Timbuktu

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independent state, which led to people fleeing the region. The political situation stabilized again, when on April 1, 2013, French warplanes helped Malian ground forces chase the remaining rebels out of the city center. But the Islamists had destroyed 14 centuries-‐old shrines of local Sufi saints of the 16 that UNESCO had put under their protection, and they had set fire to the Ahmad-‐Baba-‐Library, the then home of multiple-‐thousand invaluable Islamic manuscripts from medieval times and later. According to the Hamburg Centre for the Study of Manuscript culture, about 95% of the manuscripts from Ahmad-‐Baba-‐Library and many private libraries in Timbuktu could be rehoused in the State Capital Bamako, and the Hamburg Centre gives their count in 2015 as 285.000 individual items. Figure 2: Niger-‐Saharan Medieval Trade Routes around 1400: Timbuktu is Located on the crossroads between North, South, East and West. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Niger_saharan_medieval_trade_routes.PNG (accessed April 5, 2019) Timbuktu's rich history of learning had to do with its situation as a commercial hub from the 12th century. It was at the cross-‐roads of trans-‐Saharan trade routes and became famous for its supply of gold. The city attracted Muslim scholars and scribes from different Islamic beliefs and different geographical regions. Many of them brought manuscripts with them and copied other manuscripts while in Timbuktu. Their time of greatest affluence were the 15th and 16th centuries. Many legends about Timbuktu were brought to Europe, and the 19th century saw the French colonization of the place in 1893. In 1960, the independent Republic of Mali was established. Today, Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world, it ranks no. 182 in 2017 on the Human Development Index. In addition, Timbuktu, bordering the desert, suffers from the danger of desertification.
Figure 3: Location of the three mosques in the city centre: Plan of Timbuktu, made by the Africa explorer Dr. Heinrich Barth in 1855, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plan_von_Timbuktu_1855.jpg. Source: Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes’ Geographischer Anstalt über Wichtige Neue Erforschungen auf dem Gesammtgebiete der Geographie von Dr. A. Petermann. Teil 1, 1855 Three mosques, of which the two oldest original buildings go back to the early 14th century, the Djingareyber Mosque and the Sankore Mosque that included a university, and the Sidi Yahia Mosque (from 1400), together with sixteen mausoleums and holy public places make up the most important heritage spaces in Timbuktu. The mosques were rebuilt and restored in the late 16th century, between 1570 and 1583 (Djingareyber), 1577-‐1578 (Sidi Yahia), and 1578-‐1582 (Sankore). I am interested in linking the manuscripts back to the centre of learning at the Sankore madrasa, or university, and I would like to point to the intangible world heritage behind the tangible buildings and manuscripts: What were these manuscript cultures exactly? And how can they be preserved? Values of Timbuktu's Cultural Heritage The urban space containing the three mosques and 16 mausoleums has outstanding value as a testimony of historical, architectural, and urban development in a region of the Subsahara that does not present many relics of the past. Additionally to the UNESCO valuation that is solely geared towards the buildings, the 285.000 manuscripts (still today mostly in private possession) have not only tangible, but also intangible value to point to a long tradition of Islamic scholarship and learning, and of manuscript and scribal culture from 1200 to today.
Page 1: Timbuktu and Premodern Tradition
Page 5 and 6: delineation of quarters. For Ti
Page 7 and 8: management of the building site
Page 9 and 10: the secondary literature consult

Timbuktu

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