thereby focuses attention on the period before power shifted decisively from the Askiyas to the Anna. This reviewer is one of many who will take Hunwick's renowned command of Arabic as guaranteeing the accuracy of the new translations. Accuracy, however, had to be com bined with readability. Hunwick tells us that he wished to make al-Sacdi's writings' accessible as much to the dedicated general reader, as to the specialized student of African histo ry'(xvii). He was, therefore, obliged to take some liberties with the text, not least in matters of punctuation. In point of fact al-Sacdi wrote in a style that, as Hunwick gently comments,'was sometimes inadequate for the task before him'. It was wooden and repetitive, lacked elegance, and was often grammatically incorrect (xvii, lxiv). In the interests of readability many of al-Sacdi's stylistic infelicities might legitimately be eliminated from the translations, but an elegance that is not present in the original should not be imported into them. It is to Hunwick's credit that he does not do this. By way of contrast with the down-to-earth quality of al-Sacdi's prose, however, the reader may like to make a comparison between it and Hunwick's fine rendering of a poem by Ahmad Baba b. Ahmad of Timbuktu (vii, 316). In exile in Morocco from 1593 to 1608, that virtuoso addressed a traveller who was about to proceed across the desert: