Ethiopia and coastal East Africa have a long and vibrant history of book production, including not only codices but also scrolls. This Hidden Stories research area focuses on Christian books produced by hand across Ethiopia as well as Islamic manuscripts made in Harar (Ethiopia) and the Swahili Coast, particularly in Kenya and its coastal islands. These books reflect traditions that are at once centuries old and innovative, reflecting the intricate global networks of trade and exchange that have since antiquity connected Ethiopia across sea and land, extending across the Indian Ocean and to the Silk Roads.

Lead researchers include Eyob Derillo (British Library), Hagos Abrha Abay (University of Toronto), Zulfikar Hirji (York U., Ontario), and Sana Mirza (Smithsonian Institution), with project coordination by Melissa Moreton and Suzanne Conklin Akbari (IAS - Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) and collaborative support from librarian Tim Perry at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (U of T). Abay’s research, focused on “Heritage Crises and Distribution of Ge’ez Manuscripts of Tigray,” is part of the broader theme of “provenance” which is central to the Hidden Stories project as a whole.

A particular focus of this research area is the development of enhanced access to items from this region that are currently located in repositories linked to the project’s institutional homes — especially the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto, Canada, and the Princeton University Library, in the USA. The project supports efforts to connect these books to their diasporic communities locally (through exhibits and events) and globally (through digitization, improved descriptions in online catalogue records, and public-facing materials). Both aspects of this access-oriented work highlight the ongoing importance of these books to their communities of origin, not only in East Africa but also in the Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora.