About

In March 2013, the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at the University of Hamburg joined the international effort to save the Timbuktu manuscripts which are considered one of the most important collections of the written heritage of the West African literary tradition, and an immensely valuable source for the cultural history of the whole region. Three months earlier, approximately 300,000 manuscripts, including voluminous and small-sized items, had been rescued from the threat of extinction posed by radical Islamist rebels during the period of political and civil unrest in Northern Mali. This gigantic operation undertaken by the NGO SAVAMA-DCI took eight months to transfer the contents of many Timbuktu libraries to Bamako, the capital of the Republic of Mali.

Urgent measures for their preservation, restoration, and research have been taken by several countries, with the active participation of German institutions. Generous funding from the German Federal Foreign Office and the Gerda Henkel Foundation has enabled the specialists at the CSMC to contribute materially and through their expertise to preservation of, and research on, the Timbuktu manuscripts in Bamako.

The overall objective of the international effort is to establish archival facilities in Bamako where the Timbuktu manuscripts can be stored, preserved, catalogued, digitised and made accessible to Malian and international scholars. These measures will ensure that the long-lived written tradition of sub-Saharan Africa, which stretches back to the European Middle Ages, is given its deserved place in the cultural heritage of humanity.