Amid the turmoil of conflict in Mali, local residents saved the bulk of the treasured Timbuktu manuscripts by hiding them from Islamic militants, who regarded the artefacts as idolatrous and appeared intent on destroying them. The militants fled the city under attack late last month.An estimated 300,000 manuscripts were the target of Ansar Dine rebels who had imposed conservative Islamic law in areas under their power.
Faced with the firepower of French military strikes, the Islamic militants left – but not before damaging the Timbuktu-based Ahmed Baba Institute building, which at one time had been used as a headquarters by the rebels.
The Ahmed Baba Institute, whose construction was funded by South Africa, was officially opened in 2009. It is one of several libraries and collections in Timbuktu containing fragile documents dating back to the 13th century, and houses more than 20,000 scholarly manuscripts.
Timbuktu is a United Nations world heritage site. It is an archive of handwritten texts in Arabic and in African languages in the Arabic script (mainly Fulani and Songhay), which experts say were written between the 13th and the 20th centuries.
The texts include religious, scientific, medical and commercial documents.
According to the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project, run by the Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town, a limited number of items were damaged or stolen and furnishings in the Ahmad Baba Institute library were looted by rebels.
“From all our local sources – all intimately connected with the public and private collections in the town – there was no malicious destruction of any library or collection,” says its website.
Shamil Jeppie, director of Tombouctou project, told University World News this week that efforts to get regular updates from Timbuktu were still being affected by disturbances in Mali.
“Civilians are still under restrictions to move in and out of Timbuktu. But we are hoping to get photographs of the Ahmad Baba Institute library this week from our colleagues in the capital Bamako, which will tell us more about the damage,” said Jeppie.
According to TIME, residents including old Timbuktu families that have looked after the documents for centuries, rescued tens of thousands of manuscripts early last year before militants seized northern Mali. They agreed to talk on condition that TIME kept their secret until after the jihadists had been defeated.
The plan was to leave a few hundred manuscripts in Timbuktu’s only publicly run collection, the Ahmed Baba Institute, in order to conceal the fact that the bulk of them had been hidden elsewhere.
“It points to a deep tradition of conservation,” said Jeppie.
He said protection of the cultural and intellectual heritage of the region needed to be enhanced and promoted.
Although he has no idea when restoration efforts might start, Jeppie stressed that the abandonment of the security of Timbuktu nine months ago, the flight of archivists and researchers, and the closure of libraries should not be repeated.
Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, paid tribute to local people in Timbuktu who protected most of the manuscripts from Islamic militants by moving them out of occupied zones, but said manuscripts were still at risk of being trafficked out of Mali.
She said UNESCO hoped to work with people who privately hold Timbuktu documents to safeguard the treasures.
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), based in Senegal, condemned the destruction and looting of manuscripts housed in the Ahmed Baba Institute during a recent symposium titled "The Library Colonial Debate" held in Dakar.
CODESRIA leaders Dr Ebrima Sall and Professor Mamadou Diawara said the destruction dealt a serious injury to the memory, spirit, and being African and to all humanity.
They called on African governments to come up with urgent and concrete actions dedicated to the preservation of libraries, manuscripts and other creations of the mind. "War first targets people, but it is also always and everywhere a threat to books, libraries and culture," they said.
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