My first encounter with the Arabic Literature of Africa (ALA) project was in the basement of John Hunwick’s house in Skokie, Illinois, which he had transformed into an office that doubled as personal library and archive. The time must have been early 2003, because he was correcting the proofs of ALA IV, Writings of Western Sudanic Africa, which was to be published in May, and I still remember his soft-spoken excurses into the shifting sands of West African Arabic transliteration and etymology.

The year 2003 marked the tenth anniversary of this “multi-volume work of reference,…