Italian paper

Ingredients

Italian paper

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

Paper was not produced locally in West Africa or the Sokoto Caliphate during the pre-colonial period due to a reported lack of flax and a shortage of linen rags; cotton was noted as being unsuitable for the process and papyrus had fallen out of use (p. 142). Consequently, the material was imported in bulk from North Africa, with Tripoli merchants specifically providing Italian paper (p. 138), and other supplies arriving from Morocco and Algeria (p. 135). By the nineteenth century, paper was relatively cheap and widely available, which facilitated the widespread copying of borrowed texts by students (p. 141).

Evidence

"Borno may have been their best source of books – distinguished Fulbe scholars were based there, as were the Tripoli merchants with a tradition of importing Italian paper."

Remarks

Manuscript libraries in the Sokoto Caliphate were extensive, with some collections such as those in the National Archives in Kaduna containing over 3,000 Arabic manuscripts (p. 137, 140). The use of paper predated the printing press in West Africa by approximately 300 years, meaning vellum was not required for scholarship (p. 137). Many manuscripts are described as being in a 'battered' state or in 'fragmentary form,' such as an uncatalogued Fulfulde rendering of the Ihya al-Sunna in the Sokoto State History Bureau (p. 132, 141). Administrative documents and letters were typically written in a classical Arabic using a Maghribi script (p. 136).