Title: The book smugglers of Timbuktu : the quest for this storied city and the race to save its treasures /
Authors: English, Charlie
Year: 2017
Subjects: Manuscripts, Arabic Mali Tombouctou.; Libraries Destruction and pillage Mali Tombouctou.; Islamic learning and scholarship Mali Tombouctou.; Cultural property Protection Mali Tombouctou.; Antiquities; Cultural property Protection; Destruction and pillage; Discoveries in geography; Islamic learning and scholarship; Libraries Destruction and pillage; Manuscripts, Arabic; Tombouctou (Mali) Discovery and exploration.; Tombouctou (Mali) Antiquities.; Mali History Destruction and pillage.; Mali; Mali Tombouctou
Abstract: Two tales of a city: The historical race to reach 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 tantalising 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 centre of learning, it was home to tens 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. Relying on extensive research and firsthand reporting, Charlie English expertly twines these two suspenseful strands into a fascinating account of one of the planet's extraordinary places, and the myths from which it has become inseparable.
Contents: Prologue: A man of enterprise and genius -- Part 1. Occupation. A seeker of manuscripts -- A wide but extended blank -- Hell is not far away -- The fourth traveler -- Al-Qaeda to the rescue -- It shall be mine -- Ismael's list -- Part 2. Destruction. The armchair explorer -- The headless horseman -- The pope of Timbuktu -- Secret agents -- Part 3. Liberation. Lives of the scholars -- The terrible twosome -- King Leopold's paperweight -- Auto-da-Fé -- Chronicle of the researcher -- An Indiana Jones moment in real life! -- Manuscript fever -- The myth factory -- Epilogue.