The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer

Mali was a cultural center of Africa and the west in the late Middle Ages producing original works of philosophy, theology, history, literature, and a science, and developing a rich culture of manuscript production. In the centuries since the Middle Ages, that tradition has been damaged by a series of radical governments, many of which were hostile to the manuscript culture, driving hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of manuscripts into hidden chests and basements as their owners tried to preserve their heritage. This remarkable book is the story of both the development and decline of that culture, and of the astounding effort to find and preserve those manuscripts in modern libraries built to house them in Timbuktu. It is also the story of how an al-Qaeda inspired group of radical Islamicists took over Mali, threatening to destroy those manuscripts as representing a tradition of Islam they rejected. Finally, it’s the story of brave individuals who risked their lives to save hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable treasures of the past.