Blog

333 Saints: A Life of Scholarship Under Threat

16 July 2012

The photographs in the following video were taken in 2007 in the region of Timbuktu, Mali, a landlocked country in West Africa. At that time, Mali was one of Africa’s most stable democracies. Timbuktu had regained its ancient fame as a center of Islamic scholarship. Political chaos has now over-taken the north and south of Mali.

Mali’s Tomb Raiders

16 July 2012

In the past week, Islamists have destroyed and desecrated the tombs of Muslim saints in the fabled town of Timbuktu in northern Mali, recalling the Taliban’s 2001 destruction of two giant Buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.

Tombouctou Manuscripts Newsletter

12 July 2012

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Timbuktu shrines damaged by Mali Ansar Dine Islamists

1 July 2012

Islamist fighters in Mali have damaged the shrines of Muslim saints in the city of Timbuktu, witnesses say. The fighters, from the Ansar Dine group, which controls much of northern Mali, attacked the mausoleum of Sidi Mahmoud, one of 16 shrines in the city.

Report by Dr. Thomas Schuler

28 June 2012

Since the very beginning of the Malian crisis, ICOM “Disaster Relief Task Force” has been monitoring the situation in northern Mali very closely. We also acted on behalf of our umbrella organisation “Blue Shield”; therefore we didn’t focus on museums only, but included also libraries and monuments.