January 2024: Mprint field work Lamu/Pate, Hassen Kawo and the NMK team
The MprinT project has an outstanding “secret” team member who has yet to feature on this site. Hassen Muhammed Kawo has been head of department of Arabic at Addis Abeba University, and is presently a PhD student of Philosophy in Arabic Language and Literature at Mohamed Bin Zayed University in the UAE.
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Hassen Kawo has his educational background from Addis Abeba and Zanzibar and long experience with Islamic manuscript collections in Ethiopia, including the rich and important collection in Harar. Hassen was also part of the team that digitized the Riyadha Mosque manuscript collection back in 2012 and which is now being properly catalogued (May be viewed online here (external link))
In the MprinT project, Hassen Kawo has partcipated in field work in Lamu and Pate, together with the NMK team and with PhD student Raphael Michaeli. With his wide regional perspective he is also invaluable in identifying text fragments and obscure titles.
In January, Hassen, alongside the MprinT NMK team revisited Pate Island. The manuscripts collected during from the Alauddin family in 2023 were handed back to the owners after repair by NMK Lamu. This collection of manuscripts and prints derives from Shaykh Alauddin who was a Pate scholar who taught a halaqa (teaching circle) in his house. During this visit, focus was on the collection of early printed books, which shows the distribution of print beyond centres like Zanzibar and Lamu and – not least – histories of ownership and usage.
In the digitized collection of the Riyadha Mosque in Lamu and the Hassan bin Ameir collection in Zanzibar we find many interesting notes of ownership and stamps by booksellers. This information on printed books are very important for understanding the circulation of printed books, book collectors and local booksellers. As the MprinT project now moves into a new phase of detailed cataloguing and analysis, sellers, owners and collectors becomes an important focus.
