Timbuktu’s Manuscripts Need Money

by Pierre Joris · Published June 12, 2013 · Updated June 13, 2013

Crowdfunding for Timbuktu’s Manuscripts

BY MLYNXQUALEY ON JUNE 12, 2013 • ( 1 )

It’s not as sexy as saving ancient manuscripts from Islamists, but these manuscrips need rescue from humidity and bad storage, according to Dr. Abdel Kader Haïdara, of the SAVAMA-DCI (Protection and Exploitation of Manuscripts for the Defense of Islamic Culture) project, which works to protect manuscripts in Timbuktu and beyond:

The project aims to save over 300,000 manuscripts. According to Dr. Stéphanie Diakité, the manuscripts of Timbuktu are from the 13th through the 19th centuries, and are a corpus of religious, scientific, philosophical and artistic works, and include “tales, poems and music treaties.”Most were written in Arabic, by Africans, although some originated in Andalusia or the Mashreq.

Diakite told Star Africa: “The purpose of the crowdfunding effort is to ensure the preservation of the physical integrity of the manuscripts. Each one of them needs to be put in special boxes equipped with a system against humidity. Rain[y] season will begin soon in Mali, the preservation action is thus of the utmost urgency. The crowdfunding campaign that has been launched on the 21st of May, 2013, and is due to end on the 20th of June[.]“

See more:

Star Africa: YOU can save the Timbuktu manuscripts: interview

IndieGoGo: Timbuktu Libraries in Exile

Also: On June 13, Arab Literature (in English) published an update & questioning on & of this post, which you can read here.

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Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946, was raised in Luxembourg. Since age 18, he has moved between Europe, the Maghreb & the US & holds both Luxembourg & American citizenship. He has published over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021) & Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello, both from Contra Mundum Press. In 2020 his two final Paul Celan translations came out: Microliths They Are, Little Stones (Posthumous prose, from CMP) & The Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG). Forthcoming are: Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” (Small Orange Import, 2023) & Diwan of Exiles: A Pierre Joris Reader (edited with Ariel Reznikoff, 2024). For a full list see the right column on this blog.

In 2011 Litteraria Pragensia, Charles University, Prague, published Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, with essays on Joris’ work by, among others, Mohammed Bennis, Charles Bernstein, Nicole Brossard, Clayton Eshleman, Allen Fisher, Christine Hume, Robert Kelly, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jennifer Moxley, Jean Portante, Carrie Noland, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff & Nicole Peyrafitte (2011).

Other work includes the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; Mitch Elrod, guitar; Ta’wil Productions). With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, and with Habib. Tengour Poems for the Millennium, vol. 3: The University of California Book of North African Literature.

When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte. A volume of their collaborative work, to be called Domopoetics, will be published in the near future.