Saved!

This is coolbert:

Here from the Chicago Tribune of several days ago we have the timeline of events the survival of the ancient manuscripts from the University of Timbuktu at stake!

"Mali mission preserves history, hope"

That university and the manuscripts ancient and valuable, Timbuktu during the Middle Ages a center of learning for all of northern Africa at least equal during the same period to universities such as Bologna, Salamanca, the Sorbonne, Oxford and Cambridge.

Those manuscripts in danger of destruction at the hands of the fundamentalist jihadi allied with and taking inspiration from Al Qaeda.

That timeline:

"How manuscripts were saved"

April 2012: "Islamists seize Timbuktu . . . a secret operation move the ancient manuscripts to safe houses was set into motion."

Late May, early June: "workers at the old state run library . . . contact their director . . . saying the documents would be destroyed if the Islamists discover them."

June: "The director sends a reconnaissance mission to Timbuktu . . . return[ing] to Bamako with a computer hard drive containing the library's records of the manuscripts."

Late July: "A second mission to Timbuktu returns to Bamako with two trunks of manuscripts."

August: . . . "more than 2,000 trunks containing about 275,000 pages are evacuated."

Late January 2013: "Jihadists burn about 4,000 pages they find days before the French troops arrive."

As was NOT the case at Baghdad [1253] or Leuven [1914] a certain degree of foresight and the situation was saved. Some documents burned but that bulk saved!

See here and here previous blog entries regarding the ancient library of the University of Timbuktu.

coolbert.