Timbuktu’s Medieval Manuscripts Return Home After A Decade Away Safe From Insurgents

Timbuktu’s Medieval Manuscripts Return Home After A Decade Away Safe From Insurgents

Timbuktu’s Medieval Manuscripts Return Home After A Decade Away Safe From Insurgents Stacks of Timbuktu manuscripts at the Ahmed Baba Institute – credit, UNESCO Bureau of Mali, CC 4.0. INT Thousands of ancient Arabic texts have returned to their rightful place in the legendary Saharan trade city of Timbuktu after years of safe-keeping further south. Having undergone extensive digitization, fear that the content of the manuscripts may not survive the centuries due to security concerns or funding have abated somewhat. Mali was once the center for the richest kingdom arguably in history, and that wealth afford scholars the leisure time for tens of thousands of hours of study, much of which was written down and preserved in the dry desert air. Kept within the antique centers of learning in Timbuktu, their existence was threatened by Islamic insurgents that spread through North Africa and the Sahel in the wake of the overthrow of Moammar Ghaddafi in Libya back in 2011. A year later, the insurgen…