Timbuktu
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The key question and task here is to put the two strings together again, the manuscript <br />
culture and the building culture and show more about the scholars and their habits of <br />
learning, writing and talking in the spaces of the city and with the other social groups mixing <br />
on the markets and in the mosques. I want to know how it is that all the old families of <br />
<strong>Timbuktu</strong> were able to take part in this writing cultures, and how it is that manuscripts came <br />
to and were distributed from <strong>Timbuktu</strong> in olden times. The texts, as well as the buildings, <br />
together with the history of the houses as storing places, might give answers to these <br />
questions, also the stories that families were passing on to their children about the <br />
manuscripts and how they came to possess and cherish them. <br />
<strong>Timbuktu</strong>'s Cultural Heritage conserved, utilized, and managed <br />
Figure 6: Islamists set fire to sacred tombs in <strong>Timbuktu</strong>: Islamist militants destroy an ancient <br />
shrine in <strong>Timbuktu</strong> on July 1, 2012 in a still from a video. <br />
https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/30/world/africa/mali-‐shrine-‐attack/index.html (accessed: <br />
April 5, 2019) <br />
There have been two stages of conservation: The first stage started when in 1988 <br />
UNESCO accepted the three mosques and 16 mausoleums of <strong>Timbuktu</strong> as Cultural Heritage. <br />
It ended, when in 2012 an islamic war over <strong>Timbuktu</strong> broke out, with 20.000 people leaving <br />
the city, cultural heritage was destroyed, and about 95% of the old manuscript were brought <br />
to safety in temporal spaces in Bamako, the capital of Mali. The second phase of <br />
conservation started immediately after the war. However, although the war was won by <br />
Malian forces with the help of French military in March 2013, up to today, the city is still a <br />
place of military presence, and most of the manuscripts have not been returned to their old <br />
home. The center space with the three mosques is intact, with fourteen of the sixteen <br />
mausoleums destroyed and re-‐built again after 2014, and tourism is almost non-‐existent <br />
because of war threat that is still imminent in the region. <br />
The UNESCO documents publicly available but tucked away on the UNESCO World <br />
Heritage Site are my chief source for summarizing the efforts of conservation, utilization and