Letters to Thomas Hodgkin from persons other than his immediate family: Mandingo scroll

An early 19th-century Islamic talismanic scroll created by the Mandingo people of the sub-Saharan interior Chiefly in Arabic (with some text in a local language using Arabic script) it is composed of invocations to the almighty arranged in a geometric pattern. This item was sent to Hodgkin from Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1809-1876), first president of Liberia; Roberts' covering letter is held in as PP/HO/D/A2057/1 in the main run of Hodgkin's correspondence (see file PP/HO/D/A2051-2075, from which this scroll has been removed for conservation reasons).

A similar style of talisman, albeit of Iranian origin, can be seen illustrated in Islamic Calligraphy in the Wellcome Library by Nikolai Serikoff (Chicago: Serindia, 2007), p.10.