Documenting Endangered Northern Nigerian Arabic Manuscripts: A Methodological Framework for Digital Preservation

Northern Nigeria's Arabic manuscript heritage, accumulated across centuries of Islamic scholarship in the Sokoto Caliphate, Kanem-Borno Empire, and associated scholarly networks, faces an escalating preservation crisis driven by physical deterioration, lack of custodial capacity, and inadequate documentation infrastructure. This study develops and evaluates a methodological framework for the digital preservation of endangered Arabic manuscripts in northern Nigeria, drawing on established international manuscript digitisation best practices and adapting them to the specific institutional, climatic, and community context of northern Nigerian private and institutional manuscript collections. Using action research methodology conducted in partnership with three manuscript-holding institutions in Katsina, Sokoto, and Maiduguri, the research pilots a five-stage preservation protocol encompassing condition assessment, digitisation workflow design, metadata schema development, digital repository integration, and community custodian capacity building. Technical, logistical, and ethical challenges encountered in the piloting process are systematically documented and used to refine the framework. The revised framework is evaluated by ten international Islamic manuscript preservation experts for completeness, cultural appropriateness, and technical viability. The study produces a publicly available Methodological Framework for Northern Nigerian Arabic Manuscript Preservation that provides replicable guidance for other preservation initiatives in comparable contexts. Keywords: Arabic manuscripts, digital preservation, northern Nigeria, manuscript documentation, Islamic heritage.