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Reviewed by:
  • Manuscripts of Timbuktu
  • Thomas A. Hale
Zola Maseko. Manuscripts of Timbuktu. 2009. South Africa, Mali, Morocco. French and Arabic, with English subtitles. 52 min. California Newsreel. $195.00.

Manuscripts of Timbuktu reveals a significant chapter of West African history largely unknown outside the world of Africanists, telling the story of Timbuktu’s beginning with its founding in the eleventh century. Unfortunately, [End Page 198] a faction of Tuareg nationalists has recently added a new chapter to the story of Timbuktu by looting the city of some of these manuscripts.

Up until the sixteenth century, Timbuktu was a flourishing city that attracted Islamic scholars and students for instruction at the Sankore mosque, an institution often compared to medieval European universities. But the importance of Timbuktu declined as a result of various local and international factors, including a shift in trade patterns between West Africa and Europe. Today, one can walk around the circumference in less than a half hour without knowing that Timbuktu contains such a rich regional history. The importance of this isolated city, ten miles north of the Niger River in northern Mali, is rooted in the thousands of manuscripts there that date as far back as the thirteenth century. The Ahmed Baba Institute for Higher Learning and Research alone holds thirty thousand of these rare documents. There is no reliable estimate of the number held in private libraries, but one can assume that it is in the thousands. The visits to the collections seen in the video are heart-wrenching because the manuscripts are kept in very poor conditions.

The video combines interviews with scholars in Mali, including the then director of the Ahmed Baba Institute, Ismaïl Haidara; lively contemporary street scenes; and well-performed reenactments of events in the history of Timbuktu. Of particular interest is the portrayal of the life of Ahmed Baba (1556–1627), a scholar who, along with members of his family, was taken to Morocco by Moroccan-led conquerors because of his role in resistance to the occupiers. He lived there from 1594 to 1608, the first year in jail and the remainder of his life under house arrest. The scene of his confrontation with the Sultan of Morocco is particularly striking because of the eloquence of his statements to the ruler. Quotations from Baba’s autobiography, cited along with enactments of his life history, give an impressive human dimension to the documentary.

Those involved with the Ahmed Baba Institute have been working for years on microfilming and cataloging the manuscripts held there. In the last decade, South Africa has given new impetus to this effort by building a larger home for the institute. The video ends with the inauguration of the facility in 2009.

The Manuscripts of Timbuktu will be of interest to a wide range of audiences, from high school students in world history courses to undergraduate university students in surveys of African studies, and scholars in a variety of disciplines who may be unaware of the current state of work on the manuscripts. One can only hope that the conflict in the Sahara and Sahel regions of West Africa will be settled and the stolen manuscripts returned. [End Page 199]

Thomas A. Hale
Pennsylvania State University
State College, Pennsylvania
tah@psu.edu
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