Transient texts: erasable writing on wood, sand, and metal in northern Nigerian Islam

Based mainly on ethnographic research carried out in Qur’anic schools and in private Islamic teaching circles, this chapter provides a description of writing practices on three distinct erasable surfaces – wood, sand, and metal – in the context of northern Nigerian Islam. We can broadly divide these writing practices into two categories: pedagogical and occult. In both cases, the use of traditional writing supports should not be dismissed as the residual vestige of a long-gone past but rather should be understood either as functional to the technical goals of the pedagogical system in which the practice is embedded or as reflecting the symbolic logic of the religious practices that it facilitates.