In June, Ansar al Dine rebels, who took
control of Timbuktu following a military
coup in Mali in March, started destroying
ancient tombs and libraries in the city,
some of which are UNESCO World
Heritage Sites. Before the destruction, a
preservation and study project started by
the South African and Malian
governments to save Timbuktu’s ancient
manuscripts for posterity was making
progress. Curtis Abraham reports on what
is being done to save the manuscripts
from further rebel destruction.
In the fabled Malian city of Timbuktu, West
Africa tradition dies hard. Africans here still use
the Niger River for their ancient fishing
excursions in locally-made canoes. The past is
very prominent in the present. The three great
mosques or madrasas (schools) of Djingareyber,
Sankore, and Sidi Yahya are a testament in mud
architecture to the city’s golden age.
During the 15th and 16th centuries, Timbuktu
was a fabulously wealthy African city. It was the
city’s key role in trans-Saharan trade in gold,
ivory, slaves, salt, and other goods – a trade
conducted by Tuareg, Mandé, and Fulani
merchants – which led to its prosperity.
With wealth came learning, libraries, and
universities. The city was perhaps the most
important centre of learning in sub-Saharan
Africa during the 15th and 16th centuries,
where scholars of religion, arts, and sciences
flourished. During this time, tens of thousands
of manuscripts were commissioned and
meticulously executed by African academics.
However, when the Moroccans invaded the city
in the 1590s, academics and most of their
writings were banished by the Moroccans.
Miraculously, a treasure trove of thousands of
manuscripts survived persecution – and is
presently lying untouched in trunks or has been
buried in the thick mud walls of mosques for
generations.
But now all this is in danger of being destroyed
and lost forever. A military coup in March this
year has opened a Pandora’s Box in the
northern part of the country. In late June,
Ansar al Dine Tuareg militants, who took
control of Timbuktu from their former MNLA
Tuareg allies, and whose aim is to create an
Islamic state across the whole of Mali, attacked
tombs of revered saints and scholars in
Timbuktu. These are places of pilgrimage.
Ansar al Dine’s strict interpretation of Islam is
akin to the Taliban in Afghanistan and the
Wahabi of Saudi Arabia where the worshipping
of shines (or the wearing of amulets to ward off
malevolent spirits) is haram or forbidden.
Destroying the past and future
The rebels used pick-axes and other
instruments to knock down the tombs of Sidi
Alpha Moya and Sidi Mukhtar. They also
destroyed the tomb of Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar,
a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Timbuktu has 16
such sites
The rebels broke off doors, windows, and
wooded gates from Ben Amar’s grave and
burned them. They later set fire to the tomb
itself, and went on to attack and deface a 15th
century red wooden door in the Sidi Yahya
Mosque, one of the most famous mosques in
Timbuktu, as onlookers sobbed.
But the destruction did not stop there. The
Islamist fighters then destroyed two tombs at
Timbuktu’s famous Djingareyber mosque.
“The rebels are oblivious to the heritage of
Timbuktu, as we have just witnessed with the
destruction of a number of tombs by the Ansar
al-Din,” says Shamil Jeppie, director of the
Tombouctou [Timbuktu] Manuscripts Project of
the University of Cape Town, South
Africa. “These are the graves of people highly
regarded in Timbuktu and the region. Among
them are men who were both saintly and
scholars.
“The rebels may next focus on the manuscripts
with Sufi content – with which the libraries are
filled. It is strange to hope for any person or
group to be illiterate but in this case one hopes
that they cannot decipher the materials because
of their inadequate literacy in the language or
script of the materials. One hopes that they are
just not interested in the materials. If they are
interested in them then it should be to see that
they are cared for,” Prof Jeppied added.
But he was not alone in his condemnation of
the destruction of Timbuktu’s cultural heritage.
“I believe this is a tragedy for all of humanity”,
lamented Irina Bokova, UNESCO’s director
general.
According to the latest reports, the Ansar al
Dine rebels have not yet harmed any of the
priceless manuscripts but they are worryingly
close. They took over the new building of the
Ahmad Baba Institute, and computers and data
were reportedly stolen as well as vehicles
belonging to the Institute. But the reports said
the insurgents did not enter the rooms and
underground vaults where the manuscripts are
stored.
Major private owners of manuscript collections
are said to have hidden or packed their ancient
documents away for protection. Some may have
even smuggled them out to Bamako, the Mali
capital, or to neighbouring countries.
But this is not the first time these ancient texts
are being hidden because of armed conflict and
occupation. Some manuscripts were hidden
away for centuries under mud houses and in
desert caves from Moroccan invaders, European
explorers, and French colonialists.
The armed occupation and apparent cultural
destruction of Timbuktu by the Ansar al Dine
(they have vowed to destroy the tombs of all the
revered holy men of the city) come as a major
setback for experts attempting to translate,
digitalise and preserve these ancient texts.
South African project
One such project involved examining the
scientific contents of tens of thousands of these
documents. In 2003, a South Africa-Mali
Timbuktu Manuscripts Project was officially
launched as a bilateral cooperation agreement
between the two governments.
Their goal is to research various aspects of the
literature of the handwritten works of
Timbuktu – arguably the largest collection of
written artifacts in Africa. The project also aims
to train young African researchers in the
preservation, translation, and digitalisation of
the ancient texts for future generations.
Then in February 2006, “The Project on the
Search for Scientific Contents of the Timbuktu
Manuscripts”, an offshoot of the main study,
was launched as a joint collaboration between
the University of Cape Town’s Department of
Science and Technology (DST), and Bamako
University in Mali.
The aim is to unlock the scientific secrets of the
Timbuktu manuscripts, something which has
never been previously attempted.
The South African government initially funded
the project to the tune of R500,000 (about
$70,000 at the time). However, since the
occupation of Timbuktu by the Ansar al Dine,
the government of South Africa has remained
conspicuously silent about the desecration of
the sacred sites.
The expectation is that these fragile reams of
paper, some dating back to the 13th century,
may yield surprises not only in the field of
astronomy but also in the disciplines of botany,
medicine, biology, chemistry, mathematics, and
climatology.
The main ambition of the researchers is to try
and build as complete a picture of the status of
science studies and research during the ancient
Mali and Songhay empires as possible.
The project also hopes to investigate the extent
of the participation and contribution of African
astronomers to medieval Islamic scientific
culture.
“This project is important because it seeks to
reveal aspects of the history of science in Africa
that the world does not know about,” says Dr
Thebe Rodney Medupe, the chief researcher of
the project. “Until we thought of this project,
the common belief amongst scientists was that
Africans only began studying and participating
in science only recently after the arrival of
Europeans in our continent.
“We hope that the findings from our project
will revise all of that so that our continent can
get the respect it deserves, regarding its
relationship with science. The fact that right
now we can speak with confidence that black
people were studying mathematics and
astronomy over 300 years ago is something that
was unthinkable during my school days. The
common perception was that Black Africans
could not think or do science.”
The bulk of the Timbuktu manuscripts are
currently housed in the Ahmed Baba Institute of
Higher Learning and Islamic Research. While
most are in Arabic, some are in indigenous
languages such as Songhai and Hausa, written
using Arabic script.
There are also several volumes of catalogues,
and there may be up to 18,000 manuscripts!
Entries of the Ahmed Baba library catalogues
indicate the existence of 37 manuscripts that
deal with the topics of astronomy and astrology.
Medupe’s team also discovered 27 such articles
in the famous Mamma Haidara Memorial
Library. Furthermore, there are also 32
manuscripts on astronomy which have been
identified in the libraries of the Al-Furqan
Foundation, but no studies of the scientific
content of the manuscripts have been done
before.
There are also 25 private libraries in and
around the city of Timbuktu. However, only
eight of these are open to scholars. And out of
that eight, it is only the Mama Haidara
Memorial Library that has catalogued its ancient
texts.
Key questions
Some key questions that Dr Medupe and his
colleagues are hoping to answer by surveying
the thousands of ancient manuscripts include
whether or not the astronomers of Timbuktu
knew that the Earth was round. Did they also
suspect that they were living in a helio-centric
or sun-centred solar system? Did they have any
instruments for looking at the heavens? What
were their thoughts about meteor showers,
comets and eclipses? Was their mathematical
knowledge sufficient enough to apply it to the
study of the sky? Did they keep any records of
astronomical events?
One particular question the researchers would
like to answer is the possibility of a two-way
flow of scientific ideas between the known
centres of medieval Islamic science, such as
Baghdad and West
Africa.
Islamic science had its heyday during the period
between the 8th and 16th centuries AD. During
that time, most research in astronomy in the
world took place in Islamic Spain, North Africa,
and the Middle East. The knowledge resulting
from this era went on to benefit European
scientists during the time of the European
Renaissance. The source of this knowledge was
a combination of the translated Ancient Greek
science manuscripts, and original research by
medieval Islamic scientists.
The Timbuktu manuscripts are part of a much
larger collection of Islamic writings found
throughout much of West Africa. But such
documents are not exclusive to West Africa
alone. These ancient Islamic texts can be found
in areas of sub-Saharan Africa where Islam has
had a substantial impact on the life and culture
of the indigenous African communities it
touched. Such places include Sudan,
Mozambique, Tanzania, and Mauritania.
“The most amazing part of this is that the study
of Islamic science in the past in Africa may be
more widespread than we think,” says Medupe,
now an associate professor at the University of
North West, South Africa. “This is because, these
ancient manuscripts are found not only in
Timbuktu, but in many older cities in Mali, the
neighboring countries of West Africa, and all
the way to the east in Sudan and as far south as
Tanzania, I believe.”
Medupe and his colleagues continue to be
optimistic about finding further astronomical
data in the Timbuktu archives. Their optimism
is rooted in two known facts. First, until quite
recently, the stars dominated many aspects of
human life, providing vital information on the
time, changing seasons, navigation, and
complementing spiritual beliefs. This cultural
astronomy or archeo-astronomy is what
Medupe and his colleagues are hoping to find in
the Timbuktu manuscripts.
Second, it is well-known that Timbuktu traded
extensively with Muslim traders from the
Middle East. From the 8th century until the 15th
century, Muslim astronomers took over from
the Ancient Greeks as some of the most accurate
and innovative mathematicians and
astronomers in the world. Through the book
trade and regular interaction between these two
cultures, it is quite feasible that they shared and
discussed observations and discoveries about
the stars. They also developed and shared
systems of mathematics.
Facing Mecca
Unlike the early Christian church, whose
conservatism delayed progress in advances of
scientific understanding for many centuries,
because of teaching attitudes that were still
rooted essentially in Plato and Aristotle, early
Islamic investigations in astronomy, however,
were driven by two main religious practices.
The first was the requirement for Muslims to
pray facing Mecca, and to orient their mosques
in the direction of Mecca. This direction was
determined in some cases by using stars to
determine latitude and longitude for both Mecca
and the locality of interest. Then trigonometric
identities were applied to determine angles.
Secondly, there was the need to determine
proper times for prayers at sunrise, noon,
afternoon, sunset and evening.
Practical solutions to both of these problems
require the use of trigonometry, a section of
mathematics that was not known during the
times of Ptolemy, the Greek mathematician and
astronomer. Ptolemy did offer solutions to these
problems, but his methods were too
cumbersome, say experts.
Muslim astronomers, however, devised easier
solutions by inventing the cosine, tangent, co-
tangent, secant and cosecant functions of
trigonometry. The medieval Islamic
astronomers also improved on the astrolabe, an
instrument that was used to predict positions of
the stars and planets.
According to Dr Petra Schmidl of the Johann
Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt,
Germany, the Timbuktu manuscripts include
texts that discuss calendars and timekeeping,
which were written as poems.
“The interesting thing concerning pre-modern
astronomy and astrology as presented in the
Timbuktu manuscripts does not [just] concern
new discoveries and information not available
in other parts of the Islamic realm,” says
Schmidl, who also collaborated with Medupe
and Sharon Hawkes on the documentary, The
ancient astronomers of Timbuktu.
Schmidl adds that “the Timbuktu scholars deal
with astronomical and astrological problems
and questions, as well as methods and solutions
that modern scholarship knows from pre-
modern astronomy and astrology in other parts
of the Islamic realm.”
Discoveries so far
So what ancient astronomical data have the
researchers discovered so far among the
manuscripts?
“The preliminary investigations point to
connections with the western part of Muslim
North Africa, for example the Maghreb,” says
Benno van Dalen of the Institute of Islamic
Science in Frankfurt, who was also a
collaborator on the Timbuktu manuscripts
project.
“Western Islamic astronomy, for example from
Muslim Spain and the Maghreb, is in general
quite different from astronomy in the eastern
Islamic world,” Dalen continues. Between June
and October 2006, Medupe and his South
African and Malian colleagues translated 14
manuscripts, which covered the disciplines of
astronomy, geography, and mathematics. These
documents varied in size and are particularly
difficult to read since they are not punctuated,
and many have crucial pages missing, including
their front covers. Some have astronomical data
tables which are very important for historians
of astronomy. In manuscript number 3660, a
10-page document discusses orbits, division of
orbits, seasons, as well as foods and drinks to
be consumed every month.
In another document, Number 2458, a 31-pager
called “Illustration of a Poem by Mohammad
Bin Ali”, the author writes about, among other
things, days of the year, planets, lunar
mansions, the duration of planets in
constellations, and the source of moonlight.
Another document titled: “A Book about
Knowing the Situations of the Moon in the
Mansion” tells of ill fortune and bad fortune
lunar mansions, and hours and their
characteristics. Other manuscripts similarly
discuss planets, constellations, orbits, seasons,
the moon, sun, etc.
Among the treasure-trove of ancient texts is
document Number 3670. Written in 1723, it is a
copy of a commentary by Abul Abbas on a work
by Mohammed bin Said bin Yehya bin Ahmed
bin Dawud bin Abubaker bin Ya-aza, who came
from Suz (probably Morocco).
The researchers are in the dark about further
details of the author’s life. However, they
suspect that he lived or came from the area
near Timbuktu since he mentions Ahmed Baba,
the most famous scholar from Timbuktu in the
1500s.
The manuscript starts by explaining what
astronomy is, and what its uses are. Prof
Medupe’s expert Arabic translators give a direct
translation of what Abul Abbas thinks
astronomy is: “… it is also called Science of
Arithmetic. Because he who wants to know this
science must look at the sky to observe the
individual stars and to know their names. It is
called Arithmetic, because he who wants to
know it must learn Arithmetic.”
Abul Abbas then lists the uses of astronomy for
guiding people at sea, determining calendars
and determining prayer times. “These concepts
of astronomy are exactly as they are being
taught in classes of general astronomy today,”
says Prof Medupe. What is unusual about this
text is that it describes a geocentric or earth-
centred model of the universe in 1700s
Timbuktu 300 years after the Copernican
revolution, which placed the sun at the centre
of our solar system. The manuscript is a
testament to the fact that these early notions of
the universe (wrong though they are) were
being independently developed in sub-Saharan
Africa without European influence.
This particular document also includes precise
definitions of Islamic calendars, month, leap
year, etc. Furthermore, the author also gives
algorithms on how to determine leap years in
an Islamic calendar.
“I was reading Abul Abbas’s manuscript in
Timbuktu, without an astronomical book or the
internet for reference, so I decided to test the
accuracy of their algorithm for determining the
Islamic leap year by implementing it on a
Fortran (computer language] programme,” says
Prof Medupe. “Indeed the programme worked
well, and so these people were very
knowledgeable about the subject they wrote
about.”
The final chapter of Abbas’s text deals with a
description of a geocentric model of the
universe. This manuscript, which also contains
diagrams of planetary orbits, does not only
illustrate the well-known fact that Islamic
astronomy borrowed a lot from Ancient Greek
astronomy, but it also proves a far less known
fact that Africans living below the Sahara were
learning these ideas over 300 years ago.
Sadly, the Timbuktu manuscripts were already
in peril prior to the arrival of Ansar al Dine.
Climatic and environmental conditions in
Timbuktu (and the wider region) are quite
extreme, which combined, pose a considerable
threat.
Insects and other vermin that eat paper and
other materials, as well as poor quality paper
also contribute to the deterioration of the
manuscripts. Ironically, one of the rather
unexpected elements that the conservation team
has found is widespread water damage. Now
there is even a more menacing threat – the
Ansar al Dine rebels. As they continue their
occupation of Timbuktu, many of Mali’s
foremost researchers, conservationists, and
library owners have fled for Bamako, the
capital. This has left behind a void of skilled
and knowledgeable experts who know how to
handle the fragile manuscripts.
Several private libraries have also been locked
while portions of the manuscripts (as well as
other precious artefacts) have been removed
from the libraries and museums and hidden
away in private homes. The question is for how
much longer?
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