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Audiobook13 hours
The Storied City: The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save Its Past
Written by Charlie English
Narrated by Enn Reitel
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
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.
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.
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Reviews for The Storied City
Rating: 3.71874875 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
16 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In 2013, the forces of AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb) take Timbuktu and immediately begin to impose their Salafist vision of Islam - one that is at odds with the spiritual, Sufi version that has been the norm in West Africa. The scholars of Timbuktu immediately worry for their vast and unique collection of Islamic and historic manuscripts from Medieval times, one of the few primary sources of West African history. Those worries increase as the jihardists start to smash the mausoleums of Sufi saintsAnd so begins a remarkable story as brave officials, families and holders of private collections of manuscripts start the dangerous (both to the smugglers and the manuscripts) and time consuming business of hiding some manuscripts and moving others to the relative safety of Bamako, many hundreds of miles awayInterspersed with this Charlie English presents a very knowledgeable but readable history of the exploration of West Africa, with a particular focus on the histiography of the region (ie the history of its history). This is fascinating enough on its own, particularly the chapters on the undoubtedly brave, but equally undoubtedly somewhat foolish, early British explorers, many of whom came to a premature endSo a very entertaining and informative read, which ends on a slightly sour note, as the author starts to doubt his own story and his own conclusions and has the intellectual honesty to present those doubts. Doubts that are very much in line with the vague, swirling, illusory history of Timbuktu itself
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The city of Timbuktu with its ancient history has long captivated people. Just the very name conjures up images of an oasis in the desert, a city full of exotic people and a place where the mysteries of the East meet the gateway to the dark continent of Africa. It is a place that drew travellers in the Eighteenth century seeking the legendary place where even the slaves wore gold, but the desire to reach there was not always met with success, history shows us that the roads there were littered with failed expeditions as they succumbed to the hostile landscape, disease and attack.
There is another side to Timbuktu, it has always been a world centre in the Islamic world for learning from as far back as the 13th Century. As they became a centre where knowledge was pooled. This has left a lasting legacy of thousands and thousands of documents, books and manuscripts in public and personal libraries throughout the city on subjects as diverse as astronomy, religion, law and history as well as cultural subjects like poetry. These vast libraries came under threat from destruction in 2012 as al-Qaeda–linked jihadists poured across Mali wreaking havoc and destruction as they went. After destroying several mausoleums the librarians and archivists of the city were forced to consider the fate of their precious papers. So began the race to either hide the manuscripts or in the case of large collections, to move them to another city where they would be safe.
At times this reads like a thriller, as he tells the stories of how the manuscripts were moved from Timbuktu to a place of safety in Bamako using secure networks of couriers. Much of it was carried out in secret as the least amount of people that knew about it, the safer the operation. Charlie English recounts the stories he’d been told, before travelling to the city to see for himself the lockers and their precious cargoes. Whilst I think that it was important to set the context, for me it felt like there was too much emphasis on the past events. I didn’t like the switching around of the old and the new, I would have preferred the current day and historical events to be in separate sections. With its history, contemporary world issues and focus on ancient books, it is a difficult book to pigeonhole. It is a fascinating and very readable account of a small but significant part of world history.