Timbuktu

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The key question and task here is to put the two strings together again, the manuscript culture and the building culture and show more about the scholars and their habits of learning, writing and talking in the spaces of the city and with the other social groups mixing on the markets and in the mosques. I want to know how it is that all the old families of Timbuktu were able to take part in this writing cultures, and how it is that manuscripts came to and were distributed from Timbuktu in olden times. The texts, as well as the buildings, together with the history of the houses as storing places, might give answers to these questions, also the stories that families were passing on to their children about the manuscripts and how they came to possess and cherish them. Timbuktu's Cultural Heritage conserved, utilized, and managed Figure 6: Islamists set fire to sacred tombs in Timbuktu: Islamist militants destroy an ancient shrine in Timbuktu on July 1, 2012 in a still from a video. https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/30/world/africa/mali-‐shrine-‐attack/index.html (accessed: April 5, 2019) There have been two stages of conservation: The first stage started when in 1988 UNESCO accepted the three mosques and 16 mausoleums of Timbuktu as Cultural Heritage. It ended, when in 2012 an islamic war over Timbuktu broke out, with 20.000 people leaving the city, cultural heritage was destroyed, and about 95% of the old manuscript were brought to safety in temporal spaces in Bamako, the capital of Mali. The second phase of conservation started immediately after the war. However, although the war was won by Malian forces with the help of French military in March 2013, up to today, the city is still a place of military presence, and most of the manuscripts have not been returned to their old home. The center space with the three mosques is intact, with fourteen of the sixteen mausoleums destroyed and re-‐built again after 2014, and tourism is almost non-‐existent because of war threat that is still imminent in the region. The UNESCO documents publicly available but tucked away on the UNESCO World Heritage Site are my chief source for summarizing the efforts of conservation, utilization and
management of the building site before and after the war. The manuscripts, however, have their own narrative which is not so widely documented, because they had not been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. But the website of the manuscripts' remote curatorial place at the University of Hamburg gives some indications what has been done with them and how they are managed. 1. Before the war Conservation, utilisation and management of the World Heritage Site before the war was directed first and foremost to get the site out of danger created by the climate. Since 1990 until 2005, UNESCO had put the Timbuktu site on their list of World Heritage in danger: the report of 1996 states that "the Mosques of Timbuktu are made of fragile materials which are regularly threatened by rare but violent bad weather and have only survived several centuries due to the annual maintenance carried out by the local population, under the direction of the Imman and the responsibility of the corporation of masons, and with funding from the wealthy personalities of the town for the more costly works." Both negligence by UNESCO, and also its over-‐ambition could threaten the local traditions and lead to the destruction of the mosques. A workshop in 1996 was able to connect the international UNESCO conservation teams with the local groups and their imam. The workshop had the goal to show to the UNESCO officials the old techniques of conservation and was the basis of a future conservation plan for the site. (https://whc.UNESCO.org/en/soc/2113). In 2003, the UNESCO report on Timbuktu was very positive, declaring that the danger issues such as sand encroachment, lack of financial resources, deterioration of the rainwater drainage syste and the need for appropriate law have all been resolved. (https://whc.UNESCO.org/en/soc/2680) In 2005, the heritage site was taken off the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger, after a Governmental conservation heritage plan had been accepted. (https://whc.UNESCO.org/en/soc/1243) UNESCO officials complained in later reports up to 2012 that the state allowed the Ahmad-‐Baba-‐Museum, a new building of the 1974 created Ahmad Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research to be build in the direct vicinity of the Sankore mosque, thus changing the surroundings of the mosque from their original structure. It is here that a general city heritage management plan would have been of advantage to connect stakeholders with interest in the buildin site with those with interest in the manuscripts and scholarship (displayed by the Ahmad-‐Baba-‐Museum), wich however did not exist. (https://whc.UNESCO.org/en/soc/1161) The interests of UNESCO were overwritten by the interests of the Presidents of Mali and South Africa to build the Ahmad-‐Baba-‐Museum directly on the old university site at the Sankore mosque to house and display the old manuscripts, and for welcoming researchers worldwide. (This is the first time that the reports mentioning attention to tourism and utilization of the site, however with a critical undertone!)
Page 1 and 2: Timbuktu and Premodern Tradition
Page 3 and 4: Figure 3: Location of the thre
Page 5: delineation of quarters. For Ti
Page 9 and 10: the secondary literature consult

Timbuktu

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