The Storied City: The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic

The Storied City: The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save Its Past

â€œTimbuktu is a real place, and Charlie English will fuel your wanderlust with true descriptions of the fabled cityâ€™s past, present, and future.â€ â€“Fodorâ€™sÂ

Two tales of a city: The historical race to â€œdiscoverâ€ one of the worldâ€™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 â€œTimbuktuâ€ long conjured a tantalizing paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold.Â Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever forÂ â€œdiscoveryâ€ Â tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city.Â Â 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 thousandsâ€”according to some, hundreds of thousandsâ€”of ancient manuscripts, on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, law to history, pharmacology, and astronomy. When al-Qaedaâ€“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.
Country USA
Manufacturer Riverhead Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2017-05-02
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Riverhead Books
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2017-05-02
Format	Kindle eBook

The Storied City: The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save Its Past

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