Our digital futures

You may have  read about the Timbuktu manuscripts, and the war in Mali.  My colleagues and I engaged with this issue broady. All of us concurred " loss of even one munuscriptt is one too many". One of my colleagues, Nono Shai, wrote the following peice that I would like to share:

Reflection on Timbuktu Manuscripts:  A Cry From Afar

Far in the West African nation of Mali, situated 20 km north of the River Niger on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, with a population of 54,453 according to 2009 census, is the town of Timbuktu (Wikepedia). While it grew from the trade in salt, gold, ivory and slaves in the 12^th century and later an important book trade following a shift in the trading routes, Timbuktu is one of the established scholarly centres in Africa (http://archnet.org/library/dictionary).

Currently lagging from the global economic expansion due to political developments, Mali was once “famous for the education of important scholars whose reputations were pan-Islamic. Timbuktu’s most famous and long lasting contribution to Islamic and world-civilization is its scholarship and the books that were written and copied there beginning from at least the 14^th century. The brilliance of the University of Timbuktu was without equal in all of sub-Saharan Africa and was known throughout the Islamic world” (http://www.africanmanuscripts.org).

As early as 1973 there were approximately 20 000 manuscripts housed in the Ahmed Baba institute collection alone and an estimated quarter-million other scholarly manuscripts housed in private libraries and collections, managed by families of the scholars of Timbuktu. The discovery of these collections in the twentieth century led to UNESCO recognising the Malian collection as the biggest, richest archive of African scholarship on the continent (http://www.ifla.org/news/call-to-preserve-the-ancient-manuscripts-of-timbuktu-and-mali).

In the information trade era, the significance of the Timbuktu manuscripts cannot be overstated. The Timbuktu collections contradict the misconception that Africa is a continent of only oral communication. This intellectual capital is a reflection of the continued contribution of Africans to world civilization. It is also a reflection of the pioneering place of Africa at the foundations of writing and the spiritual and cultural development of mankind (http://www.ifla.org/news/call-to-preserve-the-ancient-manuscripts-of-timbuktu-and-mali). If this heritage was to disappear, the development of African historiography would be seriously compromised and an important part of the world memory would be annihilated.

Former SA President Thabo Mbeki , in the project proposal, high-lighted the fact that the African heritage of reading and writing is our heritage, part of our common human and African patrimony. It was for this reason that a partnership was formed between the South African and Malian governments and other stakeholders, with the intention of preserving, cataloguing, appropriately and securely housing the documentary heritage at the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu through provision of training, technical support and assistance for the development of conservation facilities. The building currently housing the Ahmed Baba Institute was funded by South Africa, and holds 30,000 manuscripts (www.info.gov.za/view/DownloadFileAction?id=164724).

In addition to the focus on conserving and preserving the rich collection of the African scholarly archive on the continent and recent reports of political instability which witnessed some of the manuscripts being burnt at the Ahmed Baba Institute, the beginning of 2013 also saw the spotlight on Timbuktu for yet another development: media houses such as BBC World Service radio news reported on 29 January 2013 that approximately 28,000 of the manuscripts in the Institute had been removed to safety from the premises before the attack by the Islamist groups, and that the whereabouts of about 2,000 manuscripts remained unknown. According to some reports, these 2,000 manuscripts were destroyed. On the other hand there are those who reported that none of the missing manuscripts were destroyed (http://www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org/blog/entry/timbuktu_update/).

Notwithstanding  the recent uncertainty around the destruction or preservation of the manuscripts, what remains certain is that one manuscript lost or destroyed is one too many. It is irreplaceable and priceless African heritage documentation, too significant to be ignored. The loss (for whatever reason) of even one manuscript in the future is “a cry from afar” from the historic African collection.

See also:  Timbuktu manuscripts mostly safe, University of Cape Town says (Huffington Post, January 30, 2013) and Video (26:47) Interface: Timbuktu manuscripts (SABC 3, Interface, February 2013).