Saved Mali manuscripts face damage in new home

Weather and poor storage conditions in Bamako are posing a new threat to thousands of ancient manuscripts that were rescued from the clutches of al-Qaeda in Timbuktu After being spirited away from under the noses of rampaging Islamic extremists, thousands of ancient manuscripts from the fabled city of Timbuktu now face another threat: weather and poor storage conditions in their new location that scholars say could cause permanent damage.
     
In 2012, Timbuktu and the rest of northern Mali fell under the control of Islamic extremists following a military coup. The turbaned fighters made women hide their faces, forbade the music for which Mali is known and deemed religious buildings and artifacts to be idolatrous.
     
They took aim at the manuscripts that date back to the 13th century. The camel-skin bound manuscripts reflect the diversity of learning that marked Timbuktu's heyday and cover a vast array of subjects, including astronomy, law, history and philosophy.
     
Before the al Qaida-linked fighters were pushed from Timbuktu by a French military intervention in 2013, they set ablaze the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research, where many of the brittle manuscripts were stored, protected from the harsh Sahara Desert climate. UNESCO estimated that about 4,000 of the manuscripts were destroyed.
     
But most of the documents had been saved thanks to the library's custodians, who had spirited them out of the occupied city in rice sacks, on donkey carts, by motorcycle, by boat and by four-wheel-drive vehicles.
     
The Ahmed Baba Institute is currently watching over 27,000 manuscripts in Bamako, Mali's capital in the south. The institute's director says, however, that the...