TIMBUKTU ARCHIVES UPDATE:

Rich Trove of Islamic Tradition (Navhind Times)

An exhibition of 400-year-old Islamic manuscripts from Timbuktu that was originally mounted at the Library of Congress in 2003 will be featured in Jackson, Mississippi, in fall 2005 before circulating around the United States. ....

The manuscripts, written in Arabic, Hebrew and Greek, date from the 16th through the 18th centuries. They come from the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye in Timbuktu, Mali. Timbuktu, a city celebrated in western verse for its exotic locale, was for centuries a significant religious, cultural and commercial outpost of Islam, and a center for Islamic book production. There, the written word, along with intricate calligraphy in bound sheaves, fostered an important industry in book selling, rivaling all other local trades.

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The manuscripts presented in the exhibition are samples of scholarly treatises that explore such diverse topics as medicine, science, religion, history and commerce - topics central to the intellectual life of Islam and the era. Many of the manuscripts had remained in the hands of private collectors after being zealously guarded during the colonial period by Malian families to prevent pilfering by Europeans. ...

Hebrew and Greek, as well as Arabic. More and more interesting.