Timbuktu Libraries in Exile | Hacker News Reader

Timbuktu Libraries in Exile

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124 pointsbmmayer155 comments

What may be the most revolutionary finding as more ancient Islamic manuscripts are preserved by digitization and shared with scholars around the world is the known fact (known to specialized scholars, that is) that there isn't a certain ancient text for the Quran. Just like the case with the Bible, manuscript copyists made their best efforts to copy accurately the manuscripts before them as they made new manuscripts, but mistakes happened once in a while. And, just as in the case of the Bible, tracing the copied texts back to the earliest available manuscripts, and reconstruction of what the earliest probable form of the text was, doesn't provide certainty about the original "words of God" found in the texts. (That's equally true of the Hebrew scriptures also important to Jews and of the Greek scriptures known as the New Testament.) The gradual spread of knowledge of textual criticism (that's the name of this study as a field of scholarship) in the Christian world is helping to reduce "fundamentalist" tendencies among Christians. In the Islamic world, there is a much smaller percentage of Muslims who are aware that their holy book too has many varied copies, and there is no certainty about the original text of the Quran. As this awareness increases, that could be helpful in reducing conflict over supposed divine commands that were man-made in the first place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_criticism

http://www.amazon.com/Textual-Criticism-Quran-Manuscripts-Ke...

http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Text/criticaltext.html

I'd argue that it doesn't make any of the the "holy texts" any less ludicrous, but for people like me, who like to have this kind of resources for researching into our past, having this volume of texts digitized would be a godsend (pun intended :-)).

The appeal of holy texts to me is more artistic rather than spiritual or even historic. Also, I love collecting all texts (a few rather old leather-bound bibles, late 1800 to early 1900, are some of my most prized possessions).

There's something precious lost when the only copy that remains of a volume is digital. Sure, you have the content, but the weight, the smell, the texture of the paper etc... all that would have been gone forever.

Yes just thinking purely about the actual written information in an ancient book it's hard to imagine it could survive copying without a single mistake no matter how much attention to detail there is.

Add to the translation from language to language over many centuries, phrases may not translate very well even within the same language due to changes in culture over a long time. How many phrases and words do we in the English world use that were common even just 100 years ago now imagine 2,000 years ago.

I think it's well known among Muslims that there are multiple readings of the Quran. Another point of note is that unlike the Christian or Hebrew writings, the main method of preservation of the Quran has been through mass oral memorization, and so Muslims tend not to place much emphasis on manuscripts. All the printed editions of the Quran (known as Mushafs) are, in fact, authenticated by well-known memorizers of the Quran (Hafizs). It's also notable that while Bible literally means book, Quran literally means Recital, indicative of the fact that is in rhyming prose and meant to be recited orally from memory rather than read like a book.

this is not accurate. OP is referring to multiple _writings_ of the Quran, which is in fact something you'd be flogged for suggesting in most Muslim countries. The accepted dogma is that the words of the Quran have been protected from changes despite its oral nature, thus making the message more pure than that of the texts before it. also important to note is that translated versions of the Quran are not approved for worship - everyone must use the native Arabic. this does help ensure continuity in words if not meaning.

I am aware of the variations in ancient manuscripts of parts of the Quran. These variations are due to different scripts, different recitations, and sometimes scribe error. There is no reason why I would be flogged if some ancient manuscripts do not conform to the Quran. The accepted dogma is that the Quran has been preserved because of its oral nature, not despite it. No manuscript is as authentic as the oral word, and of course, no translation, whether oral or written, is the Quran itself.

It doesn't matter whether people are aware of uncertainties in their holy scriptures or not. It matters whether they have demographic issues (youth bulge) or (coming) economic problems. The spread of fundamentalist memes requires a susceptible population (or subgroup of it) that is ready to go into war mode (either civil or imperialist war).

Textual criticism is about two thousand years old. It isn't new and it doesn't have any new surprises that haven't been debunked. It certainly isn't "helping to reduce fundamentalist tendencies among Christians".

I would say - this is important. Important enough to get direct aid, either governmental (US, France), or even from those with deep pockets (Google, Apple, Paul Allen, Gates Foundaton). Why are they still depending on crowdsourced funding? Dr. Diakite is in Oregon, maybe they can get Intel backing?

In addition to securing the manuscripts, they deserve a home in a new climate-controlled institution to replace the one torched, once the situation stabilizes.

These documents ought to be digitized and uploaded/mirrored to the cloud ASAP, so that the information content can no longer be destroyed.

Sounds like something UNESCO should be involved with.

Why are they not scanning/digitizing the whole collection and putting it online as part of this fundraiser? If they want money to simply keep these in some library or other, that doesn't excite me as much as helping make them available to the whole world.

EDIT: Here is part of the reply I received about scanning the collection: "Preservation needs to happen first. The manuscripts will be destroyed by the humidity if they are not boxed within the next couple of months."

Send them a message, suggest a stretch goal for digitizing. They might not have thought that far ahead, more concerned with immediate problems/threats.

Thanks, rjd - I'm doing that now. In case anyone else wants to do the same, here are two email addresses I found:

contactt160k@gmail.com from the linked page and ross@mtolympia.com from http://t160k.org/volunteer/ , which was linked from the first page.

There is value in the pysical copy because you can date it with material analysis and compare it to other sources.

More often than not written words aren't as important as the physical material there are written on.

Just received a much longer reply and permission to share it:

Hi Miles,

Thanks for your message. Tony Dowler is our campaign manager and guru. I'd like to get him into this conversation if you don't mind, and I'm copying Brian Mayer as he is a really important member of our team on this effort and I see him in the thread your inquiry came out of.

A couple of things about the subject -

right now, we are concentrating on ensuring the physical integrity of the evacuated manuscripts. they are jam packed in metal footlockers in an environment that is much, much more humid than their home in Timbuktu. We have seen signs of trauma and also of humidity based risk (molds, mildew, fungus). If we don't get the manus into individual boxes with humidity traps before the rainy season get going next month, we are very afraid that we will lose them as "wet" based issues spread like wildfire on shelves in libraries. you can imagine what they could do in our footlockers.

SAVAMA DCI, the organization my friend and colleague, Abdel Kader Haidara, curator of the Mamma Haidara library, presides has digitized a couple thousand manuscripts over the years. Because of the physical vulnerability of the corpus (brittle linen rag paper, with highly unstable ferous inks for the most part), standard scanning protocols cannot be applied because the manuscripts literally burn when exposed to that kind of "hot light". Cold circuit photographic based digitization is extremely time and resource consuming as you can imagine. Character recognition in Arabic is another serious issue that needs to be resolved for the digital solution to be fully responsive in this corpus.

We think about the utlimate digital solution alot, Miles. Fantasize may be a better term for what we do - the sheer volume of funding, technical assistance to perfect it for this corpus, and the time needed to digitize all of the manuscripts is pretty overwhelming and as I said, at this point, we have about 30 days until it starts raining buckets in Mali and finding enough money to secure the physical integrity of the corpus is our number one priority for the time being.

Best, Steph

------- T160K Timbuktu Libraries in Exile Knowledge for Peace Initiative

731 Woodmont Beach Road South Des Moines, Washington 98198 USA Tel. +1 206 948 5882 and Sébénincoro, Près du Pont Woyowayanko Bamako, Republique du Mali Tel. +223 76 43 89 06

Email: contactt160k@gmail.com URL: http://t160k.org/

This is really important:

"We have about 30 days until it starts raining buckets in Mali and finding enough money to secure the physical integrity of the corpus is our number one priority for the time being"

This is a backstory on the project from the New Republic: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112898/timbuktu-librarian...

I'm suspicious of this fundraiser. How does it relate to the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project? [0]

The TMP has government funding from the South African government, University of Cape Town and Ford Foundation and was working to preserve and digitise the manuscripts before the war (and had built a new climate-controlled centre, the Ahmad Baba Institute, for the purpose in Timbuktu) and has been working to recover and restore those displaced by the fighting.

That the organisation which has been most responsible for preserving these manuscripts over the past decade isn't even mentioned once on the Indiegogo page is decidedly odd.

I've sent the Project team a heads-up about this and asked for some feedback, so I hope to have more information soon. In the meantime I recommend refraining from donating money to this until the background is cleared up. Hopefully it'll all turn out to be on the up and up.

[0]http://www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org/

Edit: It's also worth reading the TMP's official statement on what happened to the manuscripts after the rebel take-over: http://www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org/blog/entry/timbuktu_upd...

The article in The New Republic gives the story-

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112898/timbuktu-librarian...

This stuff makes my blood boil!!! They already destroyed tons on ancient buildings and relics in Timbuktu. When I saw them putting their axes in a 1000 year old temple... I WANTED TO SCREAAAAAAM.

The books survived though. Now we just need to keep them preserved until they can be returned.

Indeed. I am definitely donating some money.

Re-whatnow? Return them to the place where they were almost destroyed? This kind if item should be viewed as a part of humanity's common history and carefully protected, not sent back into a barely stable area where they would act as a prime target for the people who were duped into letting them go.

Same here. When I heard about the large Buddha sculptures in Bamyan Valley (Afghanistan) destroyed by the Taliban, my heart sank.

You should be aware that while it was bad, it was also used as propaganda. There's no accident that there's multiple clips about the statues on the offical NATO YouTube channel. The event is nothing compared to what happened during the Iraq war for instance.

http://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476/chp04-12iraqen...

That an event was used as propaganda does not make it less real.

It's shocking how someone is able to disrespect someone else's religion and still demand respect for his or her own.

I WANTED TO SCREAAAAAAM

That's useless, the right reaction would be to shoot them.

When I was a student at the University of Florida, I had the pleasure of working in the Special Collections department of the university library system. This is the department where collections significant to Florida history as well as really old things were kept. These items required a well controlled environment. I had the opportunity to discover many unique items, and I'm sure there are tons of things that some enterprising researcher may discover one day that no one currently knows about.

These Timbuktu items need to be preserved. In my opinion, destroying things of this nature, or letting them get destroyed through lack of care, is a very serious issue. I hope a larger body gets involved with this.

I suppose it's well past the point where we can complain about every radical Islamist group being called Al-Qaeda with no regard for, say, what they actually are. Because terrorism. Or something.

In all fairness, no ones going to donate to "Save books from Ansar Dine," are they?

But for the record, they are AQ affiliated. It's not a completely random connection.

You're pretending to be unbiased by starting your reply with "in all fairness". But you're the submitter. Please stop that.

Also you say "for the record" but neglect to cite a source. And you use the term "affiliated" which is somewhat vague.

1) "In all fairness" was clearly a turn of phrase intended to indicate that whilst it was fair point, there was a bigger issue at play. I see nothing wrong with that.

2) Since when is the submitter not allowed to comment?

3) Simply googling for "Ansar Dine" turns up plenty of links indicating links to Al-Qaeda e.g. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-20/world/39379359...

Terrorism, particularly when it's cell-based, amorphous, and decentralized, is hard to label. But the title here is a clear example of wanton laziness.

1) Linkages are very distinct from identity. The UK is linked with the EU, and it's also simultaneously linked with the USA. We don't refer to, though, "USA Prime Minister David Cameron." Journalists love to drop the Al-Qaeda linkage line, but it's driven mostly by a desire to drive home the (true) point that these are murderous barbarians who cloak their actions in Islamic rhetoric and who are highly inimical to American interests.

And how closely are they linked? The head of Ansar Dine is a cousin to a commander of Al-Qaeda. No shared military exercises; no consolidated HR department; nothing of the sort. So basically a familial tie and a shared embrace of violence and Islamism, at least that I know of. So not only is the equation of linkage and identity deeply problematic, but the linkages seem to be of a weak sort.

2) The Al-Qaeda that Ansar Dine is being linked to is a different entity than the Al-Qaeda that's well-known in the USA. Indeed, it had an entirely different name on 9/11: the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. It changed names about five years ago to cash in on Al-Qaeda's notoriety.

Why am I obnoxiously making a big deal about it, especially since I agree with the fundamental point that these are Bad People who share many attributes with Al-Qaeda? I like facts. Not just as a good in themselves, but because if there is a fact that's being ignored or misstated, people's understanding of reality is also going to be warped, leading to bad outcomes. If people think Al-Qaeda's nth in command is burning books in Timbuktu, it simultaneously makes people not understand how fundamentally the Al-Qaeda that planned 9/11 has been destroyed, and it implicitly suggests to them that to fix various Islamic fundamentalist problems we just need to do a more thorough job of disrupting Al-Qaeda's organizational structure, when that's not the issue at all.

Those are all good points.

Perhaps it is wrong to use the term Al-Qaeda in this case - it would probably have been better to say militant Islamic fundamentalists or some such than give any specific group name.

However, I was mainly trying address benatkins comment which I thought was an unfair criticism.

It's absolutely wrong to use the term Al-Qaeda on here. It isn't the author's blog, it's Hacker News, and they are quite clear in the guidelines that the submitter's commentary shouldn't be added:

> Don't abuse the text field in the submission form to add commentary to links.

By the way, do you have anything to do with the article you've linked? Because the "when Europe was experiencing its dark ages, these collections were already well established" is complete nonsense. "The Dark Ages" refers to a period in the European history that ends with the end of the 10th century and that is commonly referred to as Early Middle Agen in modern historiography. Wikipedia claims that Timbuktu became a permanent settlement in the 12th century. By then, Europe had at least a few fledgling universities. So no, no Dark Ages here.

Obviously, that doesn't diminish the value of the effort (and, I hope, the eventual schievement), but whenever I see claims like that I cringe. So many people have so little notion of history... (I blame in on the Renaissance people, they were the ones who tried to blacken (pun intended :-)) the previous centuries so that they could feel good about the world they remade for themselves. And then the term got stuck.)

I'm getting a bit off topic here, but the Dark Ages is a deeply interesting invention. It simultaneously allows for linear, teleological progression, from a dark pit of despair to the brilliant shining world of today; while also allowing for a Roman-ticized past that we can imagine ourselves as having fallen from.

But most people were probably better off in the "Dark Ages" than in Roman times. And perhaps the darkest period of European history isn't something buried a thousand or two thousand years ago but something that happened in living memory.

It's sort of nicely ambiguous. If you hate the period (some people do, the Renaissance guys obviously did), you can interpret it as "the time when people were in the dark (about stuff)". If you love it (I do, for a plethora of reasons, as do many contemporary historians, now that our reconstruction shows that the life of the people in that period was as rich and study-worthy as any other historical period), the obvious interpretation is "the the time we've been in the dark about for quite some time (i.e., due to scanty records)".

To me, it always seemed that in the provinces, quite little has changed after the end of the 5th century from the POV of your ordinary peasant. The more remote provinces have never been that much urbanized to begin with, and the non-Roman east of Europe didn't notice a thing anyway.

I am volunteering my time to build the site and manage the tech, payment processing, etc. Thanks for the note, I'll pass it on.

> But for the record, they are AQ affiliated.

Citation needed.

Do they pay an annual subscription? Is their leader pals with The leaders of Al Qaeda? What is the process of becoming an Al Qaeda affiliate? Do they need to train in the same camps?

I just realized that I am willing to part with a considerable wealth if war is waged on neutralizing groups which destroy knowledge or monuments; ancient or otherwise.

I'm for open-sourcing all ancient books and give humanity access to it. NO COPYRIGHT can be held on ancient books, the authors have died hundreds of years ago. The "holy" church and their banksters should open access for scanners to all their book too.

"Saving ancient books and manuscripts from Al-Qaeda"? What the heck?? I don't know how Al-Qaeda ticks, but I remember having read that soldier troops from the us and other countries ripped and/or bombed the museums and archives, during the many wars.

So...reading through the OP and the New Republic link it refers to, there is almost no mention of Al-Qaeda at all. This is the sole mention I could find (besides in the headline of the New Republic story):

> This vision of a philosophical, scientific Islam means little to the Al Qaeda–linked Islamist group Ansar Dine, which for most of last year ruled Timbuktu through terror, cutting off the hands of thieves, flogging women judged to be dressed immodestly, and destroying centuries-old tombs of local saints. In the summer, the militants commandeered Ahmed Baba, using it as a headquarters and barracks. Then, in January, French forces closed in on Timbuktu. As the Islamists fled, they trashed the library, burning as many of the manuscripts as they could find. The mayor of Timbuktu, Hallé Ousmani Cissé, told The Guardian that all of Ahmed Baba’s texts had been lost. “It’s true,” he said. “They have burned the manuscripts.”

There's quite a difference between "Al-Qaeda" and "Al-Qaeda-linked"...in that a linked-to group may think of Al-Qaeda as the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" but most certainly have different philosophical aims. Don't get me wrong: destroying a library is bad no matter who is doing it. But if there's anything we've learned in the last decade of international politics, it's that these kinds of distinctions matter, and have, on occasion, been exploited for propaganda purposes.

Edit: oh, and after doing a cursory Wikipedia lookup, it appears there may be no association at all:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_Dine

Ansar Dine has its main base among the Ifora tribe from the southern part of the Tuaregs' homeland.[8] It has been linked with Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) because its leader Iyad Ag Ghaly is the cousin of AQIM commander Hamada Ag Hama.[4] In April 2012, Salma Belaala, a professor at Warwick University who does research on jihadism in North Africa said that this association was false, claiming that Ansar Dine was opposed to Al Qaeda.[9] Ag Ghaly was also previously associated with the 1990 Tuareg rebellion.[4] The group's members are reported to be from Mali, Algeria, and Nigeria.[10] Omar Ould Hamaha, who served as Ansar Dine's spokesman after April 2012, became the military leader of the AQIM-affiliated Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA) in August 2012.[11]

Who do you think legally owns the manuscripts?

The whole of humanity?

I'd love if that were the case although I dunno if I'd trust them to safeguard these, to be honest.

The Swerve is an excellent read if you are interested in learning more about the history of losing texts to the ravages of time and religion.

There is no such thing as Al-Qaeda.

As far as I can tell, there are two diametrically opposed groups of people who love to repeat this.

1) People who say that Al-Qaeda is a bogeyman that is used to justify any expense in the war on terror.

2) People who say that Al-Qaeda is a held up as a few bad apples when the problem is that all followers of Islam are terrorists.

I think they're both wrong. I'm curious: What exactly do you call the organization that bin Laden ran? I'd maybe buy arguments that this organization is not as pervasive or cohesive as they have been made out to be, but not that they never existed at all.

There was a short BBC documentary, and an intervview with a high rank officer who was telling that wherever they go there were no Al-Qaeda. Only few locals that were armed, no organization called Al-Qaeda. Maybe it was this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mztfFdpd1Rk

Also http://gibiru.com/index.php/component/content/article/78-new... "There Is No 'Al Qaeda' - Ex UK Foreign Secretary"

Also CIA Whistle Blower Susan Lindauer says that everyone knew that there is going to be false flag on before 9/11 but not exatly how. And she says that there were huge military transportain into near Afganistan befor 9/11, it was already been planned, she say.

As for Al-Qaeda, probably Bin Laden called himsef mujahdeen or somthing like that, but they are not international so big organization. I don't exacly remember but they were trying to establish Islamic republic or something like that in Afganistan. And I have no doupt that he was killed at the beggining of the war.

The name "Al-Qaeda" is nothing but propaganda. When someone is reffering to some organization in Somaila he should not call it Al-Qaeda, I think it is proper to call them "Islamit extremist form Somalia lead by XY".

So type 1) then.

Its become an umbrella term like mafia for organised crime. I'm surprised of a decade of its use in this fashion you still can't understand what people are referring to.

What a horrible propaganda peace.

Nice freudian slip.

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