Outside interest, and funding, has helped to create more than 20 libraries in Timbuktu, from tiny collections with a few hundred documents to Ismael Haidara's Fondo Kati Bibliothèque, which has more than 7,000 leather-bound manuscripts dating back to 1198. Private collections are also being restored. "We want people all over the world to be able to access these manuscripts online." "We are creating a virtual library," said Muhammad Diagayete, 37, a researcher who was busy documenting a 1670 text on astronomy written in blue, red and black ink. Then, with the help of computer scanners, ancient knowledge is uploaded into the 21st century. Fragile pages are being carefully affixed to special Japanese paper to stop them crumbling.Īcross the courtyard, researchers sit in front of computers documenting the contents of each manuscript. In a large room with fans whirring overhead, a team is building made-to-measure cardboard boxes for every manuscript that will provide protection from the dust. Meanwhile workers are trying to safeguard the institute's growing stock of 30,000 manuscripts. With South African money, a £3.5m home for the Ahmed Baba Institute, featuring a museum, archive and rooms for scholars, is being built in the heart of the city, and will open next year. "Every minute, every second, part of a manuscript is being lost," said Mahmud Muhammad Dadab, a scholar who compares their value to the works of Victor Hugo and William Shakespeare. Even those intact, such as Mr Muhammad's Qur'an, are so fragile the pages may disintegrate when handled. Mr Mbeki was so impressed he declared them to be among the continent's "most important cultural treasures" and pledged to set up a project to help properly conserve the manuscripts.Īfter centuries of exposure to the harsh desert climate, abrasive sands and hungry termites, many of the manuscripts are badly damaged. On visiting Timbuktu in 2001, the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, was shown some of the manuscripts held at the Ahmed Baba Institute, named after the city's most famous scholar, including a copy of Islamic law dating to 1204. Still, it took a further 37 years for the campaign to document and preserve them to gain momentum. It was not until 1964, at a Unesco conference, that Timbuktu's literary wealth was recognised. But the practice of writing, copying and storing manuscripts lived on here and in other west African cities such as Gao and Kano. Timbuktu's decline began in 1591 with a Moroccan invasion. "We have even found texts where scholars offer advice on overcoming erection problems." "Every manuscript contains surprises," said Shahid Mathee, part of a University of Cape Town team studying the manuscripts. Commercial transactions were recorded - slaves and ostrich feathers were among the goods traded - as were the pronouncements of learned men on everything from the environment to polygamy and witchcraft. Using paper manufactured in Europe, scholars in the town produced their own original work, which was then copied by their pupils. Travellers from as far as the Middle East brought manuscripts to Timbuktu to sell. By the late 1500s, however, when it formed part of the powerful Songhai empire, it had become known as a centre of great learning.īooks became hugely prized. With the Sahara directly north and the Niger river south, it was established as a rest stop for travellers and a trading post for gold and salt. In reality its location was the key to its development nearly a thousand years ago. The Timbuktu of myth is a place at the end of the earth. "But these manuscripts come from an African city, a city of black people." "It has long been said that there was only oral history in this part of the world," said Salem Ould Elhadje, 67, a historian in Timbuktu. Some even believe that the fragile papers, which are now the focus of an African-led preservation effort, may reshape perceptions of the continent's past. Their emergence has caused a stir among academics and researchers, who say they represent some of the earliest examples of written history in sub-Saharan Africa and are a window into a golden age of scholarship in west Africa. After centuries of storage in wooden trunks, caves or boxes hidden beneath the sand, tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts, covering topics as diverse as astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women's rights, are surfacing across the legendary Malian city. In Timbuktu and its surrounding villages like Ber, where Mr Muhammad lives, it is commonplace. For an outsider, such a remarkable find might seem extraordinary.
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