Blog

Zukunftsphilologie Winter Academy: World Scripts - In UCT’s News

13 October 2015

UCT’s news published an article on one of the talks delivered at the Zukunftsphilologie Winter Academy: World Scripts, hosted by Huma and the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project. “What the coat of arms reveals about us,” discusses Kurt Campbell’s talk, “Politics of the Sans Serif.”

Die Manuskript-Kultur in Timbuktu - The Key Piece (Documentary Series)

13 October 2015

The fourth instalment in the Gerda Henkel Foundation documentary series focussing on the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project, The Key Piece, has been released and is available for online viewing.

Publication Announcement: Catalogue of de Gironcourt Collection of Manuscripts

20 May 2014

Dr Mauro Nobili has recently published an exemplary catalogue of the manuscript collection known as the Fons de Gironcourt housed in the Institute de France.  The full scale catalogue which started as an appendix to his doctoral thesis is published within the Series Catalogorum of the Istituto per l’Oriente C.A. Nallino (Roma) and the CNRS - Mondes Iranien et Indien (Paris). It describes in detail the 142 Arabic manuscripts of the collection, analysed in both their physical dimension, i.e. the object manuscript, and the intellectual contents, i.e. the text that they preserve.  The catalogue also includes a map of the places visited by de Gironcourt, several black and white pictures of manuscripts, six colour plates of manuscripts, and twelve reproductions of photos taken by de Gironcourt during his trip, as well as several indexes (titles, authors, senders and recipients of letters, copyists, owners, places of copy, dates of copy, places of production, seals etc…) crucial to navigate such a rich collection as the Fonds de Gironcourt.

Timbuktu Update

30 January 2013

Since the start of this week there are reports about the destruction of library buildings and book collections in Timbuktu. It sounds as if the written heritage of the town went up in flames. According to our information this is not the case at all. The custodians of the libraries worked quietly throughout the rebel occupation of Timbuktu to ensure the safety of their materials. A limited number of items have been damaged or stolen, the infrastructure neglected and furnishings in the Ahmad Baba Institute library looted but from all our local sources - all intimately connected with the public and private collections in the town - there was no malicious destruction of any library or collection.

Tombouctou Manuscripts Newsletter

12 July 2012

We recently sent out our second newsletter. Click the image below to view a web version of it. If you would like to sign up for the next newsletter, please fill in your details by following this link.