Northern Mozambican Muslim population has been using the Arabic script for writing in KiSwahili and local African languages for centuries. Even today, many people continue using this script in private correspondence. Despite the abundance of the documents in this script that are housed at the Mozambique Historical Archives as well as in private hands, these documents have never been addressed or researched either from linguistic, historical, cultural or religious vantage points. For the last seven years, the Archives have been trying to draw attention of the scholars and obtain funds for the preservation and research of the documents. In this article (published in 2008), two short letters from the collection of the Mozambique Historical Archives are transcribed and translated with the help of a local shaykh who was educated within the regional historical Islamic literacy tradition.

Read More: The Use of Arabic Script in Northern Mozambique, by Liazzat Bonate