On Thursday, April 2d, the cruel news came: Professor John O. Hunwick had passed away. After long years of poor health, the man so many knew as the shaykh had left us. Word arrived just as a few of us were sitting down for a seminar on the Tarikh al-Fattash. There could hardly have been a more fitting way for us, so far away, to honor his memory and his life’s work than to bring to life what he had taught us by plunging into the tangled history of Timbuktu’s chronicles.
I had the immense privilege of studying under Professor Hunwick (in my experience, one did not study “with” him) in the last years of his prime. As a loyal but inadequate "talib," I learned many things from him, too many to enumerate. I hope never to forget his deep and human engagement with the intellectual world of Muslim Africa, the endless wonder he brought to the texts and the language of their expression, and his generosity of spirit. One can remember, but never imitate, the bright light that would shine from his eyes when he dealt another devastating—and always multilingual—pun. That same light was reflected, I well recall, in the eyes of an old Malian bookseller on a dusty side street—his kiosk cluttered with prayer beads, mats, and kutub—when Hunwick addressed him in mellifluous Arabic. Alongside the shaykh, one did not forget that knowledge can be joy.
Among his many translations, one phrase lingers: “scented salaams.” Amidst the perfume of the good shaykh’s parting, we hope that his many survivors and descendants will find some small comfort in the strength of our sentiments as we wish him salaam.
-Gregory Mann, Professor of History, Columbia University
Obituary from Northwestern University: http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/04/john-owen-hunwick...
