Latest / Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History / Timbuktu's Lost Library: The Mamma Haidara Collection
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Timbuktu's scholars and its manuscripts, but I want to focus today on one particular collection that really shows how deep that tradition went. I'm talking about the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library. Luna: I've heard the name, but I don't know much about it. How did it start? Lucas: It's a family library, really, founded by a scholar named Muhammad al-Mukhtar al-Wangari — we've mentioned the al-Wangari family in past episodes. He was a 16th-century jurist and collector, and his descendants kept adding to the collection for centuries. By the time it was formally organized in the 20th century, it held over 9,000 manuscripts, some dating back to the 1200s. Lucas: And that's just one library. Timbuktu had dozens of private collections like this. The Mamma Haidara collection is special because it survived so much — the Moroccan invasion in 1591, the Fulani jihad under Seku Amadu in the 1820s, French colonial rule, and then the jihadist occupation in 2012. Luna: Wait — 2012? That's recent. What happened then? Lucas: In 2012, jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda took over northern Mali, including Timbuktu. They considered many of these manuscripts to be un-Islamic because they contained astronomy, logic, or anything that predated the Prophet. So they started destroying them. Librarians and families secretly evacuated hundreds of thousands of manuscripts to Bamako in the south. Lucas: The head of the Mamma Haidara library, Abdel Kader Haidara, organized this massive smuggling operation. They packed manuscripts into metal trunks, loaded them onto boats, trucks, and donkeys, and moved them over 600 miles to safety. By the time the French military retook Timbuktu in 2013, they'd saved over 300,000 manuscripts. Luna: That's incredible. Were any lost? Lucas: Some were burned or stolen, but the vast majority survived. The Haidara collection itself lost only about 4% of its holdings. And since then, there's been a huge effort to digitize them. The Ahmed Baba Institute, the Mamma Haidara family, and groups like the British Library have been working to preserve these texts digitally. Lucas: The range of subjects is staggering. There are legal texts, medical treatises, poetry, astronomy, mathematics. One of my favorites is a copy of the Qur'an from the 13th century, written on gazelle skin with calligraphy so fine you can see the individual hairs of the brush. Another is a treatise on ophthalmology by Ibn al-Haytham — the same guy who wrote the Book of Optics. Luna: Ibn al-Haytham — so these scholars were reading the same works as scholars in Cairo and Baghdad? Lucas: Exactly. Timbuktu was part of a global intellectual network. Manuscripts came from Fez, Cairo, Granada, even as far as Persia. They were copied, annotated, and discussed in the Sankore mosque and in private homes. The Mamma Haidara collection includes a legal code written in both Arabic and Tamasheq — the language of the Tuareg — which shows how scholars adapted Islamic law to local customs. Lucas: There's also a famous text called the Tarikh al-Sudan, which we've referenced before. The Mamma Haidara library holds one of the oldest surviving copies. It was written in the 1650s by Abd al-Rahman al-Sadi, and it's the main source for Timbuktu's history during the Songhai Empire. Luna: So the library isn't just a collection of books — it's a record of how African scholars thought about their own history. Lucas: Absolutely. And that's what made the jihadist targeting so sinister. They weren't just destroying old books. They were trying to erase an entire intellectual heritage — one that contradicted their narrow ideology. But the people of Timbuktu, especially families like the Haidaras, refused to let that happen. Lucas: You know, it's interesting — the Mamma Haidara library was actually founded with a grant from the Malian government in the 1960s, but it's always been a family-run institution. That private-public partnership is part of why it survived. The Haidara family has been collecting manuscripts for 400 years. They know their worth. Luna: Four hundred years. That's longer than most universities in the West. Lucas: Right. And it reminds me of something — if you've been coming along with us through these conversations about West Africa, you know we're able to do this because the show is supported by listeners. We don't run ads. It's just people who care about history, helping us keep it going. If that's you, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing that makes a big difference. And it keeps us free to dive deep into these stories. Lucas: Exactly. So back to the manuscripts — one of the challenges now is digitization. The manuscripts are fragile, and while they're safe in Bamako, the humidity down south is different from the Sahara. So there's a race to scan them before they deteriorate further. The Ahmed Baba Institute has digitized about 10,000 so far, but there are hundreds of thousands more. Luna: And can people access them online? Lucas: Some are available through the Library of Congress and the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme. But many are still only in physical form. There's a project called Timbuktu Manuscripts Project run by the University of Oslo that's working on a digital catalog. It's slow, but it's happening. Lucas: What I love is that these manuscripts aren't just historical artifacts — they're still used. Local scholars in Timbuktu consult them for fatwas and legal opinions. The knowledge in them is alive. And that's something we often miss when we think of Timbuktu as a lost city. It's not lost. It's still there, holding onto its past. Luna: It's amazing to think that in a few years, anyone with an internet connection could read a 700-year-old manuscript from Timbuktu. Lucas: That's the hope. And when that happens, the story of Timbuktu — Africa's forgotten center of knowledge — will finally get the audience it deserves.