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Author: Rodney Thebe Medupe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521169769
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 96
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Book Description
Author: Rodney Thebe Medupe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521169769
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 96
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Book Description
Author: Jarita Holbrook
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402066392
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
This is the first scholarly collection of articles focused on the cultural astronomy of the African continent. It weaves together astronomy, anthropology, and Africa and it includes African myths and legends about the sky, alignments to celestial bodies found at archaeological sites and at places of worship, rock art with celestial imagery, and scientific thinking revealed in local astronomy traditions including ethnomathematics and the creation of calendars.
Author: Joshua Hammer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476777438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
**New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice** To save ancient Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean’s Eleven in this “fast-paced narrative that is…part intellectual history, part geopolitical tract, and part out-and-out thriller” (The Washington Post) from the author of The Falcon Thief. In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that were crumbling in the trunks of desert shepherds. His goal: preserve this crucial part of the world’s patrimony in a gorgeous library. But then Al Qaeda showed up at the door. “Part history, part scholarly adventure story, and part journalist survey…Joshua Hammer writes with verve and expertise” (The New York Times Book Review) about how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist from the legendary city of Timbuktu, became one of the world’s greatest smugglers by saving the texts from sure destruction. With bravery and patience, Haidara organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 350,000 volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali. His heroic heist “has all the elements of a classic adventure novel” (The Seattle Times), and is a reminder that ordinary citizens often do the most to protect the beauty of their culture. His the story is one of a man who, through extreme circumstances, discovered his higher calling and was changed forever by it.
Author: Marq De Villiers
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 1551992779
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
The first book for general readers about the storied past of one of the world’s most fabled cities. Timbuktu — the name still evokes an exotic, faraway place, even though the city’s glory days are long gone. Unspooling its history and legends, resolving myth with reality, Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle have captured the splendour and decay of one of humankind’s treasures. Founded in the early 1100s by Tuareg nomads who called their camp “Tin Buktu,” it became, within two centuries, a wealthy metropolis and a nexus of the trans-Saharan trade. Salt from the deep Sahara, gold from Ghana, and money from slave markets made it rich. In part because of its wealth, Timbuktu also became a centre of Islamic learning and religion, boasting impressive schools and libraries that attracted scholars from Alexandria, Baghdad, Mecca, and Marrakech. The arts flourished, and Timbuktu gained near-mythic stature around the world, capturing the imagination of outsiders and ultimately attracting the attention of hostile sovereigns who sacked the city three times and plundered it half a dozen more. The ancient city was invaded by a Moroccan army in 1600, beginning its long decline; since then, it has been seized by Tuareg nomads and a variety of jihadists, in addition to enduring a terrible earthquake, several epidemics, and numerous famines. Perhaps no other city in the world has been as golden — and as deeply tarnished — as Timbuktu. Using sources dating deep into Timbuktu’s fabled past, alongside interviews with Tuareg nomads and city residents and officials today, de Villiers and Hirtle have produced a spectacular portrait that brings the city back to life.
Author: Charlie English
Publisher: William Collins
ISBN: 9780008126650
Category : Cultural property
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
Two tales of a city: The historical race to reach one of the world's most mythologized places, and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians, fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al Qaeda, added another layer to the legend. To Westerners, the name "Timbuktu" long conjured a tantalising paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for "discovery" tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, the climate, and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way too. A medieval centre of learning, it was home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts, on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, law to history, pharmacology, and astronomy. When al-Qaeda-linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012, threatening the existence of these precious documents, a remarkable thing happened: a team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the manuscripts into hiding. Relying on extensive research and firsthand reporting, Charlie English expertly twines these two suspenseful strands into a fascinating account of one of the planet's extraordinary places, and the myths from which it has become inseparable
Author: John Owen Hunwick
Publisher: Thames and Hudson
ISBN:
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
The extraordinary manuscripts of Timbuktu: invaluable historical documents, objects of tremendous beauty, and a testament to a great center of learning and civilization. For centuries, trading caravans made epic journeys across the Saharan sands to reach the markets of the legendary city of Timbuktu, where they traded salt, gold, slaves, textiles—and books. By the mid-fifteenth century, Timbuktu had become a major center of Islamic literary culture and scholarship. The city's libraries were repositories of all the world's learning, housing not only works by Arab and Islamic writers but also volumes from the classical Greek and Roman worlds and studies by contemporary scholars. The astonishing manuscripts of Timbuktu form the lavish visual heart of this book. Beautifully graphic, occasionally decorated, these exquisite artifacts reveal great craftsmanship as well as learning. All were written in the Arabic script, but not all are in Arabic, for they also feature a range of local African languages. Aside from scholarly works, the surviving manuscripts include a wealth of correspondence between rulers, advisers, and merchants on subjects as various as taxation, commerce, marriage, divorce, adoption, breastfeeding, and prostitution, providing a vivid insight into the ordinary life and values of the day.
Author: Charlie English
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594634297
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
“Timbuktu is a real place, and Charlie English will fuel your wanderlust with true descriptions of the fabled city’s past, present, and future.” –Fodor’s Two tales of a city: The historical race to “discover” one of the world’s most mythologized places, and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians, fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al Qaeda, added another layer to the legend. To Westerners, the name “Timbuktu” long conjured a tantalizing paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for “discovery” tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, the climate, and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way too. A medieval center of learning, it was home to tens of thousands—according to some, hundreds of thousands—of ancient manuscripts, on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, law to history, pharmacology, and astronomy. When al-Qaeda–linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012, threatening the existence of these precious documents, a remarkable thing happened: a team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the manuscripts into hiding. Relying on extensive research and firsthand reporting, Charlie English expertly twines these two suspenseful strands into a fraught and fascinating account of one of the planet's extraordinary places, and the myths from which it has become inseparable.
Author: Edward Stewart Kennedy
Publisher: American Philosophical Society
ISBN: 9780871694621
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 82
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Book Description
The source material for the study of medieval oriental astronomy consists of Byzantine Greek, Sanscrit, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish astronomical and astrological manuscripts. If one desires to build up a detailed picture of Islamic astronomy, one can choose material from these available manuscripts. Of these manuscripts it is possible to isolate a group of works, the "zijes". A "zij" consists of the numerical tables and accompanying explanation sufficient to measure time and to compute planetary and stellar positions, appearance, and eclipses. This paper is a survey of the number, distribution, contents, and relations between "zijes" written in Arabic or Persian during the period from the 8th through the 15th centuries. Illustrations. Oversize.
Author: Félix Dubois
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
Special Envoy of Figaro, Felix Dubois, left Dakar in 1896 and traveled into Mali by train to the end of the line (just after Kayes), and then on foot and horseback to Bamako and in pinnace from Koulikoro to Timbuktu. He describes Bamako, Segou but extremely long Djenne and Timbuktu, focusing on economic and cultural activities, collecting manuscripts and bringing a unique iconography (including photos of Fort Segou, a plan and reconstruction of the old mosque Jenne already been lost and not rebuilt); fundamental evidence on Mali in the early hours of colonization. Dubois resumed (from North) this journey of 15 years later and thus engaged in an assessment of changes. The merit of Felix Jones is to have transcribed the path to that goal, in a masterly text drawn from the sources of the bush, heat and space. His style made great reporter of the late nineteenth century, teeming with anecdotes. With the text researched and documented, it earned him then to be crowned by the French Academy.
Author: Shamil Jeppie
Publisher: HSRC Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
Salt comes from the north, gold from the south, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Timbuktu." 15th-century Malian proverb. In a joint project between South Africa and Mali, a library to preserve more than 200 000 Arabic and West African manuscripts dating from the 13th to the 19th centuries is currently under construction. It is the first official cultural project of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), the socio-economic development plan of the African Union, and when the library is built, the cultural role of Timbuktu will be revived, as it becomes the safehaven for the treasured manuscripts. The manuscripts prove that Africa had a rich legacy of written history, long before western colonisers set foot on the continent. This volume, authored by leading international scholars, begins to sketch the 'meaning' of Timbuktu within the context of the intellectual history of West Africa, in particular, and of the African continent, in general. The book covers four broad areas: Part I provides an introduction to the region; outlines what archaeology can tell us of its history, examines the paper and various calligraphic styles used in the manuscripts; and explains how ancient institutions of scholarship functioned. Part II begins to analyse what the manuscripts can tell us of African history. Part III offers insight into the lives and works of just a few of the many scholars who achieved renown in the region and beyond. Part IV provides a glimpse into Timbuktu's libraries and private collections. Part V looks at the written legacy of the eastern half of Africa, which like that of the western region, is often ignored. A fascinating read for anyone who wishes to gain an understanding of the aura of mystique and legend that surrounds Timbuktu. The Meanings of Timbuktu strives to contextualise and clarify the importance of efforts to preserve Timbuktu's manuscripts for Mali, for Africa and for the intellectual world."--Abstract
