Because they spanned colonial borders and crossed the boundaries of current scholarship rooted in Area Studies, these institutions and the people who shaped them have been made invisible by archival and historiographical divisions. After seeing the report that day in Nouakchott, I realized that Ould Rouis and the médersas fall through the cracks when research is conducted only out of large, prominent archives. As I continued my research in Algeria, and subsequently in France and Senegal, Ould Rouis remained a tantalizingly fleeting figure, evidence that the médersas’ trans-Saharan nature remained out of reach. Ould Rouis’s manuscript remains there, alongside reams of attendance records, exam results, and other bureaucratic documents. Footnote 5 Only there, outside of an official archival institution, did I find much historical evidence about these schools and the people who passed through them. Footnote 4 I stumbled upon that collection, preserved in the attic of the Lycée Amara Rachid, almost by accident, following up on a tip from a colleague whose father taught there. Of the three Algerian médersas, only the Médersa of Algiers has a relatively complete archive preserved within Algeria. Official archives – the National Archives and National Library in Algiers, and regional archives in multiple provinces – all came up short when I went looking for documentation of the médersas and the medérsiens, as students and graduates of these schools were known. But in Algeria, as elsewhere, it was difficult to find information about Ould Rouis and his peers. I wanted to learn more about Ould Rouis and others who taught in both Algeria and West Africa – people who embodied this trans-Saharan colonial connection. Footnote 3 Because of that manuscript, I knew that he was one of a number of Algerians who had traveled to French West Africa to teach in médersas, colonial schools that combined Islamic and French curricula and forged new links between North and West Africa through Islamic education. There, I found a brief manuscript, titled Bilad Shinqit, that he had written in 1953 describing his impressions of Mauritania. I had encountered Ould Rouis’s name a few months earlier, in the dusty attic of a high school in Algiers. This report did not exactly do that, but it did connect a lot of dots. Historians sometimes fantasize about finding the one document that uncovers a whole new history. But as I sat in the archive that day, I was struck by one document in particular: a report, from May 1939, by Boualem Ould Rouis, proposing reforms to the Médersa of Timbuktu. My camera’s memory card was full, and it would take weeks to sort through everything. Thanks to the generosity of the archivist, who passed me glasses of tea as I scanned the pages, I finished the stack of documents by the end of the day. Footnote 1) The dossier was enormous, with hundreds of pages piled precariously on the table. (Without access to any archival catalogues ahead of my visit, I had relied on Mohamed Said Ould Hamody’s encyclopedic guide to Mauritania’s scholarly resources to prepare. Upon entering the building, I was pleased to see that the single dossier I had been able to request had been located and set out for me. The archives are housed in a simple warehouse, out of the way. I was unsure what to expect as I passed from the dusty streets of Nouakchott onto the greener grounds of the presidential palace. The day before, after several weeks in administrative limbo, I had been granted access to the Mauritanian national archives. With my visa set to expire, I would have to leave Mauritania the next day. Everything fell into place at the last minute.
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