The Tazzla Institute for Cultural Diversity recently announced the establishment of a new initiative, the Timbuktu Heritage Project, a joint undertaking with the Timbuktu Heritage Institute of Mali.
One of the project’s core goals is to identify historical manuscripts taken or reproduced from libraries in Timbuktu, Mali, and return them to their rightful places.
Issa Ag Mohammed heads the Timbuktu Heritage Institute. He is an Amazigh activist from Mali recently independently enjoined by the Malian government to locate, confiscate and return to their points of origin manuscripts and artifacts illicitly taken out of the country. The Embassy of Mali in Washington, D.C. will serve in an oversight capacity in the venture.p>
It is thought that thousands of valuable manuscripts, dating at least to the 15th century, have been bought, appropriated, photocopied, or smuggled out of Mali, in arrangements unauthorized by the government, in recent decades. Many institutions in the United States house collections of North African manuscripts and artifacts.
Helene Hagan, president of the Tazzla Institute, emphasized the group’s concern that funds raised abroad for the preservation, research or publication of these documents be made available to the locally-based institutions established for these purposes, such as the Timbuktu Library Project. Ms. Hagan contends that resources may have been redirected to American organizations in the mistaken assumption that there is a lack of adequate facilities and qualified scholars in Mali and other parts of North Africa. Indeed, Ms. Hagan offers, African scholars have a far better understanding of the manuscripts in the context of the Amazigh culture and history that produced them, and a stronger appreciation for the stewardship responsibility associated with maintaining them.
The manuscripts are of vital importance to the Amazigh historical record, and are central pieces of the cultural patrimony of the Imazighen. Private and public collections include diverse literary, historical and scientific writings representing almost a millennium of Islamic – and Amazigh - scholarship and thought.
Professor John Kunwick of Northwestern University three years ago helped bring to light the astonishing private collection of the Haidara family, including a never-before seen version of a book written by Mahmud al-Kati, an ancestor of the Haidaras and an African historian of the 16th century. These and other works have helped realign many scholars’ perceptions of the African historical record.
In the past, many historians have presumed that African traditions were primarily oral, that no written historical record existed before the colonial era. The manuscripts of Timbuktu and other parts of North Africa have exploded these assumptions with their revelations of rich and extensive written traditions in Arabic dating from the 15th century era Songhay Empire and beyond.
The new project seeks to return control of the documents and their use to their rightful owners, the Imizaghen and people of Mali. The Timbuktu Library Project was established in October 2000, in order to develop the capacity of the national Ahmed Baba Centre for Documentation and Research for handling the centuries-old materials. These organizations -- officially chartered to manage the research and dissemination, physical conservation and electronic documentation of the priceless manuscripts -- should be the recipients of any funds collected for these purposes, according to the Tazzla Institute.
African historians date the founding of the city of Timbuktu by nomadic Tuareg and Arab peoples to around 1,100 C.E. Situated strategically on a bend of the Niger River, it soon became an epicenter of commerce and learning, drawing scholars from all over North Africa, many of whom brought their personal libraries with them. Many of these private collections have been passed down through family lines from generation to generation, as in the case of the Haidara library.
The Timbuktu Heritage Project will seek to raise awareness of the need to protect these works, as a vital legacy that is “the common history of all Imazighen.”
The Mali-based Timbuktu Heritage Institute will also work to promote support for the preservation of currently deteriorating sacred sites across Mali. More information on these undertakings can be found at http://www.tazzla.org.
