Research Travel Grant, West African Arabic Manuscripts at UIUC

Dear all,
I would like to announce that the University of Illinois Library and the Department of History have just issued a Call for Application for a short Research Travel Grant to work in our library, which is one of the largest academic libraries in the United States. Among the many different sources that can be found here, I want to attract your attention to the possibility of applying for this grant to work with our microfilms (now also available in digital format) of Mauritanian manuscripts from family library of the famous Mauritanian 19th century scholar Shaykh Sidiyya (d.1868). This collection was microfilmed by Charles Steward during one of his fields in Mauritania in the 1980s (https://archives.library.illinois.edu/archon/?p=collections/controlcard&id=1592&q=mauritania). 

You can find more information on this collection on the West African Arabic Manuscript Database https://waamd.lib.berkeley.edu/about/collections/boutilimit. The same database can be easily searched to have a full picture of the materials available.

I strongly encourage applications to work on this collection, that remains one of the largest West African repositories of manuscripts outside the continent and is still very little used by scholars.

Looking forward to receive applications. Feel free to contact me at nobili@illinois.edu

NOTE that the deadline is May 1st and awards will be granted before June 1st.

Best regards,

Mauro Nobili

Asst.Professor

Department of History

446D Gregory Hall

810 S. Wright St.

Urbana, Illinois 61801

http://www.history.illinois.edu/people/nobili