The book smugglers of Timbuktu : the quest for this storied city and the race to save its treasures

Resource Information

The work The book smugglers of Timbuktu : the quest for this storied city and the race to save its treasures represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in City Libraries, City of Gold Coast. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

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Label

The book smugglers of Timbuktu : the quest for this storied city and the race to save its treasures

Title remainder

the quest for this storied city and the race to save its treasures

Statement of responsibility

Charlie English

Creator

• trueEnglish, Charlie

Author

• trueEnglish, Charlie

Subject

• Cultural property -- Protection -- Mali | Tombouctou
• trueHistoric preservation
• Islamic learning and scholarship -- Mali | Tombouctou
• trueLibrarians
• trueLibraries
• Libraries -- Destruction and pillage -- Mali | Tombouctou
• trueArchivists
• trueManuscripts -- Collection and preservation
• Manuscripts, Arabic -- Mali | Tombouctou
• Nonfiction
• Tombouctou (Mali) -- Antiquities
• Tombouctou (Mali) -- Discovery and exploration
• trueTombouctou, Mali
• trueMali -- History -- Tuareg Rebellion, 2012- -- Destruction and pillage
• trueBooks and reading

Language

eng

Summary

Two tales of a city: The historical race to reach one of the world's most mythologized places, and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians, fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al Qaeda, added another layer to the legend. To Westerners, the name "Timbuktu" long conjured a tantalising paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for "discovery" tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, the climate, and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way too. A medieval centre of learning, it was home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts, on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, law to history, pharmacology, and astronomy. When al-Qaeda-linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012, threatening the existence of these precious documents, a remarkable thing happened: a team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the manuscripts into hiding. Relying on extensive research and firsthand reporting, Charlie English expertly twines these two suspenseful strands into a fascinating account of one of the planet's extraordinary places, and the myths from which it has become inseparable

Biography type

contains biographical information

Dewey number

966.23

Illustrations

• illustrations
• maps
• plates
• portraits

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction