For decades, geography textbooks and instructional materials have depicted West Africa as a landscape defined primarily by oral tradition, reinforcing the idea that writing, record-keeping, and textual transmission were either limited or introduced during the colonial encounter in the 19th century. This framing does not reflect historical reality. Instead, it perpetuates a narrow and Eurocentric definition of literacy, one that recognizes only Latin letters and European languages as valid forms of written expression. When literacy is measured solely through these frameworks, the long, complex history of writing in classical Warsh Arabic and African languages using Ajami (an enriched form of the classical Warsh Arabic script) becomes obscured. The result is a geography of linguistic omission, in which African multilingual intellectual traditions are remembered as spoken but not written, local but not networked, informal rather than fully documented across space and time.
In practice, communities across Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Niger, northern Nigeria, and other parts of Africa have long used classical Warsh Arabic and Ajami—an enriched form of the Warsh Arabic script—to write Wolof, Mandinka, Pular, Hausa, and more than 70 other African languages for centuries. Their Ajami texts record poetry, medicine, trade agreements, jurisprudence, genealogies, religious teachings, environmental knowledge, political argument, and everyday correspondence. They circulated not through colonial schools, which often discouraged or actively suppressed African-language literacy, but through Qur’anic schools, marketplaces, artisan workshops, migration corridors, healer’s clinics, agricultural extension networks, and religious communities. Crucially, Ajami’s diffusion was also shaped by major intellectual and religious movements. In Senegal, the teachings of Shaykh Amadou Bamba (1853-1927) and the Muridiyya Sufi order he founded played a central role in expanding the use of Ajami through widespread Qur’anic schooling and devotional networks that connected rural villages to rapidly growing urban centers.
In general, contemporary African governments continue to disregard Ajami as an important form of literacy. They continue to espouse the colonial, Eurocentric definition of literacy as the ability to read and write only in European languages or to use the Roman script. Despite African governments’ lack of support for Ajami literacy, this grassroots form of literacy persists in religious centers and in rural and urban areas, especially among neighborhood shopkeepers, tailors, merchants, and local Quranic school teachers, to name a few.
Today, Ajami remains visible in storefront signage, public health announcements, commercial advertisements, healer’s clinic walls, street murals, agricultural pamphlets, and community letters. It continues to operate as a functional literacy system embedded in the everyday landscapes and pathways of West Africa. Recognizing Ajami requires acknowledging that the region has long been home to thriving written communities, cultures that geography as a discipline often overlooked simply because their scripts and languages did not align with European linguistic expectations. The twenty figures that follow demonstrate how Ajami shaped and continues to shape communication, community, mobility, and belonging across West African space and its diasporic extensions. To begin understanding how Ajami operates across West African space, this photo essay traces its regional foundations: where it circulated, who carried it, and how its routes of transmission shaped local and trans-local literacies.
This map illuminates the interconnected geography of Ajami literacy across the Sahel, emphasizing movement rather than fixed centers. Ajami did not spread from a single birthplace; it traveled along trade routes linking desert and coast, along pilgrimage paths connecting major Islamic learning centers, through scholarly lineages scattered across layered regional histories, and via herding routes and seasonal migration. It also diffused through political change: the rise of organic Islamic learning centers, the spread of Sufi orders, and the cultural networks shaped by figures like Shaykh Amadou Bamba, who helped institutionalize Qur’anic education in Wolof areas of Senegal.
Qur’anic schools have always operated as neighborhood institutions, physically embedded in the rhythms of daily life: near family compounds, devotional spaces, footpaths, and informal meeting points. Instruction is immersive: students first learn Arabic letters for Qur’anic recitation, then adapt those letters to write in Wolof. The school thus becomes a geographic node through which literacy and cultural knowledge circulate.
This advertisement for chair, mattress, and tent-cover rentals exemplifies the multilingual and multilayered literacy environment of contemporary Touba, the epicenter of the Muridiyya Sufi order of Senegal. Written in both Wolof Ajami and French, it occupies a transitional pedestrian space, a walkway where residents, pilgrims, and visitors circulate continuously. The placement ensures that reading is a communal act embedded in everyday mobility. The sign also demonstrates that Ajami is not merely a religious or historical script; it is used in commercial and social services that shape the city’s spatial economy. Its presence within Touba’s urban landscape challenges the assumption that modernization displaces traditional literacies. Instead, it shows how Ajami and French coexist, reflecting a lived multilingual geography.
This community letter demonstrates how Ajami facilitates political belonging across geographic distances. Written in Pular Ajami and circulated among Fuuta Jalon immigrants in Dakar, it exemplifies how diaspora communities maintain engagement with Guinean political life. The letter moves through mosque courtyards, social associations, and informal gathering spaces, creating ephemeral but powerful transnational networks. In this way, literacy becomes mobile, since it is carried across national borders through kinship, religious affiliation, and migration histories. The document underscores how Ajami continues to sustain long-distance political ties, making diaspora urban neighborhoods extensions of broader regional public spheres.
This storefront advertisement for Tigo Mobile uses Wolof Ajami to address consumers directly in the script most familiar from everyday communication. Situated along a commercial street in Diourbel, it merges economic and cultural geographies: telecommunications services meet linguistic heritage, and the built environment becomes a site where vernacular literacy competes with global corporate branding. The sign is part of a larger “Ajamiscape” visible across Senegalese cities, where African languages in Arabic script coexist with French, Romanized Wolof, and global corporate logos. Ajami’s presence in these spaces reveals how urban communication is shaped by layered histories and by the linguistic preferences of everyday residents.
This COVID-19 public health billboard was written in Wolof Ajami to reach residents whose literacy was acquired primarily through Qur’anic schooling. Positioned along a major urban road, it transforms public space into an arena of accessible health communication. During the first wave of the pandemic, such signage ensured that preventive guidelines circulated not only through elite media channels but also through the everyday landscapes where people work, travel, and gather. Ajami here becomes a spatial tool of care and protection.
Documenting these historic forms of knowledge requires researchers to work with deep cultural sensitivity, since these archives are often held by families, religious leaders, healers, and community scholars whose authority is rooted in trust. Relationships are central to this work, and scholars must navigate these spaces with care, humility, and reciprocity. Access to these manuscripts requires enduring partnerships that honor local custodianship and the living traditions that sustain them.
Beyond marketplaces and political communication, Ajami also structures the intimate geographies of everyday wellbeing, circulating through neighborhood footpaths and the economic infrastructures that sustain community health. This barbershop sign, positioned along a busy neighborhood street, demonstrates how Ajami shapes the visual economy of daily life. Its presence communicates services to passersby who read Wolof in Arabic script, turning the street into a text-bearing landscape. The barbershop operates as both a commercial site and a social hub, and the signage reflects local linguistic preferences rather than external standards. Its placement at eye level ensures legibility within the flow of pedestrian traffic, making the built environment an extension of vernacular literacy networks.
This clinic poster lists a healer’s specialties in Wolof Ajami, communicating services such as traditional dermatological treatments and spiritual therapies. The poster is located at the entrance of a compound situated along a frequently traveled street. It reveals a geography of health care that is informal, community-based, and deeply local. Ajami is used to transmit specialized knowledge, allowing healers to reach clients whose literacy does not align with biomedical or French-language protocols. This image highlights how health knowledge circulates through localized infrastructures rather than through formal institutions alone.
These intimate everyday practices intersect with the broader civic and spiritual geographies of the city, where Ajami supports governance, religious life, and public communication across expanding urban environments. This open letter, circulated in Wolof Ajami, relays essential information about local water distribution, a crucial environmental issue in a rapidly growing city. The document exemplifies how Ajami plays an active role in urban governance and civic communication. Its dissemination through community networks positions literacy as a tool of environmental management embedded in local knowledge systems.
This shopfront sign presents a layered visual field in which Arabic and Ajami appear alongside Romanized text and iconography. Situated near a mosque and several small vendors, the sign reflects how commercial communication intersects with devotional and social geographies. Ajami (the line at the bottom of the figure) functions as an accessible script for customers tied to Qur’anic schooling, making the marketplace a literacy-rich environment.
This billboard conveys rules and behavioral expectations for visitors approaching the mosque. The use of Ajami emphasizes moral communication grounded in local religious culture. As pilgrims approach the sacred center, the billboard occupies a strategic spatial threshold, shaping conduct through script that aligns with devotional schooling traditions.
This mural depicts Shaykh Amadou Bamba in white and Shaykh Ibra Fall, two foundational figures of the Muridiyya. Although visually iconic, the inscriptions accompanying such murals frequently appear in Ajami, linking devotional imagery to linguistic heritage. These walls become storytelling spaces that encode memory and religious devotion within the urban landscape.
Touba in northern Senegal is the spiritual and administrative center of the Muridiyya, a Sufi order founded by Shaykh Amadou Bamba, and one of West Africa’s most significant hubs of Islamic learning. Its urban landscape, which is organized around the Great Mosque and dense networks of Qur’anic schools, has long supported the teaching, circulation, and everyday use of Wolof Ajami. As pilgrims, students, and traders move through the city, Touba functions as a living geography of African-language literacy, where Ajami remains visible in religious, commercial, and communal life.
This Wolof Ajami billboard, sponsored by the telecommunication company Expresso, advertises free Wi-Fi access and expanded data packages for both phone and internet services. Positioned along a busy road leading toward the Great Mosque of Touba, the advertisement blends commercial messaging with the city’s spiritual landscape, creating a visual connection between modern telecommunications and Murid religious life. By using Wolof Ajami, Expresso reaches customers who are literate through Qur’anic schooling, demonstrating how corporate communication adapts to local linguistic practices. The billboard shows how Ajami continues to circulate through contemporary urban geographies, linking global technologies to everyday life in one of Senegal’s most important religious centers.
Yet Ajami’s influence is not limited to religious or urban centers; it also plays a crucial role in the environmental and agricultural landscapes where rural livelihoods are negotiated, and ecological knowledge must be communicated clearly. This agricultural extension poster promotes improved groundnut cultivation through clear instructions delivered in Hausa Ajami. Displayed at rural markets and supply centers, it blends visual instruction with vernacular literacy, ensuring farmers navigate economic opportunity through familiar written forms. The poster reveals how Ajami supports both environmental stewardship and rural livelihoods.
This poster encourages women to pursue careers in medicine using Hausa Ajami to promote gender equity in accessible language. Displayed in a mixed-use commercial and educational district, the poster ties aspirations in health and science to everyday movement across urban space. Ajami thus becomes a literacy of female empowerment embedded in the city’s social infrastructure.
Yet the mobility of Ajami extends beyond Senegal, carried by migrants, scholars, traders, and enslaved people into new social worlds. In Dakar, Pular Ajami letters like the one in Figure 4 help maintain political attachment to the highlands of Guinea. In the nineteenth-century Afro-Brazilian communities of Salvador (Bahia), enslaved West Africans used classical Warsh Arabic and Ajami to record prayers and create protective talismans deployed during the 1835 revolt, embedding African multiple literacies into the cultural geography of the Atlantic world. Today, in diaspora centers such as Harlem, members of the Muridiyya continue to use classical Warsh Arabic and Ajami in their private gatherings, communal celebrations, and recordkeeping practices, sustaining the written traditions they carried from Senegal. These diasporic Ajamiscapes demonstrate how writing binds communities across geographic distance, transforming migrant networks into extensions of West African intellectual life. Classical Warsh Arabic and Ajami become a portable geography, a way of mapping memory, belonging, and identity across continents.
These manuscripts at the Public Archives were produced by enslaved West Africans in Bahia, Brazil demonstrate how multiple literacies traveled across the Atlantic. Written in classical Warsh Arabic and West African languages using the Arabic script, they served devotional, talismanic, and community-record functions. Their survival reveals that African literacies did not disappear in the Americas but adapted to new conditions and cultural terrains. The text embodies a diaspora geography of resilience: knowledge carried across forced migrations, maintained under surveillance, and reconstructed within Afro-Brazilian religious and social networks.
This Nigerian banknote includes Hausa Ajami script, showing how Ajami circulates through some of the most widely used objects in daily life. As the note moves through markets, bus stations, rural trading posts, and city streets, it carries a form of literacy shaped by Qur’anic schooling and northern Nigerian commercial networks. The presence of Ajami on state-issued currency demonstrates how written African languages anchor economic exchange and mark the movement of people, goods, and knowledge across regional space.
This gathering of Murid disciples celebrating Amadou Bamba Day in Harlem illustrates how the spiritual and cultural influence of the Muridiyya extends far beyond Senegal. In New York City, Murid communities transform public streets into spaces of devotional performance, bringing Sufi poetry in Warsh Arabic, and shared memory into the heart of the African diaspora. The celebration reflects how migrants recreate the social and religious geographies of Touba abroad, making Harlem a site where Bamba’s teachings continue to circulate and strengthen community belonging.
Recognizing classical Warsh Arabic and Ajami writing traditions reshapes how we understand literacy, mobility, and geographic space in West Africa. Rather than emerging from centralized state institutions or colonial educational systems, these literacies are rooted in decentralized networks: Qur’anic schools, marketplaces, diaspora associations, pilgrimage routes, healer’s clinics, agricultural extension programs, and community governance structures. Their landscapes are also diverse: rural farm zones, dense pilgrimage cities, roadside kiosks, diasporic mosques, migrant neighborhoods, underpasses, and bustling commercial corridors. Seeing these forms of literacies within these environments allows us to re-map West Africa not as a region defined by oral tradition alone, but as one shaped by centuries of written knowledge embedded in vernacular languages and everyday spaces. This reframing disrupts long-standing patterns of omission in geography and restores classical Warsh Arabic and African-language writing to the center of regional intellectual history. To acknowledge these forms of literacies, especially Ajami, is to expand our understanding of where literacy lives, how people make knowledge spatial, and how writing anchors communities across both local and global worlds.