Timbuktu Manuscripts or (Tombouctou Manuscripts) is a blanket term for the large number of historically important manuscripts that have been preserved for centuries in private households in Timbuktu , Mali. The collections include manuscripts about art, medicine, philosophy, and science of the late Abbasid Caliphate, as well as priceless copies of the Quran . The number of manuscripts in the collections has been estimated as high as 700,000. [1] The majority of manuscripts were written in Arabic , but some were also in local languages, including Songhay and Tamasheq.[2] The dates of the manuscripts ranged between the late 13th and the early 20th centuries (i.e., from the Islamisation of the Mali Empire until the decline of traditional education in French Sudan ).[3] Their subject matter ranged from scholarly works to short letters. The manuscripts were passed down in Timbuktu families and were mostly in poor condition. [4] Most of the manuscripts remain unstudied and uncatalogued, and their total number is unknown, amenable only to rough estimates. A selection of about 160 manuscripts from the Mamma Haidara Library in Timbuktu and the Ahmed Baba collection were digitized by the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project in the 2000s. With the demise of Arabic education in Mali under French colonial rule, appreciation for the medieval manuscripts declined in Timbuktu, and many were being sold off. [5] Time magazine related the account of an imam who picked up four of them for $50 each. In October 2008 one of the households was flooded, destroying 700 manuscripts.[6] Research In 1970, UNESCO founded an organization which included among its tasks preservation of the manuscripts, but it went unfunded until 1977. [7] In 1998, Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates visited Timbuktu for his PBS series Wonders of the African World . The series raised public and academic awareness of the manuscripts, which led to a pool of funding opening up. [8] The Timbuktu Manuscripts Project was a project of the University of Oslo running from 2000 to 2007, the goal of which was to assist in physically preserving the manuscripts, digitize them and building an electronic catalogue, and making them accessible for research. [9] It was funded by the government of Luxembourg[10] along with the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), the Ford Foundation , the Norwegian Council for Higher Educations Programme for Development Research and Education (NUFU), and the United States Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation. Among the results of the project are: reviving the ancient art of book binding and training a solid number of local specialists; devising and setting up an electronic database to catalogue the manuscripts held at the Institut des Hautes Études et de Recherche Islamique – Ahmad Baba (IHERIAB); digitizing a large number of manuscripts held at the IHERIAB; facilitating scholarly and technical exchange with manuscript experts in Morocco and other countries; [11] reviving HERIABs journal Sankoré; and publishing the splendidly illustrated book, The Hidden Treasures of Timbuktu: Historic City of Islamic Africa. [12]
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 05:33:09 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015