The previous volume of Islamic Africa (vol. 8, 2017), guest-edited by Fallou Ngom and Mustapha H. Kurfi, was devoted to seven essays addressing ʿajami texts in Africa. Like the four articles that follow, they were presented at the 2016 Symposium held in the memory of Professor John O. Hunwick (1936–2015) at Northwestern University, “Sacred Word: Changing Meanings in Textual Cultures of Islamic Africa.”1 The four essays here feature a close analysis of the internal meanings of texts from Islamic Africa.2 The symposium’s emphasis was on research that is now re-shaping our use of Arabic and Arabic-script manuscripts in Africa. Participants were asked to reflect on both Arabic and ʿajami writing (African languages written in the Arabic alphabet), as well as textual analyses. Within those foci, the symposium call-for-papers specified an interest in the meaning and the sanctity of the Word in the lives of African Muslim authors and their communities, and it asked how these may have changed across time. This set of papers highlights some of the most significant contributions that can be obtained from a close-reading

中文翻译：

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从文本到意义：细读伊斯兰非洲的文本文化

上一卷《伊斯兰非洲》（第 8 卷，2017 年）由 Fallou Ngom 和 Mustapha H. Kurfi 客座编辑，专门讨论了七篇关于非洲 ʿajami 文本的文章。与接下来的四篇文章一样，它们在 2016 年西北大学为纪念 John O. Hunwick 教授（1936-2015）举行的研讨会上发表，“神圣之词：伊斯兰非洲文本文化中的意义变化”1。这里的文章对伊斯兰非洲文本的内在含义进行了仔细分析。2 研讨会的重点是研究，现在正在重新塑造我们在非洲对阿拉伯语和阿拉伯语手稿的使用。参与者被要求反思阿拉伯语和 ʿajami 写作（用阿拉伯字母书写的非洲语言），以及文本分析。在这些焦点中，研讨会征集论文明确了对非洲穆斯林作者及其社区生活中圣言的意义和神圣性的兴趣，并询问这些可能如何随着时间的推移而发生变化。这组论文强调了一些可以从细读中获得的最重要的贡献