Latest / Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History
The Timbuktu Library That Was Buried in the Desert
In 2012, as jihadists seized Timbuktu, a team of librarians and scholars raced to evacuate hundreds of thousands of manuscripts. But when the first hiding places were discovered, they turned to an ancient strategy: burying books in the Sahara. This episode tells the story of the clandestine operation that saved the legacy of Sankore, Djinguereber, and the Ahmed Baba Institute — and how a 20th-century librarian named Abdel Kader Haidara orchestrated a secret exodus of parchment and paper. We follow the route from Timbuktu to Bamako, the unsung heroines who memorized catalogue numbers, and the…
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