Website launchedThe Timbuktu Manuscript Training Project

21 March 2022

Photo: Nicolas Réméné

Maria Luisa Russo (right) with a student of the Diplome Universitaire de Technologie.

Together with the United Nations and the Ahmed Baba Institute, CSMC has launched a training project on manuscript conservation, digitisation, and cataloguing in Timbuktu. The two-year course aims to enable young Malians to preserve a unique manuscript collection in a conflict-ridden community.

In 2012, Timbuktu’s manuscript collection was facing an existential threat. After radical Islamist troops had invaded the north of the country and taken partial control of it, thousands of manuscripts, an invaluable part of the West African literary tradition, had to be secretly brought to safety. The initiative ‘Safeguarding the Manuscripts of Timbuktu’, in which the CSMC was involved, received international attention at the time. 

For the city of Timbuktu, the loss of its cultural treasure weighs heavily. To create the long-term conditions for reuniting the local community with its cultural heritage, CSMC has launched a training programme in 2019 which aims to train young people in the preservation, digitisation and cataloguing of manuscripts. After about two years of preparation, the programme is now up and running. In future, around 30 trainees per year will be taught by local instructors in a two-year course.

In a joint project with the United Nations and the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research, the CSMC supports the planning and implementation of the curriculum. Maria Luisa Russo and Dmitry Bondarev, who are running the project ‘African voices in the Islamic manuscripts from Mali: Documenting and exploring African languages written in Arabic script (Ajami)’, are regularly on site to contribute their expertise.

From the beginning, the implementation of the project was accompanied by photographer Nicholas Réméné. A first visual impression as well as further information on the background and objectives of the project is provided by the recently launched website, where more materials will be available soon.