(WOW) Timbuktu's Desert Scrolls: Re-writing the History of Africa

[Playinghardball]

You may have witnessed a moment, an event or a discovery that would change the future of a community. This event or discovery would have to be something exceptional and dramatic to write a new chapter in the books of history.

But imagine witnessing a moment or discovery that would re-write the history of an entire nation! That has got to be something spectacular to erase and replace the pages of history.

This is precisely what has happened in Timbuktu, Mali in the last five years. Over a million manuscripts have been re-discovered and about 20 million more in West Africa overall. These manuscripts date back to 12th to 16th century period.

More at: http://www.soundvision.com/info/history/black/timbuktu.asp

Found on the Moving The Sun To Shine In Dark Places Facebook page

[DavidDvorkin]

1. Didn't we already know that Islam had spread that far by then

Bringing its language and culture with it?

There doesn't seem to be anything new here.

[csziggy]

4. Euro-centric historians discounted the contributions of Islam

And did not admit that there was more than an oral tradition in West Africa. From the OP link:

"Prior to the re-discovery of manuscripts, people thought Africa had no literacy and that it was a simple oral tradition,” says Okolo Rashid, Executive Director of International Museum of Muslim Cultures (IMMC) in Jackson, Mississippi.

"As a team of 25 scholars and historians study this newly uncovered global legacy of literacy in Africa, they believe it's enough evidence to re-write the history of Africa,” Rashid continued.

[Posteritatis]

6. I'd call discovering the equivalent of a complete university archives "something new."

Of course people knew that Islam had spread that far, bringing its language and culture with it. Coming into tens of millions of words' worth of documents from that period is a huge, huge thing even with people knowing the broader history of the place.

It's as big a deal as finding a similarly huge pile of Roman documents in Europe would have been.

[DavidDvorkin]

9. It casts important new light on something already known

Historically valuable details will certainly be learned.

That's different from what was claimed in the OP.

[Bluenorthwest]

16. I hate to resort to Wiki, but the story is different and more interesting than the OP version

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

[RainDog]

17. Christians began anti-everyone else pogroms in 500 ad

Greek philosophers fled Italy, Greece and Turkey, etc. for Persia and other places.

After 700 ad, Muslims had moved through Africa to Spain. The reason for this movement was the dispute between various factions within Islam. Muslims controlled the regions of Spain closest to Africa for more than 700 years and brought libraries, translators, paper (instead of animal skin vellum for books), and the knowledge of mathematics that was part of their worship - b/c they had to pray at designated hours.

The translated books were brought, by traders, to Italy and other parts of southern Europe. This is the basis for the Renaissance in Europe - overturning the power of the church to control who could read what.

African and Middle Eastern Muslims taught Europeans to bathe, and taught them mathematics that had been suppressed along with Greek philosophical concepts after Constantine (who tried to incorporate Christians into the empire, along with traditional Roman gods.) The scientific revolution in Europe owes its existence to Islam bringing suppressed knowledge to southern Europe.

But long before any of that - Africa had the most advanced civilizations on earth in Ethiopia, Yemen, the Sudan and Egypt. Before there was christianity or islam, African cities were the pinnacle of civilization. This was around 2500 bce.

The rise of cities began along the Nile Valley as the climate changed and people moved from areas that used to be habitable for farming, etc. into the one area to the east that still got enough rainfall for crops - that was the area around the Nile - present-day Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.

West Africa was considered the richest kingdom in the world back in 900 ad-ish. - because of the gold there.

These books are from long after these eras but they establish the existence of cultures with centers of learning - because these books were most likely from a royal library, as were most books/libraries until well into the 19th c.

[AnnieBW]

22. Actually, it was at least 100 years earlier.

Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered by an irate Christian mob in the early 400's. There was a lot of tension between various Christian groups (Arian, Nicene, etc.) by then, plus the extensive Jewish community and the Pagans, both Neo-Platonists, Roman, and traditional Egyptian. They all studied at the Library of Alexandria, until some crazy monk and his followers came out of the desert and burned it all down.

[RainDog]

25. Yeah, I was going for a conservative time frame

From what I've read, it seems like 300 ad was when Christianity became a form of oppression - when the Bishops gained power all across the empire - and the majority of them became nothing more than political players who exerted power and used vast sums to enrich themselves. Both eastern and western versions.

From 300 until 500 there were attacks on Roman religious sites, etc. off and on, but by around 500 ad the Christians had either run off, killed or persecuted people of other beliefs to the point that others didn't think it was safe if they didn't follow the state religion, or at least pretend to.

So 500 is sort of arbitrary, but it's a useful number for me, at least, to think about a past so far in the past - and it's sort of the marker for the end of antiquity and the beginning of the early medieval era - and the consolidation of power within feudal holdings of both church and various small duchies, etc, that, about 500 years later, launched the crusades. And right about this same time, 300 years after translations of texts had been circulating, while the crusades were going on, some were trying to understand Aristotle within a Christian theocratic framework.

And 500 years after that, the printing press was revolutionizing all of western Europe.

[madrchsod]

2. Timbuktu was the most important city in africa during those times

there was a big concern these treasures would be destroyed during on on going war. thankfully the city was spared much of the fighting.

[Scuba]

3. Thanks for bringing this to light. It's new to me.

[alfredo]

5. That's great.

[xchrom]

7. Du rec. Nt

[Brother Buzz]

8. These treasures have been around for five years and I'm only hearing of it now?

That is astounding.

[Mojorabbit]

24. That was my first thought also.nt

[HappyMe]

10. That's cool.

[HiPointDem]

11. kr

[Blue_Tires]

12. kick

[malaise]

13. Timbuktu was a major center of learning in Africa

Last edited Mon Apr 1, 2013, 08:02 PM - Edit history (1)

Fuck European propaganda. How else could they be superior?

The revisionism in world history is breath-taking. My Garveyite grandfather told us that they smashed the noses of the Pharaohs because they did not look European.

[Number23]

20. "The revisionism in world history is breath-raking."

Always has been, always will be breathtaking. 300 years from now, people will weep at the ignorance of Western people who in their desire to assert their own superiority in every aspect, have ignored or minimized so many of the contributions of people from other cultures.

My Garveyite grandfather told us that they smashed the noses of the Pharaohs because they did not look European.

I heard that same thing growing up. Very skeptical about its veracity it but anything is possible.

[malaise]

21. LOL

Thanks

[UnrepentantLiberal]

14. Scenes from the race for influence over Africa's ancient written culture

By Charlotte Wiedemann
Sign and Sight
December 4, 2010

The evening light throws pink feathers across the sky. A herd of goats sends dust spiralling into the air and as it settles, a sand-coloured twilight descends on the sand-coloured city. In front of the mud construction of the Sankore mosque, men lie chatting in the sand. It absorbs their voices. Timbuktu sinks murmuring into an early night.

Somewhat incongruously, we arrive by plane. Timbuktu, in the east of Mali, on the southernmost edge of the Sahara, the eternal European metaphor for the back of beyond, for the unreachable. Not far from here, the paths that head for another form of unreachable begin, the paths of migration to Europe, through the deadly reaches of the desert. It all depends on which part of the world you chose to construct your myths from: this is Timbuktu's story.

One thing it certainly is not is the end of the world. For centuries, Timbuktu was a centre of the southern hemisphere, a stronghold of trade, an Islamic university city. Where the Niger Delta met the desert, the paths of ages crossed: from the North came the caravans, over the river came gold from West Africa. And after the merchants came scholars; Timbuktu was a cosmopolitan city. Our men murmuring into the evening are lying in the exact spot where West Africa's Quartier Latin lay in the 15th century, or to be more precise, a Quartier Arabe with 25,000 students. Almost the population of Timbuktu today.

Deceptive, this sand-coloured silence, the sense of being lost to the world. With a stoic pride the inhabitants of Timbuktu register the recent flurry of interest in something that has always been theirs: the oldest library south of the Sahara. Its Arab manuscripts dating back to the 13th century have brought state presidents, scholars, representatives of major foundations traipsing awkwardly through Timbuktu's sand to see them. Over 100,000 manuscripts on Islamic law, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, on termite-eaten parchment, on gazelle hide even.

More: http://www.signandsight.com/features/2012.html

[RainDog]

15. k&r n/t

[RainDog]

18. but, fwiw - this picture is of books, not scrolls

Other than the use of scrolls for religious reasons (i.e. The Torah) the use of scrolls ended long before the 12th c. because better technology existed to produce pages that could be turned (codex) rather than unrolled.

Though in places like Tibet, books are leaves kept in boxes and not bound - every item in those boxes in that picture is of a book.

[Number23]

19. Wow! Amazing, but not at all surprising

Moreover, the manuscripts reveal that many Africans brought to America were very established and educated individuals. Some of them were judges, teachers, and merchants prior to the transatlantic slave trade. They were not brought over to be ‘civilized'.

"In fact Muslim Africans were the first cultural group to bring a revealed religion to America,” said Rashid.

These manuscripts may also serve as a "missing link” between African-Americans and Islam. "It will allow African-Americans to look at Islam and Muslim not as strangers anymore. This is the link that has been missing from our Black and African studies in universities all this time,” added Rashid.

K&R

[AnnieBW]

23. I understand that the local Imams

are smuggling these books out of Timbuktu in order to save them from the crazy Islamic militants that want to destroy them because they're not THEIR version of Islam.

[eShirl]

26. from January: "Priceless Timbuktu Manuscripts Escape Burning"

http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/timbuktu-manuscripts-may-have-escaped-burning-130130.htm

snip

Just as Afghanistans saved the Bactrian treasure from the Taliban destruction by hiding the most valuable items in a vault deep beneath Kabul’s presidential palace, Malian preservationists moved thousands of manuscripts out of the Ahmed Baba Institute to safe and hidden locations.

“There were a few items in the Ahmed Baba library, but the rest were kept away,” Shamil Jeppie, director of the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project at the University of Cape Town, told TIME.

Begun shortly after the sharia-observing militants seized control of Timbuktu, the large rescue operation involved hiding the manuscripts everywhere in the city and its surroundings.

“The people here have long memories. They are used to hiding their manuscripts. They go into the desert and bury them until it is safe,” Sidi Ahmed, a reporter who fled to Bamako during Timbuktu occupation, told National Geographic News.

snip