The Timbuktu Manuscripts

Timbuktu manuscripts are historic texts preserved in private households in northern Mali. Covering art, medicine, philosophy and science.

One volume advised men on aphrodisiacs and infertility remedies. Even explained how to win back wives. Marriage counseling with better ingredients.

Other pages listed spells, fortune-telling, and necromancy. Some read the future from water ripples.

An Andalusian scholar composed this Arabic dictionary in the eleventh century.

Some 350,000 manuscripts were transported to safety. 300,000 remained in Bamako in 2022.

Digitization efforts have photographed more than 150,000 manuscripts since 2013. Bookbinding was revived. Scanners meet needles.