A Northwestern institute designed to document the previously unexplored influence of Islam in Africa opened Monday night.

About 60 people attended the inaugural lecture of the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa at Hardin Hall.

The institute, which is funded by a $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation, will include the cataloging of 3,000 Arabic manuscripts discovered by History and Religion Prof. John Hunwick during a 1999 research trip to Timbuktu, Mali.

Housed at the African studies department, the institute will allow scholars to study these manuscripts and other documents showing the influence of Islam in Africa. Hunwick will serve as director of the institute.

The institute will make the Arabic manuscripts available to international scholars and will help train African scholars in the field.

“The vision has been there for a very long time,” said Jane Guyer, director of the African studies program.

And the grant provides the funding necessary to achieve these goals, she said.

“Among the proposed goals are expanding public awareness of Africa’s Islamic history,” University President Henry Bienen said Monday night. “Prof. Hunwick has had his brilliance and hard work rewarded with (the creation of the institute).”

Hunwick spoke about the transmission of Islam from the Middle East to Africa and the legacy of Islamic literacy in sub-Saharan Africa, both of which are key aspects of the program.

“Knowledge of the written word gave access to information for persons distant in both space and time,” Hunwick said. “African Muslims became sharers of global Islamic knowledge.”

Sub-Saharan Africa was literate in Arabic in the 11th century, and by the 13th century Islamic thought flourished in Cairo, Egypt, and Marrakesh, Morocco, among other major cities.

According to Hunwick, this dispels the myth that European missionaries brought literacy to Africa.

“Much of Africa was literate for centuries in Arabic,” he said.

Hunwick also discussed the written accomplishments of Muslim slaves brought to the United States, including one slave who was able to write his own biography and transcribe prayers and letters in Arabic. The institute will study literacy among Muslim slaves.

Edward Muir, chairman of the history department, said a key aspect of the project is the manuscripts Hunwick discovered in Timbuktu.

“Any historian would be in envy to have those at his disposal,” Muir said.

With the inauguration of the institute, “Northwestern becomes the center of Islamic thought in Africa,” he added.

R. Sean O’Fahey, co-director of the institute and a professor of history and Middle Eastern studies at Norway’s University of Bergen, said the institute will include workshops, publications and the identification of promising African scholars.

Speech junior Leila Shahbandar said she hopes the institute will help promote interest in the African studies department.

“Being a Muslim, I think it’s really important to study Islam in Africa because it was so important there,” she said.