BuaNews (Tshwane)
8 August 2008
If President Thabo Mbeki had not intervened to save many thousands of rare but endangered Timbuktu manuscripts, this huge body of works would have "turned to dust", writes Shaun Benton.
As a result of a stopover in the area by President Mbeki while visiting Mali in 2001, the Presidency has been lending its support towards the restoration and protection of what the Malian Minister for Higher Education Scientific Research, Amadou Toure called "the great written heritage of Timbuktu".
The Presidency has been involved in the project for the past seven years.
An exhibition of the famous Timbuktu collection of ancient documents was held on Thursday night at the Castle of Good Hope. The manuscripts cover an esoteric range of subjects ranging from chemistry to jurisprudential disputes. Many of them are leather-bound.
Minister of Arts and Culture, Professor Pallo Jordan said that these important manuscripts were brought to the attention of the rest of Africa and the world as a result of President Mbeki's intervention in their preservation.
If President Mbeki had not intervened to halt and reverse the physical decay brought on the documents by the inflictions of time, they would have turned to dust, said Dr Jordan.
The exhibition, titled "Timbuktu: Script and Scholarship", marks the first time these rare and delicate manuscripts have left the arid and windy sands of Mali, a country that borders the giant Sahara desert.
Most of the rare and ancient manuscripts are part of a collection of about 30 000 housed at the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies in Timbuktu, and it is from there that the current exhibited items are drawn.
Delivering his address, Mr Mbeki pointed out that it is the first time that an exhibition of the Timbuktu manuscripts has been hosted outside of Mali.
He said South Africa had taken a lead in the conservation of - and research into - the ancient manuscripts, many of which date back over 500 years.
The new building that will house and preserve the Timbuktu manuscripts in a state-of-the-art archive in Mali is nearing completion. It is being built as a result of South African assistance.
The project is one of the first and most important of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) cultural projects, after years of effort and management in the often difficult conditions in the desert country under the tutelage of Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad.
Professor Toure, Mali's higher education minister said the "vast and functional" building would provide the correct conditions for preserving the ancient documents. It has the requisite temperature and humidity controls that are standard for any such library of antiques.
The genesis of the project, Professor Toure said, was rooted in President Mbeki's memorable visit to the mysterious city in 2001.
He described the visit as a natural a way of cementing their closer ties after the early days of South Africa's liberation
The project was so important not only for Mali itself but the continent and interested institutions and individuals throughout the world, " said Professor Toure.
The documents chosen for the current exhibition date back from around the 16th century and cover a range of disciplines, said Professor Toure, including medicine, philosophy, mathematics, astrology and Islamic studies.
Professor Toure located the exhibition itself within the context of Mali's role in the decolonisation of Africa.
He said many of the more than 30 000 manuscripts with wide-ranging content were part of a growing collection that allows for the development, promotion and spread of African cultural values in a process both "noble and fundamental".
Produced by the scholars, jurists, scientists and others of the 15th and 16th centuries, the manuscripts are a result of literary efforts rooted in disciplines ranging from medicine, philosophy, literature, mathematics, biology, astrology, history, Islamic studies and philology among others.
As such these are important works provide a historical memory of Africa's peoples, he said.
The professor expressed gratitude for the generosity that will allow for a protected building that will provide a new headquarters for the Ahmed Baba Centre with the "appropriate instruments to ensure optimal conditions for the collection, safekeeping, dissemination and scientific exploitation of the ancient manuscripts".
Many of the writers of the manuscripts were located in Timbuktu and its surrounds and they were not only academics and philosophers but also professional copiers of texts, operating without printing presses.
It is understood that the knowledge collected there when it was a key trading centre came from far and wide.
While written mostly in the Arabic script, not all the documents were transcribed from the Arabic language but other indigenous languages of the region.
President Mbeki said that "various kinds of writing materials and subjects are covered, revealing a multifaceted past of sophisticated reading and writing in West Africa, and reflecting a tradition of prodigious intellectual production."
The items on exhibition in Cape Town deal with numerous aspects of Islamic scholarship.
Western Cape Premier Lynne Brown said there is widespread interest and even involvement in the project by Capetonians, especially given their diverse make-up and the strong tradition of Islamic worship.
Expanded on the history and origins of the documents and the important role of Islam in their production, Mr Jordan said: "Islam's abiding solid influence owed more to its cultural achievements than to the sword".
The manuscripts were produced in the context of an atmosphere of "thriving urban-centred communities peopled by merchants, by guilds of artisans and craftsmen, by scholars, by jurists, by poets, by writers".
The reach of Islam into the region extolled the virtue of industry while imposing a number of disciplines on its followers, enjoining them also to charity, Dr Jordan said.
As avid traders, the Muslims of the time dominated the land routes across Africa and Asia, touching the Mediterranean which became "a Muslim lake", sailed by traders carrying not only physical goods but manuscripts.
South African academics led by Shamil Jeppie of the University of Cape Town are also studying and deciphering the contents of the documents, produced mostly in the Arabic script, as they build a 21st-century, digital archive to complement the existing collection of rare manuscripts.
Dr Eltie Links, the chairperson of the board of South Africa's Iziko museums - which helped to organise the exhibition with Mali's Ministry of Higher Education - called the project the "real implementation" of the vision of someone who could see "far-off"; and as a result, the world, its readers, its thinkers are now endowed with a hitherto largely unexplored intellectual legacy.
Dr Links thanked the Malian authorities for allowing the "precious manuscripts" to come to South Africa, in an exhibition that will travel across the country, allowing South Africans to continue what President Mbeki called "this trans-African engagement and conversation".
The exhibition is to travel to the Eastern Cape next, then to Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Durban, and to Johannesburg at the end of November.
Guests attending the function included Mali's ambassador to South Africa, the new Premier of the Western Cape, Lynne Brown, Western Cape MECs including Cameron Dugmore, the head of the Ahmed Baba Centre, deputy ministers including Nthombazana Botha of the Department of Arts and Culture and former education minister and renowned professor of law Kader Asmal.
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