The Manuscripts and Intellectual Legacy of Timbuktu

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- Okay, greetings? All right, let me get straight into it. The Manuscripts and Intellectual Legacy of Timbuktu. Okay, my early research. There's a very famous African-American professor called Chancellor James Williams, and he wrote a book called "The Destruction of Black Civilization. And in that book, this is what he says on page 207. "In the muslim destruction of the Songhai Empire, the main centers of learning with all of their precious libraries and original manuscripts were destroyed first." Now this idea that there's no intellectual heritage in Timbuktu left, was shared by another important scholar, Professor Cheikh Anta Diop. He was a scholar from Senegal and he wrote the legendary book, "Precolonial Black Africa" where he says, "The loss of the judicial and administrative archives, assistants of Cadis kept minutes of the sessions. But tons of documents have disappeared." Influenced by Professor, Chancellor Williams and Professor Cheikh Diop, most Black scholars believe that West Africa's intellectual heritage was mostly destroyed after 1591. And this is still the mainstream view among Black scholars. But new evidence has forced a paradigm shift. Professor Henry Louis Gates African-American scholar, made a TV documentary called "Into Africa" where he mentions the Timbuktu manuscripts.

Jeremy Isaacs are put together the TV series "Millennium, One Thousand Years of History" and the period 1300 to 1400. He again mentions the Timbuktu manuscripts. John Snow and Ekow Eshun did a TV documentary called "Living on the Line." Again, he mentions the Timbuktu manuscripts. Aminatta Forma, did a TV documentary called "The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu," also "National Geographic" got in on the act, and "News at Ten" got in on the act. So what has survived? Black families in Timbuktu still own around 60 private libraries today. And these family collections have survived political turbulence, climatic fluctuations and despite floods, fire, insects, pillaging and plunder, wait for it, 1 million manuscripts may have survived, and let me quote a source. "Dispersed throughout the region from the shores of the mediterranean to the Northern fringes of the forest regions of Guinea and Ghana." For example, this photograph is of Moctar Sidi al-Wangari, and he is the director of a 16th century Timbuktu library owned by his distant ancestor, Professor Muhammad Baghayogho al-Wangari.

So to give some details, the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu was established in 1970, and it was named after Professor Ahmed Baba who was once a student of Professor Muhammad Baghayogho al-Wangari. And this modern institute has nearly 30,000 manuscripts that are being studied, that are being cataloged, that are being conserved. However, during the colonial period which is where France conquered West Africa, many manuscripts were seized and burned. And following natural disasters like droughts, many people buried their manuscripts and fled. Many families still refuse access to researchers for fear that the pillaging of the colonial period when France conquered West Africa will be repeated. So the big question is, is, why hasn't all this been recognized before? Well in 1894, France conquered Timbuktu. And during the colonial period, owners of manuscripts thought it prudent to hide them away or bury them, because they feared perhaps correctly, that the French colonial power would seize those manuscripts.

And it is only within the last 30 years that the intellectual life of this West Africa region has revisited the sun. Moreover, during the french colonial period, French was imposed as the main language and that meant that many manuscript owners lost the ability to read and interpret the manuscripts in their own languages because French had been imposed. All right, so what am I going to talk about in this session? I'm going to talk about an overview of West African history, Timbuktu in the age of the Mali Empire. Timbuktu in the age of the Songhai Empire, university life, the literature itself, and the 2008 South African-Mali Project. Okay, six themes in the session. Okay, let's go. All right, the West Africa history. Let me give you a brief overview and this is my first theme. There was a West African Professor called Abdurrahman Al Sadi and he wrote a book called "Tarikh Al Sudan" Tarikh roughly speaking means history or time, and then Al Sudan it literally means Black, history of the land of the blacks.

And this was written in 1656 and he wrote, "I saw the ruin and collapse of the science of history. I observed that its gold and small change were both disappearing." And he was the pioneering scholar to divide the history of the West African desert belt into the rise and fall of three empires, Ancient Ghana, mediaeval Mali and the Songhai Empire. So where were these empires? This is a map drawn by the very great professor, W. E. B. Du Bois, and you can see that ancient Ghana is in a different place to where Ghana is today, and then it has its rise and then it fell. And then there was a second empire in the region that he calls (indistinct), everybody else calls Mali, and then you've got the third empire in the same region just bigger called the Songhai Empire. Now Songhai how we say in English, some people think that should be pronounced (indistinct), but we'll just keep it pronounced, we'll keep the pronunciation simple. Okay, Ancient Ghana. This was the first of the West African desert empires and add its height in the 10th and 11th centuries AD.

The empire ruled territories that we were today called Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania and Mali. The capital city was called Kumbi Saleh and there were two waterways running through the empire. One was called the Senegal River, and the other one was called the (indistinct) River. Essentially, half of West Africa was under one imperial structure. We have an account written by Mediaeval Philosopher Ibn Khaldun, the Philosophy of History where he says, "At the time of the conquest of Northern Africa." And I've put in brackets. "By the Arabs between 639 and 708 AD some merchants penetrated into the Western part of the land of the Blacks and found among them no king more powerful than the king of Ghana. His states extended westwards to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Kumbi Saleh, the capital of this strong populist nation, was made up of two towns and formed one of the greatest and best populated cities in the world," says Ibn Khaldun.

Now, the Arab conquest of North Africa and their spreading of Islam into West Africa, meant that you now have a change in African culture, because Islam now becomes a rival for traditionalism or ancestralism in Africa. We also get North Africa being conquered. The original North Africans used to be Black Africans. But by the time we've got the Arab conquest that now changes and North Africa faces what we call the Great Migrations. So if you go to places like Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and you're wondering, but this is supposed to be Africa, where are the Africans at? Well essentially, the first refugee crisis. There was a North African queen who stood up to the Arab invaders called Dahia al-Kahina.

She was captured and killed, but we also get Islamic sources of African history written by Arabs. And as Islam starts to spread, people convert sources also written by Africans. And one of those sources is Ibn Haukal, Surat al-Ard, 951 AD. Now, the topic area that I'm going to quote is the relationships between the city-state of Audoghast which is in West Africa and the other kings, let's read it. "The king of Audoghast maintains relations with the king of Ghana. The ruler of Ghana is the richest king on the face of the earth by reason of the wealth and treasure of nuggets dug up in the past by his predecessors and by himself. He exchanged his presence with the ruler of Kugha whose wealth and prosperity is nothing like that enjoyed by the ruler of Ghana." So we have a clear statement. The popularly held belief that the ruler of Ghana was by this time period the 10th century the richest individual on this planet.

And the same, Ibn Haukal visited the region and witnessed a merchant writing another merchant a check. Okay, now what else do we know? During this time period, we get the birth of Timbuktu. And it was started by desert nomads. And these nomads are today some people call them Sanhaja Berbers, another name for them is Tuaregs, and they're the people that set up Timbuktu during the Ancient Ghana period and they established it somewhere around the year 1100 AD. Typically, they camp near the river in the dry season and took their animals to graze in the inland territories during the rainy season.

While the nomads were away, they entrusted their belongings with their slaves one of whom was called Buktu, this is the typical story. And the campsite was thus called Tim, which means the well of Buktu, Timbuktu. What began as a semi-permanent nomadic settlement evolved into a town and then later a city of permanent settlement. And from 1100 to 1300, the city developed into a thriving commercial center. Now how did it develop into a thriving commercial center? Because of trade. Timbuktu became a center of commercial exchange between Saharan Africa, Tropical Africa, and Mediterranean Africa. Mediterranean Africa is now Arab North Africa. Now acting as a magnet, Timbuktu attracted men of learning and men of commerce. It benefited from the gold trade coming from the southern reaches of West Africa. It benefited from the salt trade coming from the Sahara Desert. And approximately, two-thirds of the world's gold came from West Africa by the time we get to the 14th century, the 1300s. Now the products themselves, textiles, tea and tobacco were imported into this region. Based on the number of poems about tea are found amongst the manuscripts of Timbuktu.

This was clearly an extremely cherished item. Tobacco had even been approved of, there's a treaty by Timbuktu professor Ahmed Baba called, check out the title, "On the Lawfulness of Tobacco Usage" and Baba claimed that it was neither a narcotic nor an intoxicant. However, the most profitable trade item in Timbuktu was books, "The Tarikh al Fettash" which is another of the mediaeval chronicles says that, the king bought a great dictionary for the equivalent price of two horses. And buying books and displaying books was a source of wealth and the source of prestige. Okay, Timbuktu in the Age of the Mali Empire. This is the same empire that Professor W.E.B Du Bois calls (indistinct). Okay, let's get into this.

The Mali Empire begins with a different ethnic group in West Africa called the Mandinkas. And the first great Mandinka ruler was Sundiata Keita, and he conquered Ancient Ghana in 1240. And two generations later Mansa Musa Keita built the Malian Empire by conquering a whole swathe of West Africa and ruling it between 1312 and 1337. Islam was now definitely the religion of the West African cities, Arabic became the language of scholarship, and the trade was based on gold just as it was during the Ancient Ghana period, salt just as it was during the Ancient Ghana period.

And now, a new product that was exploited during the Mali period copper, coming from a city called Takedda. Now the role of Arabic. Arabic could be described as the Latin of Africa, and it became useful when communicating between different ethnicities, Songhai, Fulani, Tuareg, Bambara, Mossi, Hausa. And just as Latin became an important language in mediaeval Europe associated with Christianity, Arabic became an important language in Africa associated with Islam. And just as Europeans adopted the Latin script to write their own languages, Africans use the arabic script to write theirs. Now the height of the Mali Empire, Mali is ruling a huge swathe of West Africa.

On a modern map, this would be senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Mali and Mauritania. The important cities, there's Niani in the far South which is the capital city, and the other important cities are Djenné and Timbuktu. Now the wealth of Mali, did I mention that Jeremy Isaacs did a TV series called "Millennium, One Thousand Years of History?" I mentioned that? Okay, you get the dramatic music at the beginning and then you get the voiceover. And the voiceover says, "In the 14th century, the century of the scythe, natural disasters threaten civilizations with extinction. The Black Death kills more people in Europe, Asia, and North Africa than any catastrophe has before.

Civilizations which avoid the plague thrive. In West Africa, the Empire of Mali becomes the richest in the world." And that was how that the 14th century documentary was introduced on the BCC, and then the same program was sold to CNN. So the big question is, is well, what did they spend the money on? The Sankore University mosque was built around the year 1300. Some people say earlier, there are french sources claiming that it was built in the middle of the 11th century. But the traditional mythology says that it was founded by a woman and she belonged to an ethnic group called the Aghlal and they were part of the Tuareg ethnicity. The Sankore quarter in Northeast Timbuktu became the dwelling place of the scholars and teachers and it was here that the first libraries were created. Scholars and kings acquired books during their travels from merchants coming from the North with books for sale.

Mansa Musa I, also known as Mansa Musa Keita, bought works on Maliki law and ordered the construction of the Great Mosque of Timbuktu. And that building is still around. This is a style of architecture in West Africa called Western Sudanic. So when Europe was doing its thing Gothic, this is what we were doing. Now there were challenges however to Malian hegemony. There was an ethnicity known as the Mossi and in 1343 they attacked Timbuktu. And the "Tarikh Al Sudan" says, "The Mossi sultan entered Timbuktu and sacked and burned it, killing many persons and looting it before returning to his land." Timbuktu however recovered and the Malians continued to rule it for 100 years. However, 1433 we read, "The Tuaregs began to raid and cause havoc on all sides. The Malians bewildered by their many depredations refused to take a stand against them." And so Mali lost control of Timbuktu in 1433. Okay, so what happened next? We then move to the third of the great West African desert empires called the Songhai Empire. Some people announced that as Shonghai, and this is now my third theme.

The Songhai Empire was once tributary to Mali, but became independent as Mali declined. The first great Songhai ruler was Sunni Ali Ber and the name Ber means the champion. So, his dynastic title is Sunni, his personal name was Ali and he ruled between 1464 and 1492. He conquered most of the Songhai Empire and seized Timbuktu in 1469. The records say. (clears throat) "He perpetuated terrible wickedness in the city, putting it to flames, sacking it, and killing large numbers of people." The gold traders feared Sunni Ali would take control over their goods and transactions. So many started trading via the Hausa city state of Kano which on a modern map is Northern Nigeria. The scholars of Timbuktu experienced a major setback. Sunni Ali drove the Sanhaja, the Tuaregs, out of Timbuktu and undertook a purge of the scholars. Many fled to Walata. So when you read the Timbuktu chronicles, they hate Sunni Ali with a ferocious hatred. Anyway, subsequent rulers. The next ruling dynasty was known as the Askiya Dynasty, and they offered a much more conciliatory approach towards the scholars.

They offered them cash and in kind, especially during Ramadan, including slaves, grants of land and privileges and exemptions from taxation. Now that raises the question, why slaves? Now when people hear the word slavery, everyone assumes that that automatically means whips, chains, abuse and so on so and so forth, but that's because people are looking at slavery as what happened in the Western Hemisphere, do you see? In an African context, not necessarily.

There's a scholar that wrote on this Major Félix Dubois, and he says, "The reason why slaves to ensure the scholars, the tranquility so necessary to a man of thought and letters, their affairs were managed and their properties cultivated by their slaves." In other words, the point of that was to make sure that none of this got in the way of thinking. Timbuktu under the Askiya Dynasty, they're in power from 1493 to 1591 and the city benefited under the reign of the Askiya Dynasty. And this is what the Tarikh al Fettash, al Fettash means something like seeker of truth.

History for the seeker of truth, we read. "One cannot count either the virtues or the qualities of Askiya Muhammad, such is his excellent politics, his kindness towards his subjects and his solicitude towards the poor. One cannot find his equal either among those who preceded him, nor those who followed. He had a great affection for the scholars, saints, and men of learning." However, with Islam being the religion of the cities and traditional African religions being the religion of the villages, the villagers did not necessarily benefit from the Askiya Dynasty. So when rulers like Sunni Ali were in power, then the villages benefited and the human rights abuses went against the African Muslims. And when the Askiya Dynasty was in power, then the human rights abuses went towards the traditionalists. Okay, here's a map of the Songhai Empire at its height ruling Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria and Niger, portions of all of these countries.

In other words, a huge swathe of West Africa. The capital city is now Gao, Timbuktu is now the cultural capital, Djenné continues to be a great city, Niani continues to be a great city, Kano continues to be a great city. Okay, now Timbuktu starts to rise to intellectual dominance. Let me explain how that happened. Walata, quote, "Where the holiest and most learned men resided," and Djenné were centers of Islamic scholarship in the early days. According to two scholars Daniel Chu and Elliot Skinner, "Learning flourished within Djenné. It had a university of very high reputation. The university boasted of having thousands of teachers. There were reports of several different surgical operations successfully performed by the medical doctors of Djenné" And what they're referring to is eye cataract surgery. Now Timbuktu surpassed Walata, surpassed Djenné after the year 1500. Now its scholars and students came from the entire West Africa region including Saharan Africa and Mediterranean Africa which by this period is now Arab North Africa.

There were also scholarly connections between Timbuktu and Fez versus in Morocco. And you had North African and Andalusian scholars. Andalusia is our Moorish and Arab ruled Spain. And they visited and settled in around Timbuktu. And then you had connections being made with fellow scholars in Egypt and Mecca during pilgrimages. So what was life like in Timbuktu? The "Tarikh al Fettash" says, "Timbuktu has no equal among the cities of the blacks and was known for its solid institutions, political liberties, purity of morals, security of its people and their goods, compassion towards the poor and strangers, as well as courtesy and generosity towards students and scholars." Okay, so what did anyone else think? There was a visitor, two Timbuktu from Morocco and his name was Leo Africanus.

Leo Africanus wrote a book in 1526 called "A History and Description of Africa." And the importance of that book is the idea of an African history where we're putting together the different African civilizations in one place and bigging it up as one history. Leo Africanus could be said to be the father of modern African history. Does that make sense? And so, we who write on African History, he is our big brother. Okay, what does he say. "The people of Timbuktu have a light-hearted nature. It is their habit to wander into town at night between 10:00 pm and 1:00 am playing instruments and dancing." He also says, "In Timbuktu there are numerous judges, doctors and clerics." By doctors he means PhD's and D-Litz.

"All receiving good salaries from the king. He pays great respect to men of learning. There is a big demand for books in manuscript imported from Barbary, North Africa. More profit is made from the book trade than any other line of business." Therefore books made more money than gold, books made more money than salt, books made more money than leather. Timbuktu was also a religious city, and there was a West African proverb that says, "Salt comes from the North, gold from the South, and silver from the country of the white men." What they mean by white men is North Africa. "But the word of God and the treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Timbuktu." And there's a local legend that Timbuktu is surrounded and protected by 333 saints, as well as numerous lesser saints. By the way, for those of you that have been following your news, in 2012 I believe, you had an uprising in Timbuktu by the Tuaregs and they together with some al-Qaeda affiliated persons trying to blow up Timbuktu our shrines, and it's the 333 saints that they were trying to destroy.

(clears throat) Surrounding the city like a rampart were chapels where these saints were buried. And according to the Sufis, a Wali or saint, is a Muslim mystic usually a scholar who has achieved such closeness to God as to possess special powers or baraka. For example, we read. "The very learned and pious sheikh, Abu Abdullah, had no property, and he bought slaves that he might give them their liberty. His house had no door, everyone entered unannounced and men came to see him from all parts at all hours." He would be an example of a wali or a saint. Okay, university life. (clears throat) Okay, the Sankore mosque was the main teaching venue and many scholars lived within the Sankore quarter.

Classes were also taught at another institution, the Great Mosque, the (indistinct) mosque built by Mansa Musa. I think I showed you a picture of it. And there's another building called the Oratory of Sidi Yahya. Now most of the teaching took place at the scholars houses where each scholar had his own private library which he could consult when dealing with naughty problems. Very often a student would study under six or seven different tutors one for each subject.

And at the height of the Songhai Empire, Timbuktu is said to have had 25,000 university students. Now the Oratory of Sidi Yahya, that building is still around, it's in clay brick. Again, this is the Western Sudanic style. Now student fees. The student will pay the teachers and lecturers in money, clothing, poultry, cows, sheep or services depending upon how well off the student's family was. And if you were a student, you would support yourself by working in the textile industry. There were 26 textile factories in Timbuktu that employed 50 to 100 apprentices. Enrollment was restricted to students at a certain level of education. And working in the tailoring industry secured students in income enabling them to further their studies. So what do we know about the teaching techniques? The teachers were traditionally experts in a number of texts. This is not quite the same as being an expert in a subject. And the traditional teaching method involved a lecturer dictating a text. The students would write their own copies and would read back to the teacher what they had written down.

All the students would do the same. In this way, students would learn from each other's mistakes. Once the correct version has been written down, the lecture would explain the technical intricacies of the text and engage in a higher level discussion. Now treaties on pedagogy teaching technique, have survived among the collections of Timbuktu. Some of these books wrote about how to learn to read, how to improve memory, suggestions on what subject matter should be taught, and descriptions of the ideal teacher. There's also a description of an ideal student. Let me quote one the manuscripts. "The ideal student is modest, courageous, patient and studious. He must listen carefully to his professor and have a solid understanding of his lessons before memorizing them. The students must learn to debate between themselves to deepen their understanding of the material.

They must always have a great respect and a profound love for their teacher, because these are the conditions for professional success." All right, so what did they actually study? From Professor Ahmed Baba's own account, he studied Arabic, grammar and syntax, astronomy, logic, rhetoric, prosody. And there are a number of books that were typically bought for the Timbuktu libraries. Now once you buy a book, obviously you only have one copy 'cause there's no printing. So someone is going to have to copy that manuscript out, and the manuscripts copied would be astronomy, astrology, botany, dogma that's religion, geography, Islamic law, literary analysis, mathematics including calculus and geometry, medicine, mysticism, morphology, music, rhetoric, philosophy, the occult sciences and geomancy. Many of these books were derived from Arabic translations of ancient Greek writings and mediaeval Persian texts. So the Greek astronomer Ptolemy was a basic reference for Islamic astronomy.

By the way, scholars are now starting to doubt whether Claudius Ptolemy was in fact Greek. Because that debate is now being raged. Whichever be the case. The Greek Philosophers Plato and Aristotle were also common, the Greek father of medicine Hippocrates was popular, as well as the Persian Medical Philosopher and Scholar Avicenna. Well, let me show you some manuscripts. There are astrology and astronomy manuscripts from the Mamma Haidara and the Konate Libraries. These are libraries held by Black families in Timbuktu to this day. There are manuscripts and chemistry and pharmacopeia from the Mamma Haidara Library and the Ahmed Baba Institute. And a student once they graduated, there was a traditional turban that they would receive on their graduation. By the way, I've managed to meet this gentleman, his name is Ali Ould Sidi, and he was a former mayor of Timbuktu. And I had published a book and this photograph was in there and he was surprised to see himself in my book. All right, now the way the turban is being tied, is being tied to spell out the name Allah, all right? Okay, now after graduating, teachers issued licenses that authorized students in turn to teach particular texts.

And the ulama had a variety of roles. Ulama, you've got the french word (indistinct) which might be equivalent the scholarly community, the learned community. So what happened once you qualified? Some became judges, others became imams, some became teachers, and the rural holy men were like parish priests attending to every part of the life cycle of their flock. So what do we know about the quality of the teaching? The level of instruction was as high as in North Africa and the Middle East, some say higher. There's a story that has been repeated over and over. I think Lady Lugard could have been the first person to mention, no, Major Félix Dubois was the first person to mention it.

A celebrated professor from Hedjaz, this is in Arabia, is reported to have arrived in Timbuktu with the intention of teaching, but after talking to some of the students and seeing their level of learning, he was humbled and decided to become a student himself. There's an english woman called Lady Lugard. And surprising as it may seem, she's actually one of the leading authorities on West African history, she wrote a book in 1905 called "A Tropical Dependency." And that book has a quote which just needed to be reproduced. "The appearance of comets, so amazing to Europe of the Middle Ages is noted calmly, as a matter of scientific interest at Timbuktu. Earthquakes and eclipses excite no great surprise." Okay, libraries and copying. During the reign of the Askiya Dynasty, there was an Askiya called Askiya Daud.

Daud in English is David. And he established public libraries and employed calligraphers copying books for him. Some of these books were given as gifts to scholars. The book copying industry in Timbuktu was very well structured and extensive. And what you would see with the Timbuktu manuscript, is the title, the author, the date of the manuscript, the names of the scribes who copied it, sometimes they also name the copyists and the proofreaders and the vocalizers.

The vocalizers are people who added vowels to the arabic. Oftentimes, they mentioned for whom the manuscript was being copied, the monies paid, who provided the blank paper, and the dates of the beginning and the ending of the copying of each volume. Many copies worked at the rate of 140 lines of text per day, the proofreaders read 170 lines per day. And there is a particular 28 volume text that indicates the proofreader was paid half a mithqal of gold per volume. That's 1.75 to 2.5 grams of gold, while the copies receive one mithqal of gold which is 3.5 to five grams. Okay, so what do we know about West African calligraphy? Certain styles did develop and this is the typical Hausa calligraphy. And so, you can actually spot it, it does have it's. If we're going to use a modern term, there is a particular Hausa font if you like. And this particular example is from the Ahmed Baba Institute. Okay, so what do we know about the literature itself? This is what we know.

The books themselves, the documents, range from one page fragments up to 482 pages. Most of the manuscripts are religious Qurans, Quranic exegesis, collections of Hadiths. Hadiths are sayings and comings and doings of the prophet, Sufi writings, theology, law, and other closely related disciplines. There was also poetry in praise of the prophet and seeking his intercession. And by the time we get to the 15th century, Timbuktu scholars were producing original works as well as compiling new derivations and commentaries on established texts. Now there's also commercial documents that begin, "Let all who read this document know." You can see that's to who this may concern. This was followed by the name of the buyer and seller, a detailed description of the commodity, a declaration of the legal validity of the sale, and the confirmation that the buyer paid price in full, finally, the name of the drafter and the date.

Then we also had legal documents that were had the same content, but there's more. The parties were legally competent, that had to be said. The validity was based on the parties being free from restraint. The parties being in full possession of their mental faculties. And that the transaction was lawful according to Islamic law, and they would end with praise to God and blessings upon the prophet. Okay, let's talk about poetry. Reading and writing of poetry was an important element of Timbuktu culture, where one finds verses devoted to the prophet, verses devoted to the adoration of a particular woman or man and even poems about tea. Poetry was written upon a person's death and you also had texts on grammar, law and mathematics being rewritten into verse to facilitate learning. You also had Ajami manuscript, which is where the Arabic letters are being used to write in Songhai, or Wolof or Hausa or Fulfulde or Tamasheq, West African languages.

These texts concern traditional medicine, plants and their properties, occult science, diplomatic correspondence and poetry. And here's an example of a Songhai texts from the Mamma Haidara Library in Songhai. All right, now Professor Ahmed Baba complained to the Sultan of Morocco that his troops had stolen 1,600 books from him and this was the smallest library of any of his friends. The same Ahmed Baba wrote 70 works on Arabic, many on jurisprudence and some on grammar and syntax. So 1,600 books was considered a small library that you would be ashamed to tell your friends that you've only got 1,600 books. Okay, African-American professor says, "Baba was the greatest and most prolific African writer and scholar in the 16th century. Perhaps African can be dropped here, for who else, Asian or European authored a comprehensive dictionary and 40 other works during this period?" We now know the number of works written by Professor Ahmed Baba was 70. All right, now one of the surviving manuscript collections is the al-Wangari Library, and this was begun by Muhammad Baghayogho al-Wangari who died in 1594, and he was the teacher of Professor Ahmed Baba. One of the oldest libraries in Timbuktu and I think I showed you a photograph early on of Moctar Sidi al-Wangari, who is the person that now directs that library.

Okay, now the "Tarikh Al Sudan" was completed in 1656 by Abdurrahman Al Sadi. Now opinions on this text vary widely. In the 19th century, it was praised massively and the word Homeric, this is like homer, was applied to it. In the later periods, people have now started to diss it and say that it's not as a work it's inferior, but 19th century scholars weren't saying that, just saying. All right, now the "Tarikh Al Sudan," this is the book that lays out the ancient histories of Ghana, Mali and Songhai.

The "Tarikh al Fettash," this was written by Professor Mahmud Kati and three of his sons and a grandson complete in 1665. That's another one of the Timbuktu manuscripts. They are in english translation and I've read both. Goodread, Goodread. All right, final theme, the South African 2008, South African-Mali Project, let me explain. In 2008, the South African-Mali project produced an exhibition called Timbuktu Script and Scholarship. And the project was initiated by the South African President Thabo Mbeki and the Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré. And this is what the Malian president says. "The erudition of these wise elders fostered the production of an original and varied body of important works in mathematics, esoteric arts and practices, medicine, poetry and music, as well as astronomy and reflections on the resolution of community and ethnic conflicts." Well, let me show you some of these manuscripts.

Manuscript 776 was written by Timbuktu Professor Ahmed Baba. It praises the search for knowledge and the intrinsic worth of scholarship. And it includes the famous saying that, on the day of judgment, the ink of the scholars will be measured against the blood of the martyrs and will be found to be weightier. Do you think that's a quote or a half? Okay, manuscript 4056 is a physics paper and you can see in the top right hand corner are the reflection of light, can you all see that? Okay, now what's this physics paper about? It's the properties and behavior of light and the interaction of light with matter. Manuscript 6230 is a treaty on geomancy, which is divination by interpreting markings on the ground.

This was written by Abd Allah Muhammad el-Zanati. And apparently, they believed that you could apply this to military conflicts to predict who would win the battle, what the winners would gain, where the enemy would be, and predict whether the winning army would return without loss. Okay, manuscript 2399 is begging the help of God in extinguishing some of the innovations that have been ignited and reviving those dying Acts of the Prophetic Sunna. And Mr. Angry of Timbuktu was vexed about the numbers, the numerous mosques proliferating in a single village, women visiting cemeteries, how dare they. People raising their voices when praying, people spitting in public, people blowing their noses in public, and people placing their shoes inside a mosque. How dare they. Okay, manuscript 2145 is called, On the Obligations of Princes. This was written by an Algerian professor. The Algerian professor's name was Abd al-Karim al-Maghili, but it was commissioned by a Hausa ruler Muhammad Rumfa. And so, some people classify this as a Hausa text for that reason. And the book is a guide that defines the responsibilities and duties of a ruler and details the requirements of good governance. Now I've never been able to find a translation of this in English, but I do know that French scholars are claiming that the book "The Prince" by Machiavelli, they are French scholars are claiming that that book includes the quote they used was cut and paste from this book.

Now I can't prove that because I've not seen on the Obligations of Princes in English, but when that happens, I'll be able to confirm or deny. Manuscript 1759 is a commentary by Abu Abd Allah Fara on Maliki substantive law. And it's a 816-page document which covers dietary laws and fasting, Jihad, the penal code, ritual cleansing, almsgiving. Almsgiving is giving charity to the poor, marriage and prayer. Manuscript 86 is a poem, "The Key to the Wings of Desire on the Knowledge of Arithmetic," which is essentially an 18th century copy of an earlier work which is a poem which shows how arithmetic should be used to calculate the division of a deceased person's estate among their heirs. Manuscript 5292 is called Advising Women on Sexual, excuse me, Advising Men on Sexual Engagement with their Women. It describes treatments for eye infections, headaches, infertility and even forgetfulness. But it also includes various concoctions and that's the only way they can be described. That allegedly improves sperm count, combats impotence, increases libido, helps sexual potency, and strengthens the husbands and the wife's orgasm.

One concoction and I'm quoting, "Causes the woman to have an orgasm to the point of madness due to the intensity." And then the manuscript specifies which Quranic passages you're supposed to read before intercourse. Manuscript, everyone wants to know what those passages are. (students laughing) Manuscript 2458 is a guide in verse to learning the language of the Fulani. Manuscript 4849 is written in an African language containing Quranic verses to do good deeds and to observe Islamic etiquette.

Okay, so that gives you some idea of the intellectual culture. So how did all this come to an end? Well, we read that in Morocco, political problems were kicking in. Morocco then as now, still had a large black population and the sultan of Morocco at the time was Mohammed XI. He is referred to as Al Sultan (indistinct), so we know he's black. He was overthrown, and the person that overthrew him, was Sultan Al-Mansur of Morocco who then secretly negotiated a deal with Queen Elizabeth I of England.

And you had English arms trading just as England is a leading armed dealer today was back then. And you had English arms and European soldiers accompanying those arms which were then ended up under the direction of Sultan Al-Mansur of Morocco. They invaded Songhai in 1591 and destroyed it. So we get the destruction, we get the theft of gold and resources. A Moroccan source says that, 1,400 goldsmiths were employed in the Marrakech Palace just to melt down Songhai gold. Let me give you that figure again, 1,400 goldsmiths. You also had the enslavement of the intelligentsia, large numbers of professors from Timbuktu, Djenné and the other places ended up in chains including Professor Ahmed Baba.

And that's how Ahmed Baba came to address the Moroccan Sultan and complain that yes, he had the smallest library of his friends 1,600 books, but the Moroccans had confiscated it. We also got the attempted confiscation of archives and literature. That's why so many black scholars believe that the Timbuktu heritage has been destroyed and it was destroyed in 1591. But we now know that a million manuscripts have survived. And then with Songhai out of the way, what were the consequences for West Africa? The consequences for West Africa is two-thirds of West Africa were under one government right up until 1591.

Now, two-thirds of West Africa is under no government and this would then allow Europeans to intensify what's going to become known as the trans-Atlantic slave trade. And this concludes the presentation, thank you very much. (students applauding) - What was the status of women in Timbuktu in relationship to its intellectual history, and were the students at the university exclusively male? - The simple answer is, is I've not been able to work that out. Now the "Tarikh al Fettash" uses the term school boys throughout. Now I was in Mali and a meeting was supposed to happen between me and the Minister of Culture, who herself was a historian and that was supposed to be fixed up, we never had that meeting.

The documents that have survived, certainly the ones that are in English, silence women completely, they are silent. They get to say a few words in the in the chronicles, but only a few words. Now certainly in West Africa today, schooling Islamic madrasa type schooling, is open to boys and girls. But in that period, I have no answer. - Do we know how the size of the Timbuktu manuscript collections compare to the Library of Alexandria? This is possibly too theoretical of a question says the questioner, but she asks anyway. - The problem is, is do we have a figure for Alexandria? You see the problem is, is the Alexandria Library is said to have been destroyed, some people say in the seventh century, some people said AD, some people say it was the the fourth century AD.

Because it's been destroyed, I don't know what the figure is that's being claimed for the Alexandrian Library. So I can't make a comparison. - Fair enough, you mentioned that the owners or keepers of the manuscripts lost the ability to read them under the French. - Yeah. - Were most of the manuscripts written in Arabic, or in local languages? - Both. - Both? - Yeah. - Okay.

- Thank you (indistinct) for an educative lecture. I've been coming to Gresham College for many years and I've never heard one lecture about black history or culture. Have you any idea why you for example, weren't invited earlier? - I can address that if you like? - Yeah. - Black history month, we began to start a formal series of lectures for black history month three years ago. This is our third series and we really are trying hard to increase the diversity of our offerings overall. We approached Mr. Walker largely through Angela's recommendation who's the person who handed you the microphone who had done some work in the area, some research in the area for us. So as I said, you're right. A diversity of offerings has not been as good in the past, but we're trying to work on that going forward and this part of our efforts a lecture like this one tonight.

(indistinct) Sure. - Yeah, here's the thing. Because I don't usually lecture, I don't usually get invited to speak at what you can call mainstream audiences, I just don't. And so what happens is, is that most of my work is within the black community. And unfortunately, that's just where it is. People don't invite me to speak, it is what it is. Could you tell us something about the substrata, the paper, where did it come from and where was it made? And also, how the books were produced? The different methods. - Yeah. - Thank you. - The paper was imported. Timbuktu never developed a paper industry, the West African civilization has never developed a paper industry so they imported paper and paper became very, very, very expensive.

So what would happen is, if a scholar wanted to write a commentary, they'd very often scribble in the margins. So the thing about that Lady Lugard talked about where she said there's a Timbuktu manuscript that mentions comets, that was a scribbling in a margin. And so, paper was very, very expensive. Now, when it came to books and book binding, in West Africa, I can't speak for anywhere else, but the books themselves were just pages. If you wanted to bind a book, you would have to buy the leather bindings and the center of the leather industry was Hausaland, Northern Nigeria, and you could then buy the bindings and then get someone to bind it for you, do you see? But the pages and the bindings are two separate products. - Thank you very much. What I wanted to ask you was that, first of all, are you fluent in Arabic yourself, and have you read some of these manuscripts yourself? - In translation, in translation.

- Audience translation. - Yeah, yeah, my Arabic is non-existent. Absolutely non-existent. So, I've read them in translation. So with some of them such as the "Tarikh al Fettash," "Tarikh al-Sudan" they've been translated into French and then somebody translate them from French to English. So the complete "Tarikh al Sudan" and "Tarikh al Fettash" the complete is in English. - But with the advent of French language, because it was controlled by the French. - Yeah. - They're modern Malians. Are they familiar with some of its traditions or. - Very, very few. - European education is (indistinct) and superseded? - That's the problem, that's the problem. So for example, the leading librarian in Timbuktu is a gentleman called Abdel Kader Haidara. Now, I did actually get to meet him and he's a French speaker, but as far as actually reading the manuscripts that are in his vast collection, he can't actually do it.

And basically, French has completely messed that up. Now it doesn't mean nobody can, it just means that there are people with collections including somebody as important as Abdel Kader Haidara who's in that position for real. - Thank you very much sir for the most interesting and stimulating lecture. I was very pleased to really to hear that at least a million manuscripts had been saved and they were dispersed among 60 families.

What I find worrying is the people who are holding these manuscripts. Some of them may just die off and their descendants may not appreciate their significance. Also the conditions under which they're held, I suppose on the whole it's a dry climate which is conducive. But do you know whether there is any incentive, for example, in this country, I think people can get tax relief if they donate certain papers and documents to the British liberal, British museum, also works of art. Is there anything similar like that in Timbuktu or in Mali which will perhaps ensure that these manuscripts will not be lost? - Yes, I mentioned the gentleman called Abdel Kader Haidara, and he's a librarian and a businessman, and he's based in Bamako now, but he was based in Timbuktu. And his thing is to try and cut deals with manuscript holders so that the manuscripts themselves can be scanned, can be put into book form, and there are Islamic publishing houses that are putting some of those manuscripts out, but they are facsimiles.

So there's no English or French translation, those things are in either you can read the Arabic or you can read the Ajami. So there are people like him doing that. Outside of that, there's been money that has been put towards preservation by the South African government during the time of President Thabo Mbeki. And that's how the South Africa-Mali project. So the money was coming from South Africa and fruitful research did come out of it. A black South African astrophysicist, Rodney Thebe Medupe studied 37 Timbuktu manuscripts on astronomy and then made a documentary called "The Astronomers of Timbuktu." You might see some of it online and the full text of what was said in the documentary is also online. And what happened was Medupe promised to do the same thing with the climatological manuscripts, the medicine manuscripts and the mathematical manuscripts, but the funding hasn't been made available yet. But certainly, the astronomical ones, a documentary came out of it.

- Thank you for a very interesting talk this evening, I'll possibly have two questions for you. The first one, was there much interaction between these large Western African empires, versus the other Africans that was displaced from the Egyptian area also by the Arabs at that time? And secondly, do we have any idea of the depth of the calculus or mathematics that was found in those manuscripts because it somewhat predates what we use today by two, 300 years? - Okay, the research into migration from North Africa, into West Africa, Into Central Africa into East Africa, is a relatively new area of research, but there are mediaeval African documents that say so.

Does that make sense, so there are documents and someone post, some of my Facebook friends are historians. And I have seen a document translated claiming that some of the populations of mediaeval Mali trace their heritage back to what would have been Ancient Egypt, right? Now as far as the the quality of the scholarship, did I mention Ali Ould Sidi? The guy that I showed the photograph of him in the turban, yeah. He was the former mayor of Timbuktu. And they found a 16th century manuscript which they believe is a mathematics paper, which was used during the Songhai period of 16th century. They translated it, they sent it to Paris to check the level of the paper and the paper was an algebraic paper. And it roughly corresponds with the second year of a French Maths Degree.

- Okay, I'm really sorry. I am afraid we're going to have to draw it to a close there, but i did want to thank you Mr. Walker again for just a wonderful lecture and if we could all show our appreciation. (students applauding).

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