num_pages: 416
description: Two tales of a city: The historical race to -discover- one of the world's most mythologized places and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al Qaeda added another layer to the legend. To Westerners the name -Timbuktu- long conjured a tantalizing paradise an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late eighteenth century a series of explorers gripped by the fever for -discovery- tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry succumbing to attack the climate and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way too. A medieval center of learning it was home to tens of thousands--according to some hundreds of thousands--of ancient manuscripts on subjects ranging from religion to poetry law to history pharmacology and astronomy. When al-Qaeda-linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012 threatening the existence of these precious documents a remarkable thing happened: a team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the manuscripts into hiding.
language: English
title: The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu: The Quest for This Storied City and the Race to Save its Treasures
publisher: WILLIAM COLLINS