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The project examines issuessurrounding the development of the maqāma genre in Nigeria. Among the myriadof classical Arabic works that made the list of the Islamic Library of WestAfrica, the maqāma remains among the most surviving and still developinggenres across time and space. Based on this, the study elucidates on two propositions: first,that the maqāma, and its derivatives in glosses, adaptations,commentaries, and so on, could be regarded as a formof “minor literature” in the corpus of Arabic works written in Nigeria, andsecond, that the development of the maqāma&#160;has a big stake in the global “re(de)territorializing”of the genre from its generally-presumed Arabophone origin. On one hand, the postcolonial status of the Arabic language in WestAfrica, which relegated it politically and culturally to the background, makesit plausible to view any Arabic works here as not only “minor” but also as worksfrom outside the national and regional literary borders. On the other hand, themarginalization of West-African Arab-Islamic intellectual productions from otheractivities of the Arabophone world also makes the case for considering the NigerianMaqāmāt as literature coming out of an unusual topography. I thereforelook at the linguistic, literary, and sociocultural factors that gave impetusto the emergence and survival of the genre in the “Arabic-Islamic Library” ofNigeria and West Africa across the ages.Sulaiman A. Alagunfon is a PhD researcher at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin, where he has been is working on new trends of maqāma writing in Nigeria since 2017. Before coming to Berlin, he has lectured at the Department of Religious Studies of Ekiti State University (Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria), and has a BA in Arabic from Lagos State University (Nigeria) and an MA (with distinction) in Arabic Language and Literature from the University of Ibadan (Nigeria). His general research interest is in Arabic-Islamic intellectual history and cultural production in  West Africa, particularly in recent times, on which he has published works appearing in both local and international journals.