John Hunwick

John Owen Hunwick (Born 1936, Chard, Somerset England) is an noted professor, author, Africanist. He has published several books, articles and journals in the African Studies field. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University having retired in 2004 after 23 years of service. [ [http://www.history.northwestern.edu/faculty/hunwick.htm Northwestern University, brief biography] ] [ [http://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/northwestern/fall2004/features/hunwick/index.htm Saving Africa's Islamic History] ] [ [http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/arbmss/hunwick_desc.html Herskovitz Arabic Manuscript Collections] ] [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0DEFD6153AF937A15757C0A9629C8B63&sec When Timbuktu Was the Paris of Islamic Intellectuals in Africa] ]

Biography

Born 1936 in Chard, Somerset, in England, to Rev. Cyril Owen Hunwick, a Methodist minister and his wife (whom he married in 1929) Doris Louise Miller. In 1938 they moved to Horsham, Sussex, where John first went to school. In 1942 the family moved to Ramsey, Huntingdonshire (now Cambridgeshire). In 1945 they moved to Bridport, Dorset, and in the following year John entered Grammar School, where he began to learn French and Latin.

In 1950, he was sent to Kent College, a Methodist boarding school in Canterbury. Whilst he was there the family moved to Shrewsbury, Shropshire. When John left Kent College, at age 18, he was drafted into the army, his home town being Shropshire, he had to join the local regiment, The King's Shropshire Light Infantry. Soon he was selected as a potential officer candidate and sent off to train at a Light Infantry camp near York. In February 1955 he was selected for full officer training, and spent four months at an officer training camp near Chester, ending up as a 2nd Lieutenant. He was given options of how and where to serve, and rather than joining his home regiment, partly involved in anti-Mau Mau fighting in Kenya, he volunteered to serve in the Somaliland Scouts, a force in what was then British Somaliland, whose regular soldiers were Somalis and its officers British. He sailed to Aden and then flew to Hargeisa in September 1955. In Somaliland his service took him first to Burao, then to Company A in Ainabo, which later moved to Hargeisa and later to Adedle.

In September of 1956 he attended the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. There he spent three years studying Arabic, with some courses in Islamic history and culture with professors such as Bernard Lewis. Peter Holt, and Ann Lambton, whilst his primary teacher of the language was Marsden Jones. In 1959 he graduated with a 1st Class Honours degree in Arabic.

Early in 1960 John took a position teaching Arabic at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria (then called University College, a branch of the University of London), a few months later he was offered a "Lectureship" in Arabic, which he readily accepted. He remained at The University of Ibadan till 1967, during his time there he established a Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, he also helped establish a Centre of Arabic Documentation for the microfilming of Arabic manuscripts, and at the same time began a journal, the Research Bulletin, to publish information on the microfilmed manuscripts and articles about the manuscript tradition.

In 1967 John took a temporary Lectureship at SOAS to teach Arabic. He taught there for two academic years. Early in 1969 he was offered the position of Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Ghana (Legon). By then he had already begun research into historical aspects of Islam in Africa, beginning with interest in the Timbuktu tradition and the Songhay empire.

After leaving SOAS he registered himself to do a Ph.D. there as an "external student". In Ghana he began by teaching a year-long undergraduate course in the history of the Islamic empire from the life of the Prophet through to the 16th century in North Africa. In his first years there he also worked hard on his Ph.D. thesis, editing and translating with commentaries and introduction the replies of al-Maghili to questions put to him by Askiya al-hajj Muhammad of Songhay, using manuscripts he had first started studying when at the University of Ibadan. The thesis was presented and approved at SOAS in 1974, and eleven years later became the basis of his published book Shari'a in Songhay the first of his books and public lectures.

Awards

ASA Distinguished Africanist Award 2005 [ [http://www.africanstudies.org/?page=awards_distinguished African Studies Association entry] ]

Published Books

*The Hidden Treasures Of Timbuktu (2008)
*Arabic Literature of Africa Vol. II, IV
*Jews of The Saharan Oasis
*West Africa, Islam and the Arab World Studies in Honor of Basil Davidson
*Arabic Literature of Africa III
*The Cloth of Many Colored Silks
*The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam
*Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire

References

Persondata
NAME= Hunwick, John Owen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=professor, author, Africanist
DATE OF BIRTH=1936
PLACE OF BIRTH=Chard, Somerset, England
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=