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Timbuktu: The Manuscripts of Al-Aqib and the Preservation of Knowledge
Dédé Faconam d’Almeida
Dédé Faconam d’Almeida is a journalist and a specialist in communications for development in Mali. She collaborates with several local and international media and is passionate about human rights and peacebuilding issues. Since November 2019, she has headed ODEKA, a training and media company. She is also a TV producer and presenter.
Timbuktu. In May, it is hot and the darkness in the manuscript room contrasts with the heat outside. With a smile in his voice, Mohamed El Moktar Cissé describes his treasure, passed down through his family for generations. “We have centuries-old manuscripts here. There is everything from scientific documents to historical accounts and of course thousands of religious books. They are written in several languages and on various materials such as paper, but also leather ... It is our most valuable asset,” proudly explains the son of the Imam of the great hundred-year-old mosque that stands majestically on the square that bears his name: Sankoré.
These manuscripts are the soul of this thousand-year-old city, which over time, but especially with all the peoples and knowledge that have crossed through it, has become and remains a significant holder of humanity’s heritage. The whole world learned about these manuscripts after the crisis of 2012 when they almost disappeared. Faced with the destructive intentions of the extremist groups occupying the city, the families holding the precious documents preserved them as best they could. The inhabitants of the “capital of knowledge” saved thousands of them, sometimes even at the risk of losing their own lives.
In January 2014, a year after the end of the occupation of the city, “Al Aqib,” the old library attached to the Sankoré mosque, was the first to reopen and make the manuscripts available to the public, explains Mohamed El Moktar Cissé, the library’s Director. He remembers that these already weak manuscripts suffered even more from the long months spent locked in the canteens. After a first initiative to “save their lives,” as he says, the family “wrote a letter to the Association Archives Manuscrits et Livres Anciens (AMALIA) for help.” The Director of the library remembers explaining in his letter that the conservation of some 4,000 manuscripts fell under his responsibility.
“This collection of manuscripts was being kept in problematic conditions,” explains Maria Luisa Russo, expert in the conservation, management, and enhancement of archives and libraries, and President of AMALIA. With the financial support of ALIPH, her organization implemented the project, “which was for the physical conservation of the manuscripts, for instance, dry cleaning them, storing them in conservation boxes and, in some cases, undertaking small interventions to restore the leaves. The operations were carried out entirely on site. All this was in addition to organizing the room where the works are kept. We also had to work on the physical environment in which the works are conserved. This was all done thanks to the local staff who we trained to carry out this work.”
“We were seduced by the project’s approach. First of all, they did a thorough investigation of the project even before accepting our request,” recalls Mohamed El Moktar Cissé. “Then we received training in conservation techniques. That changed everything, because before, we had really rudimentary techniques: we put the manuscripts in canteens, we took them out, we spread them out on the tables, and we dusted them. Today we have really evolved,” he rejoices.
The conservation project, which ran from 2019 to December 2020, was necessary and offered a twofold challenge: to preserve the content but also the container. As a cultural asset, a manuscript is above all a physical object with all its particularities. “The text can be preserved through digitization. But the physical manuscript can only be preserved if an action is executed on the object itself,” explains Maria Luisa Russo.
The AMALIA Association is active mainly in Mali and Italy. The project at Al-Aqib was supported by Mali’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and other focal points have been identified at the Ministry of Culture and other departments to ensure the longevity of the project.
According to Maria Luisa Russo, working on books, both printed and handwritten, is important for Mali as well as for the rest of the world. Through this project, beyond the conservation of documents for their historical, artistic, and physical aesthetic value, it is a question of “promoting knowledge of this heritage, and not only for academics: it is also essential to transmit the importance of the role of libraries and books to the general public, to contribute to the awakening of civic consciousness. This is why we organize activities to open up these spaces to people who do not normally have access to this knowledge, to books. AMALIA’s mission is to carry out a series of activities to protect heritage and make it accessible to local people.” For Yéhia B., a student from Timbuktu, having access to the manuscripts again “is an incredible opportunity.” Like him, many other Malian and foreign scholars are making the trip to consult or even just see the Timbuktu manuscripts.
Mohamed El Moktar Cissé, Director of Al-Aqib library
NB: This project ended in March 2021. To continue this initiative, in December 2021, ALIPH financed a new project to protect Malian archives and manuscripts, implemented by AMALIA, in cooperation with the Manuscript Library of Djenné, the Prefecture of Djenné, the Ministry of Culture and Handicrafts, the University of Hamburg, and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library. This project will improve the inventory, storage, and preventive conservation measures of 6,000 manuscripts (16th to 20th centuries) held by the Djenné Manuscript Library, on behalf of 180 Malian families, as well as 25 linear meters of archives dating from the colonial period (19th and 20th centuries) held by the Prefecture of Djenné.
