Timbuktu

[Wahalla]

it amazes me that so little is writen on this subject.... Muta bigged up the French and the Malainss who took it back...

But then it must be its main product was not gold but human beings in its hey day...

Timbuktu rebel damage to historic sites 'underestimated'

Many of Timbuktu's ancient manuscripts were burned and are unrecoverable
Continue reading the main storyRelated Stories

• How Timbuktu's treasure was smuggled to safety
• French army in major Mali pullout
• Islamists damage Timbuktu shrines

A team of experts in Mali says damage to Timbuktu's unique cultural heritage from recent fighting is much worse than was first estimated.
The team from Unesco travelled to the city for the first time since systematic attacks by rebel forces who occupied it until early this year.
They say Timbuktu is completely degraded and that more of its famous mausoleums than previously thought are damaged.
Many more manuscripts are also missing.
The mission of the Unesco team was the first step towards reconstruction of Timbuktu and the safeguarding of its heritage.
'Razed to the ground'Continue reading the main story“Start Quote

We need to save Timbuktu ”

Lazare Eloundou AssomoHead of UNESCO mission
"From the information that we received during the occupation, we thought only nine mausoleums from the World Heritage List were damaged," the head of the mission, Lazare Eloundou Assomo, told the BBC World Service.
"But actually, when we arrived on the site, we had 14 mausoleums damaged.
"What we also noted is that not only 2,000 to 3,000 manuscripts were lost. The estimation, today, is of 4,203 manuscripts that were completely lost," he said.
Mr Assomo said the emblematic El Farouk monument at the entrance city had been razed to the ground.
He also said he had fears for thousands of manuscripts that had been successfully smuggled out of Timbuktu, away from Islamist rebel forces.
Many of the documents are priceless
They have been taken from air-conditioned rooms in Timbuktu to the capital, Bamako.
"We are entering the rainy season", he said, "and there is a lot of humidity there. So we will need to intervene as soon as possible to put them in boxes that can resist the humidity."
African symbolFrom 28 May to 3 June, the team carried out extensive investigations in Timbuktu and consultations with the local community.
The results will be used to finalise an action plan which will include extensive reconstruction.
Mr Assomo stressed the importance of the plan, saying Timbuktu is "a symbol of African history".
"It is a place where many, many things happened since the 12th Century. A place of knowledge... a place that tells us a lot about how great the African people were and continue to be."
"We need to save Timbuktu," he said.

[jah_yout]

Christian and Muslim fanatics responsible for too much phukkery in Africa....

[Tropicana]

This whole situation is more than unfortunate.

[Emperah]

Christian and Muslim fanatics responsible for too much phukkery in Africa....

the Hobama regime an dem Africom is responsible. Who else is arming so called rebels?

[jah_yout]

the Hobama regime an dem Africom is responsible. Who else is arming so called rebels?

the religious nuts been de-stabilizing Africa along with the world powers long before africom...africom is just the latest & greatest weapon of the beast but the mindset of Africans who subscribe to the white-supremacy & arab-supremacy versions of their mis-interpreted religions have done untold harm to the concept of one africa

[blugiant]

Christian and Muslim fanatics responsible for too much phukkery in Africa....

seeth deh

wen elephants rumble afrikkan grass gitt tepp pon

[jah_yout]

the Hobama regime an dem Africom is responsible. Who else is arming so called rebels?

Obama is unique because he falls under the categories of Christian AND Muslim fanatic

[blugiant]

Obama is unique because he falls under the categories of Christian AND Muslim fanatic

arab enslavers sold blakk muslims to oyinbo christians enslavers woo tunn den enslaved blakks inna christian fanatics

[Wahalla]

arab enslavers sold blakk muslims to oyinbo christians enslavers woo tunn den enslaved blakks inna christian fanatics

Timbuktu was a hub in the slave trade....

[Wahalla]

part 2


"The manuscripts of Timbuktu have always been an aspiration for scholars working on the intellectual history of Africa," says Eva Brozowsky, a German paper restoration specialist, who examined six of the chests in Bamako in April.
The 2,000 documents she had access to were from Islamic North and West Africa, but also from the Middle East, and covered commerce and diplomatic relations as well as commentaries on the Koran, jurisprudence and Arabic linguistics.
"This is an untapped treasure trove of unthinkable value, nobody quite knows what's hidden in these chests," adds Hanssler, whose foundation is supporting the restoration efforts financially and logistically.
The manuscripts have never been kept in optimal conditions, Hanssler says.
"Some of the documents have been damaged in the past by insects or water. Others have suffered from being exposed to dry air in Timbuktu, and the leather covers have become brittle and have cracked."
The manuscript paper itself - thought to have originated from the region around Venice in Italy - has aged substantially. As a result the documents have become fragile and fragmented, and some of the writing has faded.
Haidara himself estimates that about 20% of the manuscripts are severely damaged and extremely fragile, while another 20% are damaged, but less severely.
Continue reading the main storyWho helped fund the rescue ?

• Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, The Netherlands
• DOEN Foundation, The Netherlands
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands
• The Juma Al Majid Centre, Dubai
• The Ford Foundation in the US
• Federal Foreign Office, Germany

While the security situation in northern Mali remains uncertain the manuscripts should stay in Bamako, he says, but he won't hear of them being taken out of the country.
"The day there is a lasting peace in Timbuktu we will return them to Timbuktu. But until that time comes we must preserve them well - put them in boxes, restore them, catalogue them and digitise them."
When they go back, it won't be in canoes or under piles of vegetables, and hopefully many will be in better condition than when they left.
Dr Abdel Kader Haidara was interviewed on the BBC World Service programme Newshour.

[Wahalla]

part 1
How Timbuktu's manuscripts were smuggled to safety

By Naveena KottoorBBC World Service
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When Islamist rebels set fire to two libraries in Timbuktu earlier this year, many feared the city's treasure trove of ancient manuscripts had been destroyed. But many of the texts had already been removed from the buildings and were at that very moment being smuggled out of the city, under the rebels' noses.
"These manuscripts are really precious to us. They are family heirlooms. Our history, our heritage," says Dr Abdel Kader Haidara, owner of one of Timbuktu's biggest private libraries, containing manuscripts dating back to the 16th Century.
"In our family there have been generations and generations of great scholars, great astronomers, and we have always looked after these documents."
When Islamist rebels took over Timbuktu last year, looking after the documents began to look like an impossible task.
Continue reading the main story“Start Quote

This is a treasure trove of unthinkable value, nobody quite knows what's hidden in these chests”

Dr Michael HansslerGerda Henkel Foundation
Under their strict interpretation of Islam, the rebels soon began destroying shrines they considered "idolatrous". The documents held in Timbuktu since its glory days as a centre of Islamic learning in the 13th to 17th Centuries were equally vulnerable.
As a precaution, Haidara and other big book-owning families, together with officials of the state-run Ahmed Baba Institute, had already removed most documents from major collections, hiding them in private homes.
After the destruction of the shrines, it became clear a more radical approach was necessary.

"We realised we needed to find another solution to take them entirely out of Timbuktu itself," says Haidara. "It was very difficult. There were loads of manuscripts. We needed thousands of metal boxes and we didn't have the means to get them out. We needed help from outside."
Dr Haidara, who masterminded the rescue, with boxes of manuscripts
With approval from 35 key families, Haidara went in search of funding, which he secured from the Prince Claus Foundation in the Netherlands and the German Foreign Office, among others.
Continue reading the main storyOne man and his manuscripts


"We'd seen on TV how people flee from war. But we never thought it would be us," says Timbuktu calligrapher Boubacar Sidiki.
Most people caught buses south, but they were searched on the way out for laptops, phones and anything else valuable - including manuscripts.
But Sidiki had noticed something. The militants who searched people leaving increasingly didn't bother with the drivers. So he asked his neighbour, a bus driver, to place a box of manuscripts in his driver's cab very early in the morning.

• Timbuktu calligrapher's rescue mission

But there was a major problem - the rebels often searched vehicles leaving Timbuktu, and if they found manuscripts they would certainly confiscate or destroy them.
"It was very risky. We evacuated the manuscripts in cars, carts and canoes," says Haidara, who launched the operation in October, frequently concealing the metal boxes under crates of vegetables and fruit.
"One car could only take two or three metal boxes at the most. So we did it little by little."
The cars headed for Bamako, via Mopti, the last government-controlled town in Mali during the Islamist occupation of the North.
The canoes - part of local transport in northern Mali for centuries - travelled to Bamako on the river Niger, via Djenne.
When in January of this year the insurgents torched two libraries belonging to the Ahmed Baba Institute, as they were retreating from Timbuktu, the covert rescue operation was already half-complete - and the libraries themselves had been all but empty for months.
Haidara estimates that only a few hundred manuscripts were destroyed.

As the situation in the north remained volatile, however, the rescue operation continued for three months after the rebel withdrawal, until 2,400 metal boxes containing an estimated 285,000 manuscripts had been delivered to private homes in the capital.
In Bamako, however, the papers now face threats of a different kind.
Continue reading the main storyFind out more


Dr Abdel Kader Haidara was interviewed on the BBC World Service programme Newshour

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Having been preserved for centuries in a dry desert climate, they now find themselves in the tropics, with the rainy season about to start.
"The houses are not air-conditioned and in comparison humidity in Bamako is much higher than in Timbuktu," says Dr Michael Hanssler of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, who has just returned from a fact-finding mission to assess the condition of the documents.
It's impossible for air to circulate around the documents as long they are stored in metal containers. Mould usually develops at humidity levels of 60%, and levels as high as 80% are expected in July and August.

Efforts are now under way to renovate a building in Bamako that will have proper storage facilities. Windows are currently being bricked up in order to protect the manuscripts from daylight, insects and heat.
There will also be a workspace where experts can restore the documents and digitise them for scholars worldwide to study.

[Tropicana]

This is indeed a relief.

[Wahalla]

my isue with Timbuktu is that it is a historic center of learning... it should be a research center... where intelectual persuits are carried out... building on the past.... Bit like the Dogon... they have arcane knowledge but the expansion of the knowledge has stopped...

To me any one who destroyed these manuscripts should be killed.......

Any one who trys to frame knowledge into a limitations because they think it is devils worship is evil... be they claiming it is on behalf of christians, kamunists or islam..... islam i dont get because the phrophet told his followers to seek knowledge......

I want to know what is in those chests, are they merely lists of merchandise or ancients spells of African religions in the past.... is there a copy of the full work of Tacitus a forgetten work by Arcimedes.. further wrting of Avicenna ???????

[Tropicana]

I do hope work begins on preserving and translating those manuscripts. There is SO much knowledge that we could probably use today. I still remember when it was thought the library at Timbuktu was a legend...history has proven that this is wrong.

[Tropicana]