When the Ansar Dine rebels invaded Timbuktu in 2013 and threatened to destroy the ancient city and its treasures, the world shuddered. It was feared that Timbuktu’s UNESCO World Heritage-listed buildings and the numerous libraries in which the valuable historical manuscripts were stored would be destroyed. They are a valuable testimony to the history and culture of the West African region, which dates back to the 12th century. Timbuktu was founded in the 12th century as a trading town on the northern bend of the Niger and played an important role in the trans-Saharan trade thanks to its location. Located between the gold mines in the south of West Africa and the salt mines of the Sahara, the city was not only a trading hub for gold and salt, but also for goods such as ivory, fabrics, leather, ostrich feathers, kola nuts and slaves. It experienced the heyday of the empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai, which shaped the history of West Africa. In addition to trade, Timbuktu became famous as an intellectual center, attracting travelers and scholars. Mosques that are still famous today were built as early as the 14th century and gave the desert city its unique and important cityscape. In Europe, the city made a name for itself in the 16th century as an important book trading center in addition to its popular gold shipments. Old books, manuscripts and manuscripts that pilgrims, travelers and scholars had imported from the Middle East and brought back from their travels served as trade goods and were copied and distributed. To this day, Timbuktu’s numerous libraries with their historically valuable manuscripts bear witness to a rich literary heritage. They cover religious discourses, theology, history and music, as well as medicine, mathematics and astronomy. In addition to original texts, there are also primary texts on Islam, jurisprudence and Islamic science. Timbuktu is home to the largest collection of manuscripts in West Africa, which are kept in over 40 private family libraries.
When the historical buildings and with them the precious manuscripts were threatened by rebels in recent times, the threat reached its peak in 2014 when the library of the Ahmed Baba Institute was set on fire, destroying its 30,000 or so historical manuscripts forever. A further 300,000 or so important manuscripts were threatened in the city. But after the initial shock reports of this destruction came the news of relief: most of the manuscripts were no longer in Timbuktu at the time, but had been saved by private individuals on their own initiative, thanks to Abdel Kader Haïdara. He had already committed himself to the manuscripts at the age of 17 and thus continued his father’s work. After realizing the threat to the manuscripts, he managed to convince most of the owners of the private libraries to entrust him with the responsibility of saving them. The manuscripts were taken away from Timbuktu in metal crates the size of large suitcases. To avoid suspicion from the rebels, only two crates at a time were loaded onto cars, so that a total of around 1200 journeys were necessary to transport the 2,400 crates containing a total of 285,000 manuscripts to the safer Bamako, 700 km away. Some of the crates were transported by donkey cart or boat on the Niger to places where they could be loaded onto cars more safely. Thanks to this secret rescue of the manuscripts, which took about eight months, at least 95% of the manuscripts were saved from Timbuktu. At present, these manuscripts are still stored in the same transport crates at various locations in Bamako. However, the climatic changes, especially the higher humidity and improper storage, continue to threaten the manuscripts.
After the manuscripts were successfully evacuated to Bamako, Abdel Kader Haïdara, as President of the “Organization for the Storage and Valorization of Manuscripts for the Protection of Islamic Culture” (SAVAMA-DCI), began to approach various international organizations and government representatives to help him preserve and make the manuscripts accessible. On the initiative of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Gerda Henkel Foundation and the Jutta Vogel Foundation, initial steps were taken to help set up a manuscript archive in Bamako where the manuscripts can be properly stored, conserved, catalogued, researched and digitized. In the meantime, special equipment for conservation and restoration has been acquired, a local coordinator has been appointed and work has begun. Various meetings in Mali and Germany on the preservation of the Timbuktu manuscripts aimed to discuss further protective measures in order to protect and preserve the manuscripts in the long term. The aim is also to catalog and digitize all the manuscripts for research purposes so that these valuable testimonies to the past can be preserved for future generations and their enormous diversity, genres and themes can provide further information about the history and culture of West Africa.
The Jutta Vogel Foundation supports the project to preserve the manuscripts in Timbuktu in cooperation with the Federal Foreign Office, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the University of Hamburg and other international partners.
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Overview of current developments in the Timbuktu project, Mali
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