Author: Giesing, Cornelia ; & Vydrin, Valentin Feodos'evich ; translators & editors:
Title: Ta:rikh Mandinka de Bijini (Guinée-Bissau) : La Mémoire des Mandinka et des Sòoninkee du Kaabu
Description: Leiden, Brill, 2007. orig. wrappers. 24x16cm, xxii,398 pp. Series: African Sources for African History, Vol. 9.. Textual photos,maps, charts. Minor rubbing. VG. ¶ Texts in Mandinka and Arabic with French translations and commentary; Editors’ introduction in English. Contents: Les versions du texte et leur transmission écrite et orale; Les versions écrites et orales du "Ta:rikh Mandinka" présentées en colonnes; Sujets mythiques du "Ta:rikh Mandinka" ( interprétations et commentaires comparés); Contextes de production et de transmission des livres de Bijini: historiographie et discours social dans un village musulman au pays des "Sòoninkee" du Kaabu et du Badoors ["This volume presents a hitherto unpublished manuscript written in Arabic and Mandinka from the muslim village of Bijini in Guinea-Bissau, the "Ta:rikh Mandinka", a unique and structured compilation unfolding the pagan "empire"of Kaabu from it's mythical beginnings to it's downfall in the nineteenth- century. Two existing manuscript versions and several oral interpretations of the "Ta:rikh" are reproduced, transcribed, translated, compared and analysed considering philological, historical and social- anthropological issues (chaps. 1-3). The fourth chapter deals with the clerical community of Bijini as a place of knowledge-transfer in it's local setting and within regional networks. The focus of the book is on the importance of the Mandinka and Jakhanka clerical diaspora in the making of the history of the Sooninkee "empire" of Kaabu in Senegambia. The volume contains a glossary of names and terms mentioned in the sources and is illustrated with maps, photographs and drawings" - Publisher's description]

Keywords: African Ethnology, Guinea-Bissau, Bijine History, Ethnic History, Historiography, West Africa, Mandinka, Ethnohisto, Mandingo, Ethnography