(12 Aug 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Timbuktu, Mali – 11 August 2025
1. Truck carrying boxes of Timbuktu manuscripts
2. SOUNDBITE (French) Diahara Touré, Timbuktu Deputy Mayor: ++SOUNDBITE SPLIT SCREEN WITH SHOT1 AND IS OVERLAID BY SHOT3++++
"The return of these manuscripts today reminds us that Timbuktu, through its mosques and universities, was an open-air library dedicated to education, dissemination, and transmission of knowledge."
3. (STILL) Religious leaders stand behind boxes of ancient Timbuktu manuscripts, returned after more than a decade in storage in Bamako
4. (STILL) Various of ancient Timbuktu manuscripts are displayed in glass cases in Timbuktu, Mali after being returned to the city from Bamako, where they were kept for more than a decade
5. SOUNDBITE (French) Sane Haidara, Timbuktu resident: ++SOUNDBITE STARTS ON PREVIOUS SHOT AND IS OVERLAID BY SHOT6 AND PARTIALLY BY SHOT7++
"I am very happy today because it is very good news to see the return of the manuscripts and to see that now we will be able to go to the Ahmed Baba Center and continue our research and continue to learn from our manuscripts, from the history of Africa."
6. Banner of event
7. Wide of children learning calligraphy related to Timbuktu manuscripts
STORYLINE:
A Malian army truck filled with crates containing manuscripts enters the courtyard of the Ahmed Baba Institute for Higher Islamic Studies and Research in Timbuktu.
The Malian military government on Monday started returning home the ancient manuscripts of Timbuktu, which were spirited out of their fabled northern city when it was occupied by al-Qaida-linked militants more than a decade ago.
Islamic radicals destroyed more than 4,000 ancient manuscripts after they seized Timbuktu in 2012, according to the findings of a United Nations expert mission.
They also destroyed nine mausoleums and a mosque’s door — all but one of the buildings on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
Diahara Touré, Timbuktu’s deputy mayor, said the ancient documents are important to the local people as they "reflect our civilization and spiritual and intellectual heritage.”
The first batch of the manuscripts were brought to Timbuktu by plane from the capital of Bamako, authorities said, adding that the return was necessary to protect them from the threats of Bamako’s humidity.
The majority of the documents dating back to the 13th century — more than 27,000 — were saved by the devotion of the Timbuktu library’s Malian custodians, who carried them out of the occupied city in rice sacks, on donkey carts, by motorcycle, by boat and four-wheel drive vehicles.
The shipment consisted of more than 200 crates and weighed some 5.5 tons.
The rest would be shipped later, officials said.
About 706 kilometers (439 miles) from Bamako, Timbuktu sits on the edge of the Sahara desert and has a dry climate.
For years, the local municipal and religious authorities have asked for the return of the manuscripts.
In February, the military government made a commitment to return the manuscripts, according to Bouréma Kansaye, the Malian Minister of Higher Education.
He described them as as “legacy that bears witness to the intellectual greatness and crossroads of civilization” of the city of Timbuktu — “a bridge between the past and the future.”
The manuscripts, which UNESCO has designated as part of the World Cultural Heritage, cover a myriad subjects, from Islamic theology and jurisprudence, astronomy, medicine, mathematics, history, and geography.
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