Whether there were organized libraries for scholars and the public in general we do not know. But what is certain is that individual scholarly families housed their own collections derived from the scholars in their own family or lineage.

The existing manuscripts date from the earliest periods of Timbuktu’s intellectual flowering through to the twentieth century. They reflect the whole range of areas of writing common among the scholars of the town and with copies of materials from as far a field as Nigeria. In the same way that Latin was the language of scholarship in Europe, Arabic served that role in much of western Africa, the northern half of the continent and along the Eastern African coast, and therefore the manuscripts are mostly in the Arabic language. But there are also works in the Songhay, Fulfulde, Tamasheq and Hausa languages, all written in the Arabic script, in a range of calligraphy styles, yet all with a distinctly northwest African design.

 

Given that so many manuscripts are still being found in Timbuktu - and in the surrounding towns, it would seem appropriate to talk of Timbuktu itself as a vast archive. Yet clearly there was a need for a formalised repository to take care of the vast collections dispersed so precariously across the Sahara. It was appropriate that the name of the town’s most famous scholar, Ahmed BABA, was invoked and given to the archive established in 1973 that would house all the manuscripts located in the town and the broader region.

 

From 1977 the Ahmad Baba Institute embarked on a programme to popularize the work of the centre and educate families throughout the region about the importance of preserving their cultural and intellectual patrimony perhaps long-forgotten or hidden among their family possessions. As a result of these activities, many collections have been given to the centre as family endowments. The centre also began to purchase more valuable and rare manuscripts and collections. The strategy of actively seeking and buying manuscripts proved to be very effective and to date the library has a collection of around 20 000 manuscripts housed in its inadequate building.  

 

At the same time, the increased recognition and emphasis on the ancient heritage of Mali by the Government of Mali and others resulted in a number of families with large manuscript collections establishing their own archives dedicated to preserving their own collections. There is now an association of private libraries with 24 participant families. Three families, the Mamma Haidara, Ka’ti, and Wangari families already have special buildings housing their own collections managed by members of their respective families. The Mamma Haidara library has published a catalogue enumerating its 5000 items.

 

There is no way of knowing exactly how many manuscripts or individual collections exist in Timbuktu, the surrounding region and in other towns such as Gao and Jenne. Estimates range from tens of thousands to a quarter million manuscripts. What is certain is that we are now discovering more and more materials as there is more African and international focus on the value of the manuscripts.  Working to conserve and research the extraordinary richness and vast number of the Timbuktu manuscripts is a beginning, and in itself a lifetime’s work.

Beside original works of scholars, the total corpus of manuscripts still in existence was due to a large extent to a thriving industry involving the copying of original texts. Scholarship often entailed reading a text with the master of a certain body of texts and then getting permission from the master to teach it. In the process, copies of original works would be reproduced by specialized scribes - a skill which still exists in Timbuktu today - for students or scholars who needed them.