Dive into the epic story of Africa's greatest written legacy

Deep dive into the incredible story behind the rescue of the Timbuktu Manuscripts, threatened to be destroyed by extremists in 2012. g.co/TimbuktuManuscripts #MaliMagic
Dr. Abdel Kader Haidara, the librarian known for smuggling the manuscripts out of Timbuktu when their safety was at risk, has said that it was once thought that there was no written history in Africa, only oral tradition - the rediscovery of these 400,000+ pages written by African scholars across 9 centuries represents a true renaissance.
Credits:
SAVAMA - Manuscript Digitization & Curation
Timbuktu Renaissance
UNESCO
Instruments 4 Africa
Brooklyn Public Library
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[@tananario]

The history of early civilizations in Africa needs to be recovered.

[@UniversalAfricanOrder]

Ase

[@ario2264]

You realize these Arabic manuscripts mostly date from the 16th century AD or later?

[@stuarthaw7263]

This is a lovely mini doc. Would love to see more of these documentaries where people from countries that we don't learn enough about in the UK, tell their story! Thank you for sharing

[@LR-kr9sz]

I can't believe this isn't the most spoken about thing this year

[@IgorValledeMadzou]

This is really interesting. May God bless and keep the man who have protected the manuscripts from the and preserving them for future African generations

[@millionairemaine8901]

All this written history and manuscripts but we like to act like there is no written history in West Africa. It's a shame.

[@UniversalAfricanOrder]

Wonderful

[@rayuzwyshyn2010]

Who are the scholars who can read this form of ancient Arabic? Is translation of this corpus being currently accomplished and is there a list of the most important manuscripts that have been found and/or translated? Where are the top scholars doing research, which universities and is there yet a guide for the libraries masterpieces?

[@stigmatizedminstrel1837]

Thanks

[@supahotjoe6493]

Africa’s greatest written legacy is Kemet (ancient egypt when it was still black before -525 B.C) and Kush

[@samuelreed2994]

How to build a pyramid?

[@atag1960]

How can you salvage something that didn't belong to you in the first place?"

[@AXZJ104]

Have the manuscripts been translated yet? How old are the documents?

[@NuAege2302]

Documentary says 11th century old

[@ario2264]

@@NuAege2302 More like 16th-20th century old.

[@AdamWood-dx7xm]

@@ario2264Far earlier, the last decade of the 16th century is when the Songhai empire collapsed. By then Timbuktu was already producing manuscripts, so around the 13th century at least. There could also be manuscripts that are even older, as Timbuktu also imported text from around the Islamic world into its vast collections.

[@ario2264]

Maybe sub-Saharan Africa's greatest written legacy, but certainly not Africa's greatest written legacy.

[@mikamwambazi3807]

There's no such thing as Sub-Saharan Africa, it's racist propaganda.

[@Taharquathegreat]

no such thing as sub-sahara as Egypt even is a sahelian country. The sahra did not exist thousands of years ago. the greatest written legacy of africa is Kemet (Ancient Egypt before it became non black african) and Nubia (but that we cannot decipher meroitic script)

[@ario2264]

@@Taharquathegreat yeah the place you come from doesn't exist, right? Because you want to be something you're not.

[@Taharquathegreat]

@@ario2264 Here we go again.

[@ario2264]

@@Taharquathegreat Even Timbuktu wasn't black lol.