SafeguardingThe Manuscripts
of Timbuktu

In March 2013, CSMC joined the international effort to save a large group of more than 300,000 manuscript items that had been transferred from Timbuktu to Bamako in response to the threat posed by radical Islamist rebels during the period of political and civil unrest in Northern Mali. The CSMC project successfully contributed to preservation of this written heritage of West Africa and laid the groundwork for our current research in Mali, as part of the Ajami Lab’s activity.