Back Desert Libraries of Timbuktu | Book List

SelectReads News
Simple News Pro
  Desert Libraries of Timbuktu  
Timbuktu, Mali, is the legendary city founded as a commercial center in West Africa nine hundred years ago. Today it is synonymous with the phrase "utterly remote," but this was not always so. For more than six hundred years, Timbuktu was a significant religious, cultural, and commercial center whose residents traveled throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe. Timbuktu was famous for educating important scholars who were well known throughout the Islamic world. Many individuals traveled to the city to acquire knowledge; others came to acquire wealth and political power. This booklist is about the ancient and modern ibraries and centers of learnign found in Timbuktu, Mali and West Africa today.
The Storied City: The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save Its Past

Charlie English - Riverhead Books
Format: Hardcover

Two tales of a city: The historical race to "discover" one of the world's most mythologized places, and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians, fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al Qaeda, added another layer to the legend."A...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Young Adult
Blood and Ink

Stephen Davies - Charlesbridge Teen
Format: Hardcover

Part thriller, part love story, this contemporary YA novel is based on true-to-life events in Mali in 2012 and centers around the power of individuals to take a stand against terrorism.Kadi is the 15-year-old daughter of a librarian in modern-day Timbuktu. Ali is the son of shepherds and has been...
Read More check catalog
 
 

Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mali/mali-overview.html
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts

Joshua Hammer - Simon & Schuster
Format: Hardcover

To save precious centuries-old Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians in Timbuktu pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean's Eleven.In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger...
Read More check catalog
 
 
  Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu The 2003 Library of Congress exhibit of manuscripts from the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye of Boujbeha, two of the most noteworthy institutions in the Timbuktu area. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mali/mali-exhibit.html