This is the first volume of the six-volume work, "Arabic Literature of Africa", which provides a survey of Muslim authors writing in Arabic in Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa and a bibliography of their works. Falling within the tradition of the great works of Brockelmann and Sezgin, it forms a basic reference tool for the study of Arabic writing in areas of the African Islamic world that fall outside the parameters of these works. While primarily a reference work it also aims to provide an outline of the intellectual history of Muslim societies in the areas it covers: the Nile Valley, East Africa and the Horn of Africa, West Africa and the western Sahara, from earliest times to the present. This volume covers Eastern Sudanic Africa (mainly the modern Sudan) until approximately 1900. It comprises 12 chapters organized by theme or period and aims to present as complete a coverage as the present state of our knowledge will allow.