Ancient African Books — The 350,000 Manuscripts Smuggled From Al-Qaeda 📚 #shorts

In 2012, an Al-Qaeda affiliate seized an African city — and one librarian launched the greatest book heist of the century to save 350,000 ancient manuscripts.
The city was Timbuktu. Once the largest scholarly hub in medieval Africa. Home to three universities and the largest book collection on the continent since the Library of Alexandria.
For five hundred years, ordinary Timbuktu families had inherited the manuscripts — passing trunks of priceless books down generation after generation, sometimes hidden under the floorboards of their houses.
Then in April 2012, Al-Qaeda fighters took the city. They declared the manuscripts haram — forbidden — because the books contained science, philosophy, and tolerant Islamic theology. They started burning books.
One librarian — Abdel Kader Haidara — refused to let them. He used a twelve-thousand-dollar Oxford scholarship to instead buy hundreds of metal trunks. He recruited his nephew, tour guides, teenagers, and family members. For eight months, they smuggled the manuscripts out of the city by donkey, by car, and by riverboat — past Al-Qaeda checkpoints to the north and Malian army checkpoints to the south.
Three hundred and fifty thousand manuscripts. Saved from forty-five libraries. Hidden in safe houses across Bamako.
Centuries of African thought — rescued by Africans, in real time.
This is Onyx Sagas. The books remember.
🔔 SUBSCRIBE for cinematic African history every week.

Видео Ancient African Books — The 350,000 Manuscripts Smuggled From Al-Qaeda 📚 #shorts канала Onyx Sagas