尼日利亚伊巴丹历史学派再思考——以阿拉伯文手稿的收集与研究为视角

Rethinking the Ibadan School of History in Nigeria: From the Perspective of the Collection and Study of Arabic Manuscripts

20世纪50年代,深受民族主义思潮影响的伊巴丹学派在尼日利亚兴起。国内现有研究大多强调伊巴丹学派创新地使用本土口述材料、书写民族主义史学。以阿拉伯文手稿为视角重新审视这一学派,能够帮助我们重新认识这个跨时代、跨学科的多元、动态的学术流派。20世纪五六十年代,世界各地、不同学科背景的学者共同在伊巴丹大学收集、整理、运用了大量阿拉伯文手稿,将其背后穆斯林的历史纳入“非洲人的非洲史”,打破了殖民者带有的种族偏见,并证明非洲人历史上具有国家治理经验。20世纪60年代晚期开始,伊巴丹学派遇到资金、史观的挑战,学术影响力逐渐下降,而“民族主义”“口述材料”亦不足以概括伊巴丹学派的特点。

In the 1950s,the Ibadan school of history emerged in Nigeria in the context of the rising influence of nationalism. Chinese historians have argued that historians of the school innovatively employed local oral sources to write nationalist historiography of Africa. This article focuses on the collection and study of Arabic manuscripts. In doing so,it places the Ibadan school of history in the longue durée and within a cross-disciplinary setting. In the 1950s and 1960s,scholars from different countries and disciplines collected,cataloged,and studied a large number of Arabic manuscripts at the University of Ibadan. Based on this,they refuted the racial biases of colonialists by proving that Muslin history is part of the “African history of Africans” and by proving that Africans have historical experience of state governance. From the late 1960s,the collection and study of Arabic manuscripts by Ibadan historians started to suffer from the lack of funding and to encounter challenges from other trends of historical writings,and its influence gradually declined. This article argues that the Ibadan school of history has transcended the limited scope of “nationalism” and “oral materials”.