Mali: The Timbuktu Libraries
| The Timbuktu Libraries |  |
| Back to Timbuktu Libraries Homepage |
| Excerpts of a text by Professor John O. Hunwick |
The Niger Bend is to West Africa what the Nile Valley is to Egypt: an ecological life source and a
civilizational magnet. The great northward curve of the river Niger has allowed for the settlement of
populations along a vast stretch of well-watered land. Historically, the Niger also provided a great
highway of communication across the region and provided a link between the lands of the desert and
North Africa and the lands of the savannahs and forests in the South. The intensive and extensive human
activity that has taken place in this region for thousands of years has left behind its traces in a large
number of archaeological sites. Only a few of these have been scientifically explored, while many have
been brutally exploited by local treasure hunters.
Over the past 600-700 years another legacy has developed: that of the literate culture of Islam
symbolized by the extraordinary richness of private collections of Arabic manuscripts that still survive,
often precariously, in the Niger valley and its desert hinterland. Timbuktu, located on the northern most
bend of the River Niger in Mali, was a celebrated centre of Islamic learning from the fourteenth century
onwards. Not only were books brought into the city, but local scholars wrote their own works and there is
also evidence of a sophisticated local book copying industry in Timbuktu.
The historic city of Timbuktu, now the administrative centre of Mali’s Sixth Region, lies at a
crucial point where the Sahara desert meets the river Niger. Its geographical setting made it a natural
meeting point for settled African populations and nomadic Berber and Arab peoples. Founded around the
year 1100 CE, it rapidly became a focal point for caravan commerce originating in North Africa or the
Saharan oases. The city’s rapidly growing prosperity, soon attracted scholars to it from many quartersfrom
Mediterranean Africa, from the Saharan oases and from West African towns such as Jenne and
Walata.
By the mid-fifteenth century Timbuktu was as much a city of learning as it was a city of
commerce. The scholars who settled there brought their libraries with them, and avidly purchased
manuscript books imported from North Africa and Egypt. Leo Africanus remarked on the “numerous
judges, scholars and priests [i.e. imams], all well paid by the king, who shows great respect to men of
learning”, and added “Many manuscript books coming from Barbary are sold. Such sales are more
profitable than any other goods.” Books were not only imported to Timbuktu, they were also copied
there, and it was the local copying tradition that enabled Timbuktu scholars to build up their own libraries.
By the fifteenth century, the city’s scholars were writing their own books for teaching purposes
and to satisfy a demand for scholarly works in law, Qur’anic study, traditions of the Prophet Muhammad,
theology, and Arabic language, and a more popular demand for pietistic literature and poetry in praise of
the Prophet.
In the sixteenth century we see the emergence of local chronicles and biographical dictionaries.
During the period of the Askiyas (or rulers) of the Songhay empire (1493-1591), there was considerable
support for the Muslim scholars of the city, many of whom lived in the northern quarter around the
celebrated Sankoré Mosque. Some received gifts from the rulers in cash and kind, and the renovation of
the city’s mosques was underwritten by the state. One of the rulers, Askiya Dawud (who reigned 1549-83)
is said to have established public libraries in his kingdom.
But the principal resource of Timbuktu scholarship lay in the private libraries of individual
scholars and some of these libraries were evidently quite large. The celebrated scholar Ahmad Baba (d.
1627), who was among those deported to Morocco in 1593 following the Moroccan conquest of Timbuktu
and the Songhay empire, complained to the sultan of Morocco that his library of 1,600 books had been
plundered, and his library, so he said, was one of the smaller in the city.
To this day the city still boasts some 60-80 private collections, the largest of which, the Mamma
Haidara Memorial Library, has been rehabilitated through a grant from the Mellon Foundation, while a
catalogue of its contents is being published by the Al-Furqan Islamic Foundation. The Fondo Kati Library
is now under construction with financing from the Spanish Gabinete del Consejero de Relaciones Institucionales.
The contents of several other private collections were acquired by the Ahmad Baba Institute, a public institution that now contains
over 18,000 manuscripts.
Efforts are now being made to preserve this literary heritage, beginning with some of the major
collections of the city of Timbuktu. This is an urgent mission, since poverty is leading to the sale of some
fine items, while climate and insects continue to take their toll on the fragile paper.
