Today's
BBC piece by Andrew Harding on
Saving Africa's precious written heritage spotlights the pressing need for preservation and digitization of one of humanities most important but under-appreciated cultural treasures, the manuscripts of
Timbuktu...
"Across Timbuktu, in cupboards, rusting chests, private collections and libraries, tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of manuscripts bear witness to this legendary city's remarkable intellectual history, and by extension, to Africa's much overlooked pre-colonial heritage. [...] They provide unique insights into Timbuktu's emergence as a trading post, and by the 1500s as a famous university town, full of students and scribes. They also help refute the notion that sub-Saharan Africa produced only oral histories, with little or no written records. Some of the documents discuss social and political problems, usually in an Islamic context, while others offer medicinal advice, including one 13th Century herbal remedy to help treat women in labour."
Kudos to the
South Africans for stepping forward to financially support saving this history, but one has to ask,
Where's Google? Surely there won't be any copyright complaints around digitizing these books!
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