Saving Books - Blog Posts

Timbuktu was a center of the manuscript trade, with traders bringing Islamic texts from all over the Muslim world. Despite occupations and invasions of all kinds since then, scholars managed to preserve and even restore hundreds of thousands of manuscripts dating from the 13th century.

But that changed when militant Islamists backed by al-Qaida arrived in 2012.

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the story of librarian Abdel Kader Haidara, who organized and oversaw a secret plot to smuggle hundreds of thousands of medieval manuscripts out of Timbuktu before they could be destroyed by Islamist rebels.  

Hear author Joshua Hammer tell the story here.

– Petra