Exactly two thousand and seventy-three years ago, the Roman army was split into two.
The popular Julius Caesar led one faction, while the less-renowned Pompey led the other.
The cause of conflict?
Julius Caesar's term as governor had ended, but he was reluctant to give up his control over the army. This led to political tensions between him and Pompey, the other general of the Roman army.
A civil war broke out, pitting the two against each other. Like teams in the Premier League, they battled it out in different areas. It started in Ilyria, then went to Greece, and then to Egypt.
It was in Egypt where history was made, or to put it literally, history was destroyed.
See, Caesar's forces were chasing Pompey's forces into Egypt by sea, but when they got to Alexandria, they were blocked by an Egyptian fleet.
Having been angry, outnumbered, and in enemy territory, Caesar realised that he had no way of getting through, so he ordered all the ships in the Egyptian harbour to be set on fire.
This fire spread instantly and destroyed the whole fleet, but that wasn't all. It also spread to the city, burning the buildings that were close to the port.
This included the most important building of the time... the Library of Alexandria.
It is said that the amount of knowledge that was lost when the library was burnt is immeasurable. There were scrolls in all fields of knowledge: art, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, science, etc. They were all burnt down.
Some say that if all that knowledge had been retained, we'd have advanced so far as a civilisation. That we'd have gone to space much earlier. Maybe we'd have colonised another planet by now. But that's just it. 'Maybe.'
We're only left to postulate, as we have no definitive way of finding the truth. All this, because we hadn't figured out a way to store this information safely and securely.
Thinking about it, we may have lost a lot of information this way.
I mean, consider all the wars that occurred in history, all the conquests waged against kingdoms, and all the ruins that surround us. They must have held something we would value, right?
Unfortunately, they were lost in the process. The list is extensive, but at least we have one scenario where materials were salvaged: the manuscripts of Timbuktu.
Tombuctou/Timbuktu
We have all heard about the University of Timbuktu, right?
However, it is not conclusive to discuss Timbuktu without mentioning Mansa Musa I.
Mansa Musa I was the ninth ruler of the Mali empire, and he ruled between the years 1303 - 1332 AD. It is said that he was, and to this day is, the richest man to ever exist in the world.
There is even a tale that, when he travelled to Mecca to complete the Hajj, he gave out so much gold in the streets of Egypt that he immediately caused inflation as the worth of gold shot down.
On his way back, though, he picked up architects and scholars whom he had encountered along the way, and went with them back to Mali. He employed them to establish Mosques in Timbuktu and sent some students to the oldest library in the world, the University of Al-Qarawiyyin, in Fez, Morocco, to go and conduct further studies.
There were three mosques built in Timbuktu, as well as a university, and the result of this was that more publications were coming from the area, and as a ripple effect, more scholars from varied backgrounds travelled to the city to study and live, and thus, published even more work.
Timbuktu, then, became the centre of Islamic learning and scholarship in North and West Africa in the 15th & 16th centuries, and to this date, is credited with the spread of Islam in West Africa.
Enter Jihadists
Now, fast forward to the year 2007, and a jihadist group allied to Al-Qaeda, known as the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, was formed to overthrow the governments in the northern Sahel region and institute an Islamic state.
In doing so, they planned to implement their jihad (holy war) against anything that did not align with their vision of a purely Islamic society. This included the older manuscripts from Timbuktu, and so, they embarked on destroying them.
They held the city hostage for ten months, and it was believed that, at the end of this period, no manuscript from the past would remain.
Soon enough, a French-led offensive was successful in driving the Islamist militias out of Timbuktu, and surprisingly, they found that a majority of Timbuktu's manuscripts were still intact.
It turns out, the manuscripts were smuggled to safety from Timbuktu immediately after the Islamist militant group took control of the city in northern Mali in 2012.
How? A man known as Abdel Kadel Haidara (the son of Mohammed 'Mamma' Haidara, who was a scholar and owner of a family library which had some manuscripts), worked together with members of the local community to evacuate the manuscripts to an unnamed location outside the city (and it remains hidden to this date, just in case any jihadists are still around).
After that, he contacted Google and invited them to visit Mali and see the renowned manuscripts so that they may learn why they are at risk.
Upon their arrival, they were struck by the impressive variety of manuscripts, which included early Qurans as well as texts on astronomy, mathematics, and geography. Consequently, they formed a team to review the thousands of pages of these manuscripts to create a digital version and make them available online.
For seven years, historians and digital archaeologists worked diligently to preserve them all. In the end, they succeeded in making up to 40,000 pages available online, including manuscripts from the 11th century.
The ancient documents were originally written in medieval Arabic, but they have now been translated into English, French, Spanish, and Modern Arabic to enhance accessibility for everyone.
Long arm of justice
The jihadists didn't really get away with murder (of the library).
In 2016, one member of the Islamist group, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, was found guilty of intentionally ordering attacks on religious and historic buildings in Timbuktu by the International Criminal Court (ICC). He was sentenced to nine years in jail and had to apologise.
It was the first time that the court in The Hague had tried a case of cultural destruction.
A Journey Through Malian Culture
The collection, now known as Mali Magic, can be found on the Arts & Culture section of Google. It has been animated and contains much more about the Malian culture beyond the recovered manuscripts.
Take a moment to explore the page and discover something new about Malian culture.
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