Opinion: Trashing of Timbuktu a Terrible Loss

THE AGE
By Jonathon Jones

Ancient manuscripts on display in Timbuktu. Photo: AFP

MALI---The reported destruction of two important manuscript collections by Islamist rebels as they fled Timbuktu is an offence to the whole of Africa and its universally important cultural heritage. Like their systematic destruction of 300 Sufi saints' shrines while they held Timbuktu at their mercy, it is an assault on world heritage comparable with the demolition of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001. The literary heritage of Timbuktu dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries when the gold-rich kingdoms of Mali and Songhai traded across the Sahara with the Mediterranean world. Timbuktu is Africa's city of books and learning that disproved racist myths about the continent. That luminous inheritance is what the Islamists have destroyed. [link]