South Africa helps Mali modernise ancient libraries
24 Jan 2009
By Rainer Schwenzfeier
Reuters
SOURCE
South Africa and Mali opened a high-tech library in the Malian desert town of Timbuktu on Saturday, boosting efforts to preserve thousands of ancient manuscripts documenting Africa's academic past.
The launch is part of a South African plan to help Mali to protect up to 150,000 manuscripts, some of which date from the 13th century and document subjects ranging from science and the arts to social and business trends of the day.
South Africa has also been training Malian conservators to protect the texts, which some say will force the West to accept Africa has an intellectual history as old as its own. Others draw comparisons with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
"Timbuktu is symbolic, not of a narrow Islamic or African civilisation, but of a civilization that was the synthesis of what knowledge was available in the world then," South Africa's President Kgalema Motlanthe said at the opening on Saturday.
"More importantly, it was part of Africa's contribution to the foundation of today's civilization," Motlanthe added, having been guided around the renovated Ahmed Baba Institute.
Documents will now be stored in rooms and cases where conditions such as humidity are controlled and pests like termites cannot eat the ancient scrolls.
Timbuktu, some 1000 km (625 miles) northwest of the capital, Bamako, was once a famously rich town where gold, ivory and slaves were traded and some 25,000 students gathered to study at its university during the 16th century.
Desert tourism aside, Timbuktu is now a remote town on the edge of the Sahara desert in one of Africa's poorest nations.
Many of the manuscripts have been hidden, sometimes in chests buried in the sand, as owners feared they might be stolen by Moroccan invaders, European explorers or French colonialists.
The documents, which range from ancient copies of the Koran written in gold or ornate calligraphy to studies on music and commentaries about corrupt politicians, suffered as a result.
"These riches, accumulated over the course of time, have often been damaged. A large number faded and became unreadable," said Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure.
Former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who launched "Operation Timbuktu" after a visit there in 2001 and returned on Saturday, has said he hopes the work will help "restore the self respect, the pride, honour and dignity of the people of Africa".
Other donors such as the United States and Norway are helping with the preservation of the manuscripts, which are stored in numerous other private and public libraries.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Ancient Books Reveal Timbuktu’s Former Glory, Illustrate Need for Libraries
Ancient Books Reveal Timbuktu’s Former Glory,
Illustrate Need for Libraries.
Finding Dulcinea
April 12, 2010
by Sarah Amandolare
SOURCE
Removed for copyright reasons.
Illustrate Need for Libraries.
Finding Dulcinea
April 12, 2010
by Sarah Amandolare
SOURCE
Removed for copyright reasons.
In Timbuktu, a new move to save ancient manuscripts
In Timbuktu, a new move to save ancient manuscripts.
Curator Abdel Kader Haidara leafs through a delicate old pamphlet.
By Tristan McConnell,
The Christian Science Monitor
February 5, 2008
Timbuktu, Mali
SOURCE
Abdel Kader Haidara carefully picks up one of a dozen small leather-bound books lying on his desk and leafs through the age-weathered pages covered in Arabic calligraphy.
Urbanization threatens Namibia's traditional Himba culture This tiny book is centuries old and one of more than 100,000 manuscripts that can be found on shelves and in boxes in Timbuktu, the ancient Malian city of mud-brick walls nestled between the Niger River and the Sahara Desert.
"The manuscripts are our heritage," says the curator of the Mamma Haidara Manuscript Library, the largest of more than 20 private libraries in the city. "They have been passed from generation to generation. They are the history of Africa, the history of mankind."
But if not for an $8 million donation from South Africa, this history might have been lost forever.
The manuscripts in Arabic and African languages cover almost every conceivable subject from history and medicine to law and human rights, from astronomy and philosophy to conflict resolution and literature. It's a Who's Who of ancient kingdoms. Some are close to a thousand years old, written on paper, tanned gazelle skin, or tree bark, and they provide a rare glimpse into a precolonial African history of intellectual endeavor, historians say.
"It is often thought that there was no writing in Africa but the manuscripts prove otherwise," says Mohamed Gallah Dicko, director-general of the Ahmed Baba Institute, named after Timbuktu's leading 15th-century scholar. "Before and during our colonization there was writing."
The manuscripts are threatened by the desert's harsh environment, by family neglect, and a scarcity of funds for preservation in the world's fifth poorest country. South Africa has stepped in and later this year will complete construction of a new library and research center a few yards from the high, mud walls and minarets of the Sankoré Mosque which was, 400 years ago, itself a center of learning with 25,000 students and teachers.
Riason Naidoo, the South African project manager for the new library, says it is important that this is an African initiative. "Normally funding comes in from aid organizations from the West. The difference with this project is that Africans are collaborating to preserve their own heritage for future prosperity."
The library is backed by South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has called the manuscripts "among the most important cultural treasures in Africa" and key to his notion of an African Renaissance to rival that of Europe in the late Middle Ages. The project is also supported by the Pan-African New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which named the preservation of the manuscripts as its first cultural project.
Today Timbuktu is a crumbling sleepy outback, reliant upon foreign tourism for survival. It was not always so: in its medieval heyday – as Europeans hacked at one another with swords, suffered the Black Death, and emerged blinking from the Dark Ages – Timbuktu was a thriving crossroads for trade in gold, salt, and slaves. It was the center of great empires and the intellectual heart of Africa.
It is no longer the unreachable city of explorers' myths (the first Europeans did not get to Timbuktu until the 19th century), yet it remains remote, taking more than two days' travel by four-wheel drive vehicle from the Malian capital, Bamako.
At the Ahmed Baba Institute the new library cannot come too soon as each passing month sees manuscripts deteriorate and disappear. The institute's 30,000-strong collection will be housed in the library and made available to visiting researchers and tourists alike.
The manuscripts may also have a few messages for the modern world, says Dr. Dicko. "Here in Timbuktu there is no militant Islam, it is peaceful. Look across the road, there is a Catholic church! We all live together. In the [Western] world outside, 'Islam' is a dirty word. But not here. Here there is mutual respect."
These sentiments are echoed by Mr. Haidara, who, for years before taking charge of the family library, criss-crossed the desert seeking out lost manuscripts. He says his favorite manuscripts are those that deal with conflict resolution and the tolerance that is at the heart of Islam.
And locally the centuries-old manuscripts may once again offer hope for the future of the ancient city, this time in the form of tourist dollars as Timbuktu seeks to reassert its position in the modern world.
Curator Abdel Kader Haidara leafs through a delicate old pamphlet.
By Tristan McConnell,
The Christian Science Monitor
February 5, 2008
Timbuktu, Mali
SOURCE
Abdel Kader Haidara carefully picks up one of a dozen small leather-bound books lying on his desk and leafs through the age-weathered pages covered in Arabic calligraphy.
Urbanization threatens Namibia's traditional Himba culture This tiny book is centuries old and one of more than 100,000 manuscripts that can be found on shelves and in boxes in Timbuktu, the ancient Malian city of mud-brick walls nestled between the Niger River and the Sahara Desert.
"The manuscripts are our heritage," says the curator of the Mamma Haidara Manuscript Library, the largest of more than 20 private libraries in the city. "They have been passed from generation to generation. They are the history of Africa, the history of mankind."
But if not for an $8 million donation from South Africa, this history might have been lost forever.
The manuscripts in Arabic and African languages cover almost every conceivable subject from history and medicine to law and human rights, from astronomy and philosophy to conflict resolution and literature. It's a Who's Who of ancient kingdoms. Some are close to a thousand years old, written on paper, tanned gazelle skin, or tree bark, and they provide a rare glimpse into a precolonial African history of intellectual endeavor, historians say.
"It is often thought that there was no writing in Africa but the manuscripts prove otherwise," says Mohamed Gallah Dicko, director-general of the Ahmed Baba Institute, named after Timbuktu's leading 15th-century scholar. "Before and during our colonization there was writing."
The manuscripts are threatened by the desert's harsh environment, by family neglect, and a scarcity of funds for preservation in the world's fifth poorest country. South Africa has stepped in and later this year will complete construction of a new library and research center a few yards from the high, mud walls and minarets of the Sankoré Mosque which was, 400 years ago, itself a center of learning with 25,000 students and teachers.
Riason Naidoo, the South African project manager for the new library, says it is important that this is an African initiative. "Normally funding comes in from aid organizations from the West. The difference with this project is that Africans are collaborating to preserve their own heritage for future prosperity."
The library is backed by South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has called the manuscripts "among the most important cultural treasures in Africa" and key to his notion of an African Renaissance to rival that of Europe in the late Middle Ages. The project is also supported by the Pan-African New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which named the preservation of the manuscripts as its first cultural project.
Today Timbuktu is a crumbling sleepy outback, reliant upon foreign tourism for survival. It was not always so: in its medieval heyday – as Europeans hacked at one another with swords, suffered the Black Death, and emerged blinking from the Dark Ages – Timbuktu was a thriving crossroads for trade in gold, salt, and slaves. It was the center of great empires and the intellectual heart of Africa.
It is no longer the unreachable city of explorers' myths (the first Europeans did not get to Timbuktu until the 19th century), yet it remains remote, taking more than two days' travel by four-wheel drive vehicle from the Malian capital, Bamako.
At the Ahmed Baba Institute the new library cannot come too soon as each passing month sees manuscripts deteriorate and disappear. The institute's 30,000-strong collection will be housed in the library and made available to visiting researchers and tourists alike.
The manuscripts may also have a few messages for the modern world, says Dr. Dicko. "Here in Timbuktu there is no militant Islam, it is peaceful. Look across the road, there is a Catholic church! We all live together. In the [Western] world outside, 'Islam' is a dirty word. But not here. Here there is mutual respect."
These sentiments are echoed by Mr. Haidara, who, for years before taking charge of the family library, criss-crossed the desert seeking out lost manuscripts. He says his favorite manuscripts are those that deal with conflict resolution and the tolerance that is at the heart of Islam.
And locally the centuries-old manuscripts may once again offer hope for the future of the ancient city, this time in the form of tourist dollars as Timbuktu seeks to reassert its position in the modern world.
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