Latest / Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History / The Timbuktu Librarian Who Defied the Saadians
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Timbuktu's scholars — Ahmad Baba, al-Sadi, the astronomers and jurists. But I've been wondering about something that rarely gets mentioned: what happened to their books when the city was conquered? Luna: Didn't the Saadians take a lot of them? Lucas: They did. When Judar Pasha's army marched into Timbuktu in 1591, they didn't just overthrow the Askia dynasty — they targeted the intellectual elite. Ahmad Baba was exiled to Fez for years. But the story of the manuscripts is more complicated. A lot of books were destroyed or carted off, but a surprising number survived, and that's because of a quiet, determined network of librarians. Luna: A network? You mean like a secret book-smuggling operation? Lucas: Exactly. And the key figure was a man from a scholarly family — the al-Wangari clan. They were connected to the Qadiriyya Sufi order, which had strong ties across the Sahara. When the Saadians started rounding up the ulama, the al-Wangaris knew their library would be a prime target. So they did something risky: they buried the most valuable manuscripts in the desert, hidden in camel-skin bags, and waited. Luna: Buried in the desert? That's incredible. Lucas: It's not the only case. The Fondo Kati collection — which we've mentioned before — was also hidden. But the al-Wangari story is special because we have a direct account from a later scholar who helped recover them. The man's name was Muhammad al-Wangari, a descendant, and he left a note in the margins of one manuscript describing how his family saved the books during the chaos. Luna: Wait — he wrote about it in the margins of a book? Lucas: That's right. It's called a marginal note, or hawāshī in Arabic. And it's one of the most poignant primary sources we have from that period. He says, quote: 'I took the books and I hid them in a place known only to my father and me. I did this when the people of Timbuktu were being carried away into captivity.' It's a direct voice from 1591. Luna: That gives me chills. So he was writing in the middle of the invasion? Lucas: Probably shortly after, once things had calmed down enough to retrieve them. The note is undated, but we know the invasion happened in 1591, and Ahmad Baba was exiled in 1594. So it's likely from that window. The books he saved included copies of the Tarikh al-Sudan — which al-Sadi was still writing at that time — and works on astronomy, medicine, and law. Some of those manuscripts later ended up in the Mamma Haidara library. Luna: So the Tarikh al-Sudan itself might have been saved by this family? Lucas: Possibly. The oldest surviving manuscript of the Tarikh al-Sudan is held in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, but there were multiple copies. The al-Wangari family's collection shows that local scholars were preserving their own history even as the political order collapsed. And they did it through the Qadiriyya network — Sufi brotherhoods that spanned from Timbuktu to Fez to Cairo. Luna: So the Saadians weren't able to completely shut down the intellectual life? Lucas: Not entirely, no. They exiled the top scholars, but the network survived. And here's a fascinating detail: when Judar Pasha's soldiers looted the Sankore mosque, they took gold, but they also took books — which they later sold in the markets of Marrakech. Some of those books were bought by European travelers and ended up in libraries in Spain and Italy. So the invasion actually scattered Timbuktu's manuscripts across the Mediterranean. Luna: So the books got scattered both by the invaders and by the people hiding them? Lucas: Exactly. And that's why today you can find Timbuktu manuscripts in collections from Paris to Timbuktu itself. The Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu now holds about 40,000 of them, many digitized. But the survival of those manuscripts was not a given — it took generations of quiet resistance, people like the al-Wangari librarian, who risked everything to hide a few dozen books in the sand. Luna: And now they're being digitized and read by scholars all over the world. Lucas: Right. And that brings up something we often don't think about. A show like this — we get to tell these stories because of that preservation. It's a small thing, but it connects directly to the work we're doing now. Luna: Yeah, it's humbling. Lucas: And a handful of listeners help keep this show ad-free by chipping in through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That support is what lets us spend the time digging into these details — the marginal notes, the hidden libraries. So thank you to those who do. Luna: Absolutely. It's a small community, but it makes a real difference. Lucas: So back to the al-Wangari manuscripts — one of the books he saved was a commentary on the Qur'an by a 14th-century scholar from Granada. That book had travelled across the Sahara, been studied in Sankore, and then hidden for decades. And when it was finally brought out again, it had this little note in the margin telling its story. That's the kind of connection that makes history feel alive. Luna: A book that crossed continents and centuries, with a story written in its own margins. Lucas: Exactly. And it's a reminder that the intellectual heritage of Timbuktu didn't end with the Saadian conquest — it went underground, survived, and is still being read today.