ABSTRACT

Arabic sources are vital to the reconstruction of West African, especially medieval West African history. The Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, edited by Nehemia Levtzion and Cambridge Arabist J.F.P. Hopkins (Levtzion and Hopkins 1981), presents many of them as excerpts translated into English. There is a measure of comfort in knowing that someone has decided what, among all these sources, is all-important for West African history. However, comfort is often rife with danger. Since the publication of the Corpus in 1981, developments in philosophies of language and translation theory have shown that there are benefits to be found in multiple readings and alternative interpretations and translations of texts; as historians, we have not yet addressed these developments in full. A complete deconstruction and analysis of the theories and methods that shaped the creation of this seminal work would constitute many years of scholarship — and may not, in the end, justify the effort. However, I am arguing that it is useful at this point to make some preliminary remarks based on current debates within the field of translation studies, in an attempt to put the Corpus in perspective and to suggest the value we might bring to it through a more critical reading.