Description:

“The Missing Manuscripts of Timbuktu”

Abstract:
The promise of untold thousands of Arabic manuscripts awaiting discovery in and around Timbuktu has received periodic press attention, but little scientific scrutiny. Now, with the publication of the Arabic Literature of Africa vol. V, The Writings of Mauritania and the Western Sahara (Brill, 2015) we can tell what should be in the missing manuscripts of Timbuktu, what made that scholarly culture tick, what books were in Saharan libraries, and what was innovative in the 10,000 Saharan manuscripts now documented. It all points to the strong possibility that the missing manuscripts of Timbuktu may be a myth.

Bio:

Charles Stewart is professor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A pioneering scholar in the field of Islamic Africa and manuscript studies, Stewart has been involved with the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA) at Northwestern since 2008 and is serving as ISITA’s director of programming for 2015-16. Under ISITA’s auspices, Stewart and a team of international collaborators have produced volume 5 in the Arabic Literature of Africa series, The Writings of Mauritania and the Western Sahara, the largest publication in the series, with more than 1,800 authors of more than 10,000 titles covering 350 years of scholarship.