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Timbuktu manuscripts online11/14/2023 ![]() ![]() Some other features of various manuscripts include gold leaf, botanical diagrams, and ornate decorations. “They’re basically historians trying to interpret different passages that were written 200 years before.” Many of the documents were also copied by hand from earlier ones, with the scribe inserting their own opinions of the meaning of the text into the margins. “Some of these manuscripts were passed on from generation to generation among students in Timbuktu - it was one of the largest university centers in the world,” said Chance Coughenour, who led the digitization project at Google Arts & Culture. Some of them show the marks of centuries of engagement and interpretation, with annotations in smaller font adorning the space in between lines and around the sides. The Arabic script that lines each sheet varies in calligraphic style, ranging from an older, blocky style, a thicker one associated with Hausa tradition of West Africa, and a curved one originating from North Africa. Many of the manuscripts are loose pages bound together by goatskin. Destruction of Malian manuscripts by extreemist Islamist grous at the Institute of Ahmed Baba in Timbuktu in 2012 (courtesy SAVAMA-DCI) In that same time period, Leo Africanus reported that the book industry was the most profitable one in Timbuktu. “Salt comes from the North, gold from the South, and silver from the land of the whites, but the words of God, learned things, stories, and wonderful tales are found only in Timbuktu,” one account from the 16th century related. Some estimates place a quarter of Timbuktu’s residents in the 16th century as students, enrolled at over 150 schools throughout the city. Timbuktu was an economic and political hub in sub-Saharan Africa, ruled by a series of West African dynasties. ![]() The project showcases in equal parts the tradition of learning and preservation efforts that have kept these artifacts intact. Now, some 40,000 manuscripts - many of which survived not only the most recent attack but also the French conquest of Timbuktu in 1893, when the treasured texts were pillaged from libraries - have been digitized and are viewable as part of Mali Magic, a collaboration between Google Arts & Culture and a number of local and international organizations including Haidara’s preservation nonprofit group SAVAMA Timbuktu Renaissance and Instruments 4 Africa. ![]() They capture an intellectual tradition of inquiry into subjects as diverse as astronomy, ethics, jurisprudence, geography, and philosophy and evince a rich written record in Africa, one whose value is often overlooked outside the continent.Ī manuscript featuring an illustration of a musical instrument. In total, 350,000 manuscripts from 45 libraries across the city had been kept safe from Ansar Dine by volunteers. Sorrow in the aftermath of the event was followed by a miraculous revelation: Most of the manuscripts had been salvaged, thanks to an effort spearheaded by librarian Abdel Kader Haidara. At the time, scholars worried that the desecration of the archive represented “the greatest loss of the written word in Africa since the destruction of the library in Alexandria.” As the group’s last hurrah, they set fire to the Ahmed Baba Institute, a library that held approximately 30,000 works, some dating to the 12th century. In January of 2013, French and Malian forces seized Timbuktu from the Islamist militant group Ansar Dine, which had taken over the desert city for almost a year, laying siege to mausoleums and establishing Shariah law in the interim. ![]()
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