The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts

The premise of this book seemed amazing, unfortunately the actual thing didn't deliver. While the beginning of the book was interesting as it covered Mali history and the origins of the manuscripts, around chapter 5 or so the book took a right turn into non sequitur land. The manuscripts were talked about less and less, and instead ended up with a not-so-brief regional instability history and much talk about terrorists and music(???). As an example, about halfway in, the book starts talking about a concert that Bono from U2 showed up at. I don't really know why. There was also pretty in-depth descriptions of hands and limbs being chopped off in chapter 13. I admit, I skipped that chapter once it was clear where it was going.

The actual book saving portions were interesting, and I wish the author had focused strictly on that. The book might have been shorter, but would have better fit the title.

The underlying story here is fascinating: illuminated manuscripts representing muslim thinking through the ages are strewn about as family heirlooms in Mali surrounding the area of Timbuktu. Initially scattered in the face of French colonialism that resisted evidence that Africans and Muslims were highly intelligent with a pre-existing deep culture, many of the manuscripts were being ravaged by time and the elements. A single man, Abdel Kader Haidara, heir to his father's own massive collection, was recruited to save the manuscripts and house them in a formal library in Timbuktu. As a native, armed with his knowledge of the local culture he manages to ingratiate himself and buy back manuscripts. As a well-spoken, well-read individual he also manages to ingratiate himself with NGO funders to plan and build a climate-controlled building in Timbuktu to house the documents (despite building the first library on a floodplain by accident and having to ask all of his funders to refund him!) Then Al-Qaeda invades Timbuktu and wants to destroy the manuscripts as they are largely Sufi in origin and have a more nuanced approach to Muslim law. Abdel, aided by his family, "Emily" ([a:Stephanie Diakité|5078224|Stephanie Diakité|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], for some reason her real name is obscured but her bibliography is listed, which confused the heck out of me) and crowdfunding to evacuate the manuscripts to safety.

This is a great story. Unfortunately, this is also about all you get of the story in over 300 pages of the Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, which probably would have been better if left as a longform article.

It's not all bad: I learned a lot about the major players in Al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb, Islamic and North African history, and the Tuareg ethnic group, which is something I wouldn't have otherwise been exposed to and it was interesting. But the writing style really got to me: a frequent complaint I have of popular nonfiction is it is often multiple longform articles strung together, which requires a strong editor to make it cohere. The Bad-Ass Librarians is the most flawed book in this direction that I've ever read: characters would be introduced and discussed in four or five chapters and then all of a sudden at their sixth mention would get several pages of backstory, much of it redundant to their shorter previous introductions. Acronyms would remain undefined for their first ten mentions then arbitrarily expanded on the 11th. This was particularly unwieldy because I think some parts of the book were originally from unrelated articles and plopped down unedited in the book, which made the whole thing feel very incoherent. Remember the story that I told you was the ostensible premise above? Hammer goes over a third of the book in the middle without mentioning a single person or concept from it, instead giving us the entire backstory of a terrorist who never turns out to be related.

My final complaint is that Hammer's self-insertion is really distracting. I love self-insertion in non-fiction (says the girl who's read everything Mary Roach has ever written), but Hammer does it in a way I found intrusive, perhaps because I was frustrated with his diversion from his premise. We hear what he was thinking about while he rode a boat down a river to meet with a source, and what type of iced tea he drank while sitting in a hotel lobby to meet with another source and I did not find it evocative of Northern Africa or introspective I found it completely useless noise.

So overall, these is a really weird book: I'm glad I read it because I learned so much about a region and a history that I had little prior knowledge, but I found it extremely frustrating to read.

Since the 1300s Timbuktu in central Mali has been a center of learning. The city sits at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert and on the banks of the Niger River.

This made it popular crossroads for people from many cultures to meet. There were many universities here and intellectual debate was popular. The city became known for its Islamic scholarship. Thousands of manuscripts were written and studied here. Some of them were elaborately decorated.But there have been periods of invasion and anti-intellectualism too. During these times the manuscripts were hidden around the region. By the time of the European invasions, the existence of the manuscripts was not known to outsiders. That led to quotes like these:"Perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none. There is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness."-- British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper 1963After Mali won its independence efforts were made to start collecting the manuscripts in Timbuktu again.  Abdel Kader Haidara's father spent his life collecting manuscripts.  In his will he chose Abdel to carry on his work but he wasn't interested.  Ten years passed before a library in Timbuktu convinced him to start buying manuscripts again.  He was so successful that by the early 21st century there were 45 libraries in Timbuktu with manuscript collections.  Then Al Qaeda came.The librarians knew that the manuscripts would be a target.  After all, they were written in a very progressive Islamic area.  There were manuscripts with sexual advice and rulings on how to treat women fairly.  They decided that it was time for the manuscripts to hide again.It was a big job.  There were around 350,000 fragile manuscripts in city in 2012.  How do you get them somewhere safe when travel is restricted?I really enjoyed the part of this book that was about the manuscripts. About half of it though was about the history of the Islamist uprising in Mali. That drug for me. There was kidnapping and crime and torture but I wanted to know about the manuscripts.This book shows the importance of honoring the history of the a place. I like reading about Henry Louis Gates' trip to Mali and his reaction to seeing the manuscripts. He had always been told that black people didn't have a historical culture or anything to be proud of in their past. Seeing these works of scholarship and art made by black people touched him deeply.

A photo posted by @dvmheather on Apr 29, 2016 at 11:11am PDT

This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story