Latest / Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History
The Fatwa That Saved Timbuktu's Libraries
In the dusty archives of Timbuktu, a legal opinion written in 1599 by the exiled scholar Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti would become a shield for his city's intellectual heritage. After the Moroccan invasion of 1591, when manuscripts were burned or carted off to Marrakech, Baba issued a fatwa declaring that books, like people, could not be lawfully taken as war booty. This episode follows the journey of that ruling—from the qadi's courtroom in Marrakech to the family archives of Timbuktu, where descendants of the great scholarly houses preserved their ancestors' works against future…
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