Saliba G (1991) The astronomical tradition of Maragha- a historical survey and prospects for future research. Saad E (1983) Social history of Timbuktu: the role of Muslim scholars and notables 1400–1900. In: Holbrook J, Medupe RT, Urama J (eds) African cultural astronomy. Medupe RT, Warner B, Jeppie S, Sanogo S, Maiga M, Maiga A, Dembele M, Diakite D, Tembely L, Kanoute M, Traore S, Sodio B, Hawkes S (2008) The Timbuktu science project. In: Selin (ed) Astronomy across cultures: the history of non-western astronomy. King DA (2000) Mathematical astronomy in Islamic civilization. In: Walker C (ed) Astronomy before the telescope. Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA), Istanbul Ihsanoglu E, Rosenfeld BA (2003) Mathematicians, astronomers and other scholars of Islamic civilization and their works (7th–19th c.), Series of studies and sources on history of science 11. Hunwick J (1999) Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sadi’s Tarickh Al-Sudan down to 1613 and other contemporary documents. HSRC Press, Cape Town, pp 277–285Įvans J (1998) The history and practice of ancient astronomy. Wangari M (2008) In: Jeppie S, Diagne SB (eds) The meanings of Timbuktu. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.īin Yahya al. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. As an example of the content of material taught in the madrassas in West Africa, I present an outline of the content of two manuscripts written in the seventeenth century by Timbuktu scholars Muḥammad (or Aḥmad) b. Until recently, the detail of what astronomy was known and practiced was not known. During this time West African scholars studied and taught mathematics, Quranic studies, and astronomy among other subjects. Islamic scholarship thrived in the city of Timbuktu in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Google sent equipment including a high-resolution scanner with a mounted camera from Europe, and scanning and indexing the tens of thousands of pages took Haidara’s team eight years to complete.Islam was introduced to West Africa over a millennium ago as a result of trade with North Africa and other parts of the Middle East. “As a rule, the manuscripts are never taken out of Mali,” says Mathee, and so Haidara and a team of Malian archivists were charged with digitizing them. They are made of a variety of materials, ranging from animal skins to Italian paper and written in beautiful Arabic calligraphy. The manuscripts are indicative of Timbuktu’s cosmopolitan past. Related: These women are restoring and reclaiming Kenya’s dilapidated, colonial-era libraries This legacy that is passed down from scientists, emperors and philosophers is of utmost importance to safeguard,” Haidara explained. “I turned to Google for digitization because I want to record this legacy we have in West Africa. But determined never to see the country’s national heritage lost forever, in 2014 he contacted Google. Haidara still protects these precious texts, spending most of his days as an indexer – a job that requires him to read through the manuscripts before summarizing their contents. In time, most of these documents were returned to Timbuktu, and today over 30,000 manuscripts have been photocopied and are safely housed in over 30 libraries in the city. These African heritage sites are under threat from rising seas, but there's still time to save them In the 1500s, Timbuktu experienced a golden age of wealth and trade, and scholars from all spheres of life and from all over the world converged on the city to exchange knowledge and wisdom. In the 1300s Timbuktu was known for the Djinguereber Mosque and the University of Sankoré, both important centers of learning. Now, thanks to local residents and global academics, over 40,000 pages spanning the 11th to the 20th Century have been preserved for good in Google Arts and Culture’s “ Mali Magic” portal – a compendium of digitized artifacts, many of which have never been publicly available before. Those manuscripts have had a turbulent past, threatened by Islamist rebels and irrevocable loss. Today it’s still known for its imposing earthen mosques, and the hundreds of thousands of scholarly manuscripts held in public and private collections. Located in the West African nation of Mali, the name Timbuktu has come to embody the idea of a distant place, but this city was once famed as a center of learning, religion and trade. But until recently, some of the most important evidence of one of Africa’s most vibrant medieval cities was absent from the web. Today, it can feel like the sum of all human knowledge is only an internet search away.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |