REPORTER: Amos Roberts

For hundreds of years the Sahara Desert has kept its secrets well hidden. Few outsiders have glimpsed the treasures stored in this small room. The tattered manuscripts inside this chest are part of the earliest written record from sub-Saharan Africa. For Ibrahim Ahmad Mohammad, they're a priceless connection to the past.

IBRAHIM AHMAD MOHAMMAD (Translation): They are very important because they come from our ancestors who were in the desert.

Some of these manuscripts date back to the 13th century. There are old copies of the Koran and also books about astronomy, medicine and agriculture.

IBRAHIM AHMAD MOHAMMAD (Translation): The manuscripts contain sciences, they contain ancient sciences, no one can memorise these sciences, so they are in books. They wanted to preserve their knowledge because knowledge is important and everyone who wants to solve a problem will come to the books in order to solve it.

SALEM OULD ELHADSJ, HISTORIAN (Translation): Westerners have said that Africa’s history was transmitted orally through story-telling, it must be understood that Black Africa had great scholars, it had great mathematicians, it had great physicists, it had great chemists. It had great doctors. We have known the art of writing since the 11th century - we started writing before certain European countries, certain Westerners.

While medieval Europe was still mired in superstition and religious fundamentalism, a rich intellectual culture was thriving here on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Tens of thousands of manuscripts have been found in a town that, for many Westerners, conjures up the ends of the earth - Timbuktu.
The importance of these manuscripts has been recognised for many years, but it's only recently that serious attempts have been made to catalogue and conserve them. Those fighting to save Africa's literary heritage say they have to combat Western ignorance.

CHEICK OMAR CISSOKO, FORMER CULTURE MINISTER, MALI (Translation): Timbuktu is a myth for Westerners, they hardly believe in the existence of Timbuktu.

Cheick Omar Cissoko is Mali’s former culture minister and is one of Africa's leading film-makers.

CHEICK OMAR CISSOKO (Translation): The manuscripts in Timbuktu are not in a very enviable state despite what the government has done, despite the intervention of UNESCO and Luxembourg and many other countries, the United States, Norway, Spain and so on. We need to do more than just look at the manuscripts and feel proud that because of the manuscripts we were a written culture many centuries ago.

But pride in the past is also important. Timbuktu has a glorious history and locals say this town of only 30,000 should no longer be a byword for the remote and obscure.

SALEM OULD ELHADJ (Translation): The written manuscripts prove we were the most important city, thanks to them the whole world knows about Timbuktu even if they don’t know where it is.

Salem Ould Elhadj is a local historian and one of Timbuktu's leading citizens.


SALEM OULD ELHADJ (Translation): I’d like to have lived in the 16th century, it was an intellectual city, an educated city, a very populous city, a city with Koranic schools and universities. It was a city active in international trade. It was Timbuktu’s Golden Age, I’d like to have lived then.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, Timbuktu was part of the Songhai Empire, one of the largest and most powerful empires in African history. The city was a vital link in trade routes connecting Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In Europe, Timbuktu became famous as a place of fabled riches. But in the Islamic world the city was better known for its intellectual wealth. It boasted three great mosques, a university that taught 25,000 students and one of the world's largest libraries.
Manuscripts became a desirable and extremely valuable commodity in their own right. At the Ahmed Baba Institute 30,000 manuscripts are now being catalogued. Bouya Haidara is the guardian of this unique collection.

BOUYA HAIDARA (Translation): The manuscripts retrace the history of humanity and all the materials here, whether it is scientific or historical. Researchers from all over the world come here to do research.

Sidi Maisa is studying medieval manuscripts that deal with health and medicine.

SIDI MAISA (Translation): These documents give us advice in the field of nutrition, when to eat, what to eat, how to eat, how to drink water, how to use a plate for eating, what kind of plate to use, for example they counsel against using gold or silver plates. Everyone knows that these manuscripts are Mali’s memory, they are Africa’s memory. Everything the ancients did is in those manuscripts.

SALEM OULD ELHADJ (Translation): It was tolerant Islam, people now can read about women’s rights, they can read about the rights of slaves, they can read about tolerance, good governance, they can read about the philosophy of Socrates, of al-Ghazali, of Avicenna. People can read, really how Timbuktu was a city of culture which in those distant ages in the 15th, 16th century was ahead of Italy, ahead of France, ahead of England, ahead of Australia, there it is.


The few tourists who make it to Timbuktu also come to see the collection here.

BOUYA HAIDARA (Translation): We have here a few examples of some of the oldest manuscripts, this is a treatise on Islamic law, it dates from 1204.

Brought to Timbuktu from throughout the Islamic world, manuscripts were often reproduced by local scribes.

BOUYA HAIDARA (Translation): Here you have the history of Mecca, transcribed by an Indian in 1374. Here you have a treatise on astronomy. All these manuscripts came from families in wooden crates, in metal boxes, in skin bags, exposed to rain, fire and termites. They created this centre to collect them and preserve them.

So far, only a few of the manuscripts at the Ahmed Baba Institute have been restored and then placed in special conservation boxes to protect them. But the Institute has some powerful allies determined to speed things up. South African President Thabo Mbeki is funding the construction of a new $7.5 million home for the Ahmed Baba Institute. He wants the manuscripts to play a key role in an African renaissance. And many private libraries have sprung up around Timbuktu, supported by grants from European and Arab governments.
Perhaps the largest and best-known is the Mamma Haidara Library. Thousands of manuscripts here are being painstakingly restored, thanks to generous funding from Dubai. The women who do the work have been taught how to make their own paper matching the original manuscript. Then they use this to repair damaged pages.

WOMAN (Translation): It pleases me because it is work that will endure, because it is what we have inherited. I restore it because if it remained as it was originally, neither us nor our grandchildren would ever find anything in it, if we leave it as it is, it will deteriorate more and be useless.

Thanks to a lot of outside help, thousands of manuscripts are now being catalogued and restored at libraries like the Mamma Haidara. But there are still many, many more, jealously guarded by the same families who have protected them for hundreds of years. Curators from the large libraries in town regularly travel to villages around Timbuktu. They offer to buy up manuscripts or trade them for livestock or printed books.

MOHAMED TOURE (Translation): I want to but these.

IBRAHIM AHMAD MOHAMMAD (Translation): I won’t sell them. Not for sale.

MOHAMED TOURE (Translation): I’ll pay as much as you want, 500,000.

IBRAHIM AHMAD MOHAMMAD (Translation): They are not for sale.

Mohamed Toure is from the Mamma Haidara Library and he is prepared to be generous, but Ibrahim Amad Mohammad is not interested.

IBRAHIM AHMAD MOHAMMAD (Translation): These books are not for sale, because these books contain our history. If we sold the books to the Mama Haidara Library or to the Ahmed Baba Library we would not have the books to read or to teach from. We won’t have anything anymore. These manuscripts are very important to us, the first thing we do is read the books.

Some intellectuals at Mali aim to do more than just restore the manuscripts. They dream of restoring Timbuktu. According to historian Salem Ould Elhadj, Timbuktu's renaissance has been foretold by a local proverb.

SALEM OULD ELHADJ (Translation): Timbuktu was out in front in terms of culture, suddenly God told everyone to turn around so Timbuktu ended up down the back. As soon as God says to turn around again, Timbuktu will be out front again. But I prefer the Sudanese proverb that says... “Salt comes from the north, gold comes from the south and money from the land of the whites. But God’s word, knowledge and lovely stories, they only come from Timbuktu.”