Divine Learning: The Traditional Islamic Scholarship of Timbuktu, Mali

Abstract

Timbuktu, houses, Muslim of what world, the used Mali: remains to the it's be seeds still a of center there, an of ancient Timbuktu's of down scholarship system sandy fabled alleys of renowned learning, manuscript and inside throughout the libraries, foundation mud-brick and the houses, the remains of an ancient system of learning, the foundation of what used to be a center of scholarship renowned throughout the Muslim ld, the seed of Timbuktu's fabled manuscript librari s, and in truth, the very soul of this ancient town's cultural identity the traditional Islamic scholarship of Timbuktu. Timbuktu was a world center of Islamic learning from the thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries. The town still contains an estimated 100,000 ancient manuscripts, and over the last ten years, the Malian government and private individuals have been working with foreign donors to properly house, catalog, and restore this scholarly heritage. This fantastic story has entered the international press and spread the mythic image of Timbuktu into the twenty-first century. But in Timbuktu, the manuscripts are not simply inert pieces of paper, there only to be cataloged, scanned, and forgotten again as they are placed upon shelves in climate-controlled rooms; they are part of a living tradition of scholarship that has existed in West Africa since at least the twelfth century. I spent a year in Timbuktu photographing what remains of this ancient but enduring tradition of learning. My work was supported by a Fulbright Student Islamic Civilizations Grant (2006-2007). Although I am a non-Muslim American woman, I was welcomed into this foreign, male-dominated, tightly knit desert community. The photographs I created illuminate the more subtle qualities of human interaction and intelligence. They resulted from in-depth