Timbuktu’s history at risk as rebellion moves in
Increasing violence threatens city’s archives, mosques
BA M A KO • Three months ago, U2 frontman Bono made a surprise appearance at a popular music festival in the dunes outside Timbuktu.
Today, the tourists are long gone and ominous black flags planted by jihadists flap in the city whose heyday as an ancient trading hub and intellectual centre has suddenly been supplanted with a new identity as the centre of a chaotic rebellion.
The northern Mali city has traditionally been secular, with girls going to school bareheaded and the market selling animist talismans outlawed by Islam.
But on Monday, women were forced to wear veils and trousers after the Islamist group Ansar Dine asserted their control of the town and chased out Tuareg rebels with whom they had captured it from the coup-stricken Malian state on Sunday.
It is not the first time the legendary city has seen tumult.
Founded between the fifth and 11th centuries by Tuareg desert nomads, Timbuktu became a meeting point between north, south and west Africa and a melting pot of black Africans, Berber, Arab and Tuareg desert nomads.
The trade of gold, salt, ivory and books made it the richest region in west Africa and it attracted scholars, engineers and architects from around Africa, growing into a major centre of Islamic culture by the 14th century.
But modern Timbuktu is an impoverished town sinking into the desert where youth unemployment is high.
It sits at a crossroads between Tuareg rebels, radical Islamists, drug traffickers and al-qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which has made it a no-go area for tourists.
The various groups of rebels have seized much of the north of modern-day Mali which shares a similar rich history as Timbuktu, like the city of Gao (capital of the Songhai empire).
The Tuareg rebels want independence, conflicting with the Islamist’s desire for Shariah law, while al-qaeda and various other criminal groups want to deepen their hold and ensure nothing interrupts a booming drug and weapons trade.
Fighters have been aided by weapons brought back by the Tuareg, who fought for slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
There are fears the violence could endanger Timbuktu’s rich archives and historic mosques.
“Unique manuscripts have been conserved for centuries in Timbuktu, a scholarly city, a city of 333 saints, where practically every household is a heritage site, a library,” said Hamady Bocoum, head of African research institute IFAN.
“I think there are serious risks to those manuscripts.”
Timbuktu is home to nearly 100,000 ancient manuscripts,
I think there are serious risks to those manuscripts
some dating to the 12th century, preserved in family homes and private libraries under the care of religious scholars.
Mr. Bocoum worried manuscripts could be illegally sold or destroyed by the “new arrivals.”
“These manuscripts have survived through the ages thanks to a secular order, in an area of trade where all the region’s peoples intersect. With the arrival of the Islamists, that secular order is broken, that culture is in danger,” he said.
The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO also issued a plea Tuesday to protect the city’s history.
“Timbuktu’s outstanding earthen architectural wonders that are the great mosques of Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia must be safeguarded,” said UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova in a statement.