Latest / Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History
Timbuktu's Great Fire and the Loss of Knowledge
In this episode, we explore the devastating fire that swept through Timbuktu in 1970, destroying centuries of manuscripts and reshaping the city’s intellectual legacy. Lucas and Luna discuss the specific circumstances surrounding the blaze at the Ahmed Baba Institute, the role of local scholar Abdoulaye Maiga, and the subsequent rescue missions to recover scattered texts from Bamako and private homes. We examine how this event exposed vulnerabilities in manuscript preservation and sparked a renewed global effort to digitize and protect West Africa’s written heritage, contrasting earlier…
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