World History
Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu - An online exhibition from the Library of Congress presents manuscripts from Timbuktu. The collection covers the 16th to the 18th centuries.
From the site:
Timbuktu, Mali, is the legendary city founded as a commercial center in West Africa nine hundred years ago. Today it is synonymous with the phrase "utterly remote," but this was not always so. For more than six hundred years, Timbuktu was a significant religious, cultural, and commercial center whose residents traveled throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe. Timbuktu was famous for educating important scholars who were well known throughout the Islamic world. Many individuals traveled to the city to acquire knowledge; others came to acquire wealth and political power.
Situated on the edge of the Sahara Desert, Timbuktu was famous among the merchants of the Mediterranean basin as a market for obtaining the goods and products of Africa south of the desert. However, Timbuktu's most famous and long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization is the scholarship practiced there. By at least the fourteenth century, important books were written and copied there, establishing the city as the center of a significant written tradition in Africa.
These ancient manuscripts cover every aspect of human endeavor. The manuscripts are indicative of the high level of civilization attained by West Africans during the Middle Ages and provide irrefutable proof of a powerful African literary tradition. Scholars in the fields of Islamic Studies and African Studies believe that analysis of these texts will cause Islamic, West African, and World History to be reevaluated. These manuscripts, surviving from as long ago as the fourteenth century, are remarkable artifacts important to Malian and West African culture. The exhibited manuscripts date from the sixteenth to eighteenth century.
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World History
Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu
Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu - An online exhibition from the Library of Congress presents manuscripts from Timbuktu. The collection covers the 16th to the 18th centuries.
From the site:
Timbuktu, Mali, is the legendary city founded as a commercial center in West Africa nine hundred years ago. Today it is synonymous with the phrase "utterly remote," but this was not always so. For more than six hundred years, Timbuktu was a significant religious, cultural, and commercial center whose residents traveled throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe. Timbuktu was famous for educating important scholars who were well known throughout the Islamic world. Many individuals traveled to the city to acquire knowledge; others came to acquire wealth and political power.
Situated on the edge of the Sahara Desert, Timbuktu was famous among the merchants of the Mediterranean basin as a market for obtaining the goods and products of Africa south of the desert. However, Timbuktu's most famous and long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization is the scholarship practiced there. By at least the fourteenth century, important books were written and copied there, establishing the city as the center of a significant written tradition in Africa.
These ancient manuscripts cover every aspect of human endeavor. The manuscripts are indicative of the high level of civilization attained by West Africans during the Middle Ages and provide irrefutable proof of a powerful African literary tradition. Scholars in the fields of Islamic Studies and African Studies believe that analysis of these texts will cause Islamic, West African, and World History to be reevaluated. These manuscripts, surviving from as long ago as the fourteenth century, are remarkable artifacts important to Malian and West African culture. The exhibited manuscripts date from the sixteenth to eighteenth century.
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US Library of Congress - Global Gateway: Islamic Manuscripts from Mali Collection - This site features 22 manuscripts from the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye of Boujbeha, both in Timbuktu, Mali. One example is...
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This great story explains how a 72 year old librarian saved over 2000 Timbuktu manuscripts from Islamist fundamentalists intent on destroying them. Certain that the fundamentalists would not pay mind to an old and illiterate man with a cane, Abdoulaye...