News - News Categories
Tax code changes will strengthen cider industry, increase demand for NYS apples
Congressman Chris Collins, NY-27, announced today his sponsorship of the bipartisan Cider Industry Deserves Equal Regulation Act (H.R. 2921), commonly known as the CIDER Act. If passed, the legislation would change the outdated definition of hard cider in federal tax law. Currently, hard cider is taxed at different rates based on its alcohol and carbonation level, both of which can fluctuate, especially for small, craft operators.
Collins detailed the CIDER Act at two stops in New York's 27th Congressional District: BlackBird Cider Works in Barker and LynOaken Farms in Medina. Both operations are examples of the kind of local industry that will benefit from the legislation.
"The hard cider industry is poised for major growth and, unless the federal tax code is reasonably adjusted, our producers and farmers are going to miss out on this economic opportunity," Collins said. "If these simple changes to the tax code are made, not only will the American cider industry expand and become more competitive and profitable, but our local apple growers will see a major demand for their product. On average, every bottle of hard cider contains the juice of three apples."
To improve the taxing regulations for hard cider producers, the bill:
•Increases the carbonation level allowed for hard cider. Cider consumers expect a somewhat high level of carbonation, equivalent to that of most beer. Current federal tax code does not permit this desired carbonation level without reclassifying the project as champagne, which is taxed at a much higher rate.
•Increases the alcohol content allowed in hard cider. This change will align the alcohol content with the natural sugar content of apples. The existing definition of hard cider only allows up to 7 percent alcohol by volume before it is taxed as wine.
•Allows pears to be used in hard cider production. Pear hard cider is a popular flavor in the international hard cider market. Collins' camp said prohibiting it weakens the U.S. cider industry's ability to compete globally and hampers sustainable growth.
Collins is the lead Republican sponsor of the CIDER Act in the House of Representatives. He introduced the bill in August along with Congressman Earl Blumenauer, a democrat from Oregon.
Scott Donovan of BlackBird Cider Works said, "As a small business tapping into the growing demand for craft hard cider, the CIDER Act will bring clarity to the tax code that does not exist now, simplify the way hard cider is taxed, and allow our industry to grow and expand. I want to thank Congressman Collins for his leadership on this issue."
Wendy Oakes Wilson of LynOaken Farms and Leonard Oakes Estate Winery said, "As a member of a family-run farm that both grows apples and produces hard cider, the CIDER Act will help our business. The bill will ensure that we are fairly taxed on the hard cider we produce and the demand for our apples should increase as the American cider industry reaps the business benefits of this proposed change in the tax code. We are grateful for Congressman Collins' support and understanding of this important issue."
Mike Beck, president of the United States Association of Cider Makers, said, "Today, Congressman Collins took a critical first step towards making the United States hard cider industry more competitive internationally and treated more fairly under the tax code. Our industry has tripled in size since 2007, and the existing tax structure is insufficient to deal with this growth. As a result, the potential to stunt this surge exists, and HR 2921 will remedy this problem. On behalf of the United States Association of Cider Makers, I am pleased to fully endorse this legislation and pledge our grassroots efforts to this legislation's success."
Jim Allen, president of NY Apple Association, said, "We applaud Congressman Collins for sponsoring HR 2921, which will greatly benefit NY apple growers and cider makers. Our state has a long and trusted tradition of producing the best apple cider, and with this legislation, this tradition will continue and expand with new cider options. By joining Congressman Blumenauer (D-OR) and working with Sen. Schumer (D-NY), the NY Apple Growers Association is confident that this legislation will garner broad based support in Congress. We are grateful to Mr. Collins for helping to expand New York apple growers' role in growing the New York economy."


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Pete Souza/Official White House photo
President Barack Obama is interviewed by David Gregory of NBC's "Meet the Press" on Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012 in an official White House photo by Pete Souza.
As the hours remaining for action dwindle, Washington and the nation prepared to hear more from President Barack Obama about the outlines of an acceptable deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff while Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill labored through what would normally be a relaxing holiday weekend.
After tasking the Senate with generating a compromise that would avert the onset of across-the-board automatic tax hikes and spending cuts on Jan. 1, the president was set to address some of the trade-offs he might accept in an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
President Barack Obama meets with NBC's David Gregory on Meet the Press Sunday morning. Gregory explains that for the president, this has become a matter of principle.
The round-the-clock talks were the byproduct of a meeting at the White House on Friday between the president and congressional leaders from both parties as the urgency to avoid the New Year's Day deadline increases. Those discussions produced a shift between the generally unilateral negotiations between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and toward new negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and his Republican counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
PRESS PASS: Obama on 'Meet the Press' in Sunday exclusive
For his part, Boehner has demanded that the Senate act first to produce legislation, on which he said the House would act — to either approve or amend it.
But the Saturday negotiations between Reid and McConnell appeared — outwardly, at least — to yield little in the way of consensus. Obama said Friday that if the Senate leaders could not strike a deal, he would ask Reid to advance bare-boned legislation that would preserve tax rates on income under $250,000 and extend expiring benefits for the unemployed.
Related: Senate leaders work to beat fiscal cliff clock
A Senate Democratic aide said Saturday afternoon that Democrats were preparing to move ahead with that very plan and were not particularly optimistic about the prospects of reaching an accord with McConnell, whom they characterized as offering proposals he knows the Democrats will not accept.
Reid did not go to the Capitol on Saturday, the aide said, and talks played out primarily at a staff level and talks were expected to continue.
A Senate Republican aide, meanwhile, cautioned against expecting an announcement or news before tomorrow afternoon, at which point senators will be briefed then about the weekend talks. The House will also return for work on Sunday evening, around 6:30 p.m. ET.
"We have been in discussions all day, and they continue. And we will let you know as soon as we have some news to make," McConnell told reporters Saturday as he left the Capitol. "We have been trading paper all day and talks continue into the evening."
NBC's Mark Murray explains the "blame game" that would ensue in Washington should the U.S. go over the "fiscal cliff."
With his interview Sunday morning, Obama might look to add a new sense of urgency to the last-minute negotiations to avoid the fiscal cliff, which itself is an outgrowth of lawmakers' inability to reach any consensus in the past two years about how to address taxes and the rising national debt.
Related: More coverage of 'Meet the Press'
Obama led Democrats this year by campaigning for re-election on allowing the 2001 Bush tax cuts — which the president in 2010 agreed extend for two years past their original expiration date — to end for the wealthiest Americans. Republicans struck conciliatory notes after Obama's victory in November, but that language has given way over the course of negotiations to more familiar sniping over taxes and spending.