Anjemi

Anjẹmi or Yoruba Ajami () refers to the tradition and practice of writing the Yoruba language using the Arabic script, as part of the tradition among Muslims of West Africa at large, referred to as the Ajami script. These include the orthography of various Fula dialects, Hausa, Wolof, and more.

==Background== Islam came into Yorubaland around the 14th century, as a result of trade with Wangara (also Wankore) merchants, a mobile caste of the Soninkes from the then Mali Empire. Progressively, Islam started to gain a foothold in Yorubaland over the 18th and 19th centuries, that by the end of the 19th century, all major Yoruba cities had a sizeable minority Muslim population. One consequence of this daily use of the Arabic language and the accompanying practice of establishing Arabic schools to teach new converts, was the gradual inroad of a considerable amount of Arabic-derived words and expressions relating to Islamic worship and other subjects into the Yoruba language. Another consequence was the adoption of the Arabic script by Yoruba scholars and literaturists to try and write the Yoruba language. Although it is worth pointing out that at the time, there was no unified orthographic conventions, no adaptation to represent consonants or vowels unique to Yoruba and the writing was simply done with the base Arabic consonants and vowels.