Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle

Timbuktu mayor: Mali rebels torched library of historic manuscripts | World news | guar... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...tu-library-ancient-manuscripts

Mali Africa history heritage Salafists Islamists

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jan 13 - No Cached

Islamist insurgents retreating from Timbuktu set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts,
...

Cancel
The manuscripts had survived for centuries in Timbuktu, on the remote south-west fringe of the Sahara desert. They were hidden in wooden trunks, buried in boxes under the sand and in caves. When French colonial rule ended in 1960, Timbuktu residents held preserved manuscripts in 60-80 private libraries.The vast majority of the texts were written in Arabic. A few were in African languages, such as Songhai, Tamashek and Bambara. There was even one in Hebrew. They covered a diverse range of topics including astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women's rights. The oldest dated from 1204.
...

Cancel
only a fraction of the manuscripts had been digitised. "They cover geography, history and religion. We had one in Turkish. We don't know what it said."
...

Cancel
...5 more annotations...
they exploded the myth that "black Africa" had only an oral history. "You just need to look at the manuscripts to realise how wrong this is."
...

Cancel
Mali government forces that had been guarding Timbuktu left the town in late March, as Islamist fighters advanced rapidly across the north. Fighters from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – the group responsible for the attack on the Algerian gas facility – then swept in and seized the town, pushing out rival militia groups including secular Tuareg nationalists.
...

Cancel
As well as the manuscripts, the fighters destroyed almost all of the 333 Sufi shrines dotted around Timbuktu, believing them to be idolatrous. They smashed a civic statue of a man sitting on a winged horse.
...

Cancel
The rebels enforced their own brutal and arbitrary version of Islam, residents said, with offenders flogged for talking to women and other supposed crimes. The floggings took place in the square outside the 15th-century Sankoré mosque, a Unesco world heritage site.
...

Cancel
They weren't religious men. They were criminals
...

Cancel