Saving Africa's literary history from destruction

摘要

The old books inside fida ag Mohammed's mud dwelling are no ordinary volumes. Between the intricately hand-tooled goatskin covers are hundreds of pages of Arabic calligraphy-the work of centuries of forebears. "One of my ancestors from the 12th century began our family library," Mohammed says. "There are hundreds of collections like this."rnFor centuries, Timbuktu's locals have stashed such manuscripts in their homes or under the desert sands, preserved from termites with a covering of ashes and from collectors by Timbuktu's extreme remoteness. This sweltering northern Malian town feels like the end of the earth, with dirt tracks melting into the Sahara and chickens pecking between the mud-walled houses.