>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Pause ]
>> Good afternoon, and thank you all for coming.
Mary Jane Deep, chief of the African/Middle East division,
and I'm delighted to see you here.
I always make our little spiel for the video that we're video and also
for those of you who are not familiar with this division.
The division is made up of three sections - the African section,
the [inaudible] section, and the [inaudible] section.
Between the three sections, we cover 78 countries in the whole of Africa,
Central Asia, the Middle East, and we sort of expansionist.
We go through to Afghanistan and beyond,
and we hold programs regularly, programs that inform,
programs that give greater depth to knowledge about those countries.
So it's not only that we collect materials,
that we serve those materials, that we hope we preserving the memory
of those countries, but we also try to invite scholars, artists, poets,
writers to talk about the countries that they know better than we do
because if their career, their life,
their work has focused on those countries.
Today, we have a specialist, an expert, and an old friend
of the library in the [inaudible] section.
A wonderful photographer who has been here before,
we had worked on Mali, who has lived in Mali, and who is,
has come especially for today's event to share
with us her knowledge, her expertise via a book
of magnetic, magnificent photographs.
We've acquired these photographs already, at least some of them.
We've acquired a few in the prints and photographs division,
and you can always see them.
And we are absolutely delighted
that Alexandra Huddleston was able to join us today.
So to introduce her, Marita Harper who has been, who has focused
on Mali for many, many years and is responsible for our Timbuktu website
and has been one of the greatest supporters of Alexandra's work,
Marita Harper is going to introduce the speaker today.
Thank you.
>> Thank you, Mary Jane.
I'm going to start with saying good afternoon to everyone
and thank you for coming.
As Mary Jane said, I'm one of the area specialists
in the African section of the African and Middle East division.
I generally assist researchers in locating information [inaudible]
on the Sahara area, which covers today topic.
Today's book talk will cover the ongoing scholarship work
for centuries in Timbuktu, which is located
on the edge of the Sahara Desert.
In 2002, I participated
in the [inaudible] Conference in Bamako, Mali.
The primary purpose of that conference was to develop strategies
on where to find the manuscripts in West Africa and other areas
of the continent and, most importantly,
to find means to continue preserving them.
The aged manuscripts were and are still fragile and subject
to environmental issues of global warming
as well as manmade disasters.
I saw the manuscripts in Timbuktu
where for centuries scholars kept them as teaching tools
on mathematics, religion, astronomy, war, and many, many more subjects.
It was in 2003 that the Library of Congress digitized some
of the manuscripts for Timbuktu.
Those manuscripts were returned to Timbuktu after the filming here
at the Library of Congress, and later,
I will give you the website to look at them.
Right now, within the past year or two,
these manuscripts have been endangered
by some radical Islamic invasions that took place in,
from 2012 to 2013 in northern Mali,
and they have been moved from Timbuktu.
So some of the manuscripts that were digitized here are not
in Timbuktu at the moment.
Excuse me.
On December 1, there were newspaper articles that I carry
which had an article about the problem [inaudible].
It's called "Islamic Silence: Northern Mali's Music Tradition",
which is part of the scholarships work that was ongoing in Timbuktu.
Now, I need to introduce today's lecturer.
Alexandra Huddleston will be providing more insight
into these manuscripts, and what has happened to them from 2005 to 2007.
And which will give you more detail other
than this article I just mentioned.
The background that I have
for Alexandra Huddleston is she is an American photographer who has,
was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone and grew up in Washington,
D.C. area and in West Africa.
Her work has been published and exhibited worldwide.
The title of today's lecture will center on "333 Saints:
A Life of Scholarship in Timbuktu".
Ms. Huddleston.
[ Applause ]
[ Background Sounds ]
>> Thank you very much.
I'm going to start the presentation
with this five-minute video that I made in 2012.
I made it for two reasons.
At that time, as you may well know, the whole issue of the invasion
of the north of Mali by different groups, [inaudible] groups
and radical [inaudible] groups was, had occurred.
The occupation was ongoing, and those groups
that were occupying Timbuktu were in the process
of destroying the [inaudible] Heritage sites
that were the shrines of the 333 saints.
So the issue of Timbuktu, the issues
of Timbuktu's cultural patrimony were incredibly pressing
at that time.
I felt that my photographs and what I had learned
about the traditional scholarship could help shed light
on the current events, and so I created this video
and put it online.
As a result, the video's a bit dated.
So [inaudible] 2014, but it still gives a really good background
on the situation, and it still presents my own work
and my own photography very well
as a brief introduction before I elaborate.
[ Music ]
Timbuktu is a small city on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert
that developed as a crossroads for trans-Saharan trade.
While in Western lore, Timbuktu epitomizes the end of the Earth,
in African history is it known as the center
of scholarship and wisdom.
Timbuktu's legendary tradition of scholarship
and the ancient manuscripts it created are still part
of the living culture at the heart
of the city's religious and secular life.
I stayed in Timbuktu for ten months in 2007 to photograph this tradition
of learning and of teaching.
The ancient culture of Arabic language scholarship
that has been passed down from teacher
to student since the 15th century.
Although I am a woman and an American, I was welcomed
into Islamic religious and scholarly sanctuaries.
What I found was an intellectual tradition as complex as any
in Europe or in the US with its own canon of classic text and subjects
as diverse as poetry, grammar, law, religion, and mathematics.
It's a pedagogy covering over five centuries of knowledge that was
in the past spread throughout West Africa.
The scholarly tradition in Timbuktu has long included and valued women.
Moreover, it has been a shared culture for multiple ethnic groups
in the religion, including the [inaudible].
In Timbuktu, there is a profound conviction that to be a saint is
to be a man or woman of knowledge, whether by long study
or by divine inspiration.
Therefore, to be a scholar is to be on the path to sainthood.
Since Timbuktu fell under rebel control at the beginning of April,
a militant Islamist group
and [inaudible] has imposed strict sharia law.
They have destroyed shops that sold alcohol or played Western music,
and enforced separate schooling for girls and boys, all against protests
from the local population.
They have also destroyed civic monuments
and desecrated multiple [inaudible] World Heritage sites,
including the mosque and shrines to many of the city's 333 saints,
declaring the local tradition of praying
at these tombs to be unIslamic.
Over half the population had fled, driven by fear
of the city's lawlessness and by the lack of medicine,
food, water, and electricity.
From the beginning of my work,
I knew that I was photographing a culture threatened by change,
but the threat was a gradual pressure of outside influences.
In 2007, the scholars complained about the influence of rap music,
[inaudible] soap operas, and Western fashion as well
as about the radicalism of new imams, educated in the Middle East
in the militant Islam that was alien to the local way of life.
With the city falling under the control of [inaudible],
militant Islam has become a far greater threat
to Timbuktu's tradition of scholarship
that any outside influence of fashion, music,
or television could ever be.
The Koranic schools [inaudible]
of Timbuktu have long taught a moderate form of Islam influenced
by Sufism and characterized by tolerance parality and a deep joy in
and respect for learning.
This culture is now under attack by violence, greed,
and religious intolerance.
This video is a call for all those involved in Timbuktu's future
to respect the freedom of religion
and cultural self-determination of its citizens.
It's a call to protect a living, religious, and scholarly tradition
that is one of the great cultural legacies of humanity.
No short term political, economic,
or religious gain justifies the destruction of knowledge.
Timbuktu scholars have long known this.
The famous 16th century Timbuktu scholar [inaudible] Baba is known
to have quoted the [inaudible] that states,
"The ink of the scholar is more precious
than the blood of the martyr."
Timbuktu scholars still have much to teach us about freedom
of conscious and religious tolerance.
[ Pause ]
So, again, thank you all for coming.
This afternoon I'll talk about scholarship on Islam in Timbuktu.
I'll also talk a bit about the tragic current events
that have brought the north of Mali to the front page
of the international press this last year and also talk a bit
about the crowdfunding and the publishing
that went into making my book.
So these are all, of course, huge topics.
So I definitely hope we make sure to address your specific interests in,
by bringing them up in the question/answer portion
of the event.
I say this in particular because I know that Timbuktu is a place
so surrounded by myth and legend that it probably exists
as a completely different reality in your mind than it does in mine.
After living in Timbuktu for ten months in 2007, the city became
for me a very personal and even a very normal place.
To take the photographs and do the research that went into my book,
I lived with a Malian family.
My Malian family, the Cati family,
ran one of the city's private manuscript libraries.
They traced their descent from the [inaudible] emperors of Mali as well
as the Visigoth kings of Spain, and the room I lived
in there was 15 meters away from 7,000 ancient manuscripts.
At the same time, on a day-to-day level, my main concerns consisted
of figuring out what I should do between 11:00 AM and 4:00 PM
when it was too hot to even go outside or, you know, figuring out
and deciding in turn how to entertain or how
to avoid the many very active children of the household.
But let's back track a little bit.
How, you may well ask, did I decide to spend ten months living
and photographing in Timbuktu?
As has been said at the beginning, my relationship to Africa goes back
to my youth, in fact, my birth.
I was born in Sierra Leone, and I lived in Bamako,
Mali for three years as a child.
So I have a very long-term interest in the region.
In 2003, when I returned to West Africa as an adult
and as a photographer, I quickly learned
about the ancient manuscripts of Timbuktu.
At that time, there were plenty of articles
in the international press about the subject.
However, during the time I actually spent in Timbuktu, and my meetings
with those involved in manuscript preservation when I was there,
I also learned about the ancient scholarly tradition
that had actually created the manuscripts,
and that was still active and evolving to [inaudible].
This was something that most of the news articles failed to mention and,
in fact, still fail to mention.
Because after all, their reasons that the libraries exist
in Timbuktu is the reasons that libraries exist all over the world.
Scholar study books, they collect books,
and then they write new books of their own.
We are standing here in a testament to that, in fact.
So I realize the potential in their story, and this spurred me to apply
and fortunately receive a Fulbright grant, which enabled me
to do my research and my photographs.
So although I had quite a bit of experience traveling and working
in Mali before I started the project, I actually started it
with relatively little knowledge about Islam.
And what I realized in the course of my work was
that understanding the role of Islam and the role
of traditional education in the culture of Timbuktu and actually
in Mali as a whole was, in fact, essential and at the core
of understanding the entire society.
During the colonial era, the French very consciously adopted a policy
of neglect towards Mali's traditional system of education,
and that attitude has been perpetrated in the,
or continued in the post-colonial era
by both foreign NGO's and Malian elites.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say
that these groups basically often act
as if traditional education will simply disappear if they ignore it.
To be more specific in the case of the French,
I should add that they worked, also worked actively
to co-opt these Koranic schools and transform them into French schools,
and they were successful in doing that,
but they also had an overall policy
of neglect towards the one they weren't actively involved
in changing.
Even now, there's a great amount of prejudice
against traditional Arabic based education in Mali,
in particular against the Koranic schools
which are the most elementary level of education
in the traditional system.
And it's true that there are some practices in some forms
of Koranic education that have become distorted
and corrupted in the modern era.
Of course, it's a vicious cycle because a lot
of the corruption comes from a lack of resources
which in itself is exacerbated by the neglect.
For example, some of you may know children
in [inaudible] Koranic schools,
and not all Koranic schools are [inaudible],
but those in [inaudible] Koranic schools generally beg
for their meals.
And this system was actually developed as a means
of universal education because it meant
that the community supported the education of the children
and even the poorest children could go to school.
However, unfortunately, there are at times,
especially in larger urban centers, nowadays where children only learn
to beg, and they don't learn to study.
However, in the last century, despite the neglect, Koranic schools
and the system of Arabic based education
as a whole has never disappeared, and I fear that it never did
because it's still at the core of Malian culture,
and it still provides an essential service and the moral, religious,
and cultural education of the vast majority of Malians who at least
for a few years in their youth will attend Koranic school.
So traditional education also still trains the religious
and cultural leaders of the community.
For example, in Timbuktu, when a child is born,
an [inaudible] officiates at the baptism.
An [inaudible] is a learned woman who's trained
in the ritual Arabic blessings used in ceremonies connected with women.
And boys are circumcised, the local [inaudible] imams will also gather
to officiate at the ceremony.
The same is true of a marriage.
The same is true of a death.
In fact, every single life event requires the presence
and the participation of a [inaudible], an imam,
or a [inaudible] who has gained their particular knowledge
through the system of traditional education and scholarship.
The same, of course, is also true for the many religious celebrations
from Ramadan to [inaudible].
So it's no exaggeration to say that the cultural and religious education
of Timbuktu's children as well as the entire ceremonial life
and life cycle of the city is completely dependent on the system
of traditional scholarship.
So I hope you're beginning to see, as I did,
why this ancient pedagogy did not disappear and even
if it's been neglected by state structures.
So this brings us to a very fundamental question.
We are now starting to see how scholars are involved
in the ceremonial and religious life of Timbuktu, but, otherwise,
just exactly how and why is scholarly culture linked
with religion, in this case, in the form of Islam.
There are few very clear answers to this question,
and then there are a few more esoteric ones.
I'll start with the basics.
The system of Arabic language scholarship arrived
in West Africa along with the Muslim religion,
and it spread primarily along the trade routes.
Timbuktu is a key stop along the trans-Saharan trade routes.
Naturally develop as a center for trade as well
as a center for scholarship.
Religious studies, which include Islamic law, history,
and the analysis of the Koran and [inaudible],
have always formed a backbone of the pedagogy just as those
who ruled the city with the benefit of this pedagogy, the imams,
[inaudible] traditionally form the backbone
of the cultural and religious hierarchy.
But before colonialism, more secular subjects like poetry, literature,
mathematics, and medicine were also an important part of the curriculum.
In the colonial era, the French based state schools largely took
over the secular subjects, and so the religious
and cultural subjects came
to dominate the traditional system of education.
However, I actually think that some
of the more esoteric answers are the most important
in understanding this visceral link between scholarship and religion,
and scholarship and faith I think is even a better word, in Timbuktu.
In the Muslim world, the Arabic language always has a special
importance because it's the language of the Koran,
considered the direct Word of God.
However, Islam in West Africa has a particularly strong [inaudible]
component that comes from both [inaudible] traditions in the region
and the Sufi brotherhoods.
So part of this mysticism is a belief in the power
of the written word, and most especially the Word
of God as written in Arabic.
So the Word has power if you read it, if you write it,
if you touch it, if you memorize it, if you drink it, if you say it,
if you hold it close to your body.
Scholars, who are essentially men and women who are always reading,
writing, memorizing, touching words, are, therefore, always potentially
in contact with God's power.
So it actually took me quite some time
in Timbuktu before I started to understand this.
But, finally, one evening, I was sitting with Hala,
who is a good friend and the mother of the Cati family, and it occurred
to me to ask if you had written a passage of Koran on a little scrap
of paper, just as a note or a reminder, would you throw that away.
And she was quite surprised by my question,
and she replied immediately no, of course, not.
You would keep it even until it disintegrated.
Hala's answer not only shows exactly how important the written word is
in this cultural context,
but it also very clearly shows why many families who were
and still are often extremely poor would never consider selling
their manuscripts.
The possession of those books,
of all of those words holds a real power and a real blessing.
So to give or sell that blessing away
from the family would be unthinkable.
Having a scholar in the family also brings a similar type of blessing.
The word used is [inaudible].
Scholars intern can also bless,
which explains the essential importance in ceremonial life.
Understanding this belief in the power of the word and the sanctity
of scholarship also explains, of course,
why Timbuktu is a city of 333 saints.
In Timbuktu, to be a scholar is, by definition, to be on the path
to sainthood, and to be a saint is to be a man or woman of knowledge,
whether by long study or by divine inspiration.
So quite naturally, Timbuktu, the center of West African scholarship,
the home over the centuries of so many learned men
and women is also the city of 333 saints.
Scholarship and religion in this way form the center
of Timbuktu's identity, and this is one reason why when I heard
about the rebel takeover of the city in April of 2012,
I understood immediately that the very heart
of the culture was under attack.
When the militant [inaudible] took over Timbuktu last year,
it was not only alcohol and TV and Western clothing that were banned.
What they attacked was also, and perhaps most violently, in fact,
it was the city's practice of a moderate Sufi-influenced Islam.
This includes the celebration of [inaudible],
the worship at the shrines of the 333 saints, their reverence
for the manuscripts, and the basic belief in a tolerant
and inclusive form of Islam, one that celebrates music,
that includes women in schools and commerce, and one that values study,
scholarship, and reason over indoctrination.
The most visible sign of this attack was the destruction of the student,
the tombs of the saints, which most of you probably read about,
structures that had been classified as [inaudible] World Heritage sites.
So now if you consider what I said about the connection between saints
and scholars, I think it becomes very clear why this attack
on the tombs was also an attack on the culture of scholarship
and why the citizens of Timbuktu knew without a doubt
that their manuscripts were also in danger.
Of the many things I learned about the people
of Timbuktu during my time there,
perhaps the most striking was their pride in and their love
for their city and for their culture.
So it was no surprise to me that most people
in Timbuktu hated the rule of the militants.
They worked heroically at the risk of their lives
to save the city's manuscripts,
and they cheered the French intervention, though I am still
in awe of their courage in these dangerous times.
Nonetheless, the city's future
and its cultural future is still completely uncertain,
there now exist an enormous rift among the different ethnic groups.
Tourism, which was the main source of income, will be very,
very slow to regrow, and many of Timbuktu citizens,
especially its more prosperous and well-educated citizens, are,
of course, very hesitant to return some place where their safety
and livelihood are completely uncertain.
Unfortunately, there is something I know for sure.
War changes people, and it changes cultures.
The effects of last year will be strong and lasting on the culture
of Mali and of Timbuktu, and what these changes will be is
as yet unclear to me.
If you read the most recent articles from the last couple
of weeks, there's good news.
March 14th, the first stones were laid
in rebuilding the shrines in Timbuktu.
There's also bad news.
A lot of reports that the radical groups have been seen and active
through the north of Mali again.
So the future is very, as yet very unclear.
This is one reason I knew that I needed
to publish my book as soon as I could.
All photographs change from images of the present
into documents of the past eventually.
However, that change happened to my photographs overnight.
In one day, what had been a project about the endurance
of Timbuktu's ancient scholarly culture into the present,
which is what I intended the work to be, became a historical document
about Timbuktu's scholarly and religious culture in a pre-war era.
Last April, I already had been looking for a publisher
for the book for over a year.
I had found several, but as is now unfortunately very common
with art books, they all wanted me to bring them $20,000
or more to publish the book.
Moreover, in the process of submitting my manuscripts,
I heard many comments like you have to down play the Islam angle
and other viewpoints that made me rather hesitant to place my work
in the hands of someone who didn't fully understand the project.
Sadly, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say
that the book is important for the very reasons that most publishers,
even some academic publishers,
were afraid to make a financial commitment towards it.
Last summer, I finally decided to self-publish and to finance
that publication through crowdfunding,
and although the entire process was very stressful
and incredibly time consuming,
I definitely think it was the best decision
for me both artistically and financially.
For many years, the Internet, while an amazing tool,
has drained money away from content producers, whether journalists
or artists or writers, even as it thrives off this hungry [inaudible],
that thrives off of what we produce.
We are finally beginning to see some tools like crowdfunding
that allow us to bring revenue back into our hands,
but that's only going to happen if we, as artists,
take an active role in their use.
The difficulties I faced in publication
of my book are not censorship per se.
They, by no means, compare with the violent suppression of music
and other forms of expression under [inaudible] rule in the north
of Mali, or, frankly, the suppression of journalism
in the south of Mali after the coup.
Nonetheless, I know from personal experience that of myself
and of my peers that artists of all sorts in America at this time,
especially young emerging artists, are facing enormous difficulties
in getting their work out to the public, and dare I say it,
in getting it out in a way that earns us a bare minimum
to continue to do what we're doing.
Why does this matter?
Why is art important?
These are questions that I grapple with constantly.
In times of economic difficulty, of terrorism, of war, does art matter?
Do manuscripts matter when people's lives are at stake?
Does music matter when other people don't have enough to eat?
My answer is yes.
Art and manuscripts, music and poetry, shrines
and books matter more than ever in such times.
I'm going to end this part of the presentation with a quote
from Seamus Haney, from his essay, "The Government of the Tongue",
and this essay is part of a book of essays also named "The Government
of the Tongue", all of which meditate in various forms
on this persistent question, does art matter, and in particular,
how does it matter in times of war.
And for those of you who don't know, Seamus Haney is an Irish poet
who for much of his life, of course, was working under a situation
of conflict and also of religious conflict.
So he was living these questions himself.
Haney writes, "I want now to offer two further texts for meditation.
The first is from T.S. Eliot.
Forty-four years ago in October 1942 in wartime London when he was
at work on [inaudible], Eliot wrote in a letter to E. Martin Brown,"
and here it begins the Eliot, T.S. Eliot quote.
"In the midst of what is going on now, it is hard when you sit
down at a desk to feel confident that morning
after morning spent fiddling with words
and rhymes is justified activity.
Especially as there is never any certainty
that the whole thing won't have to be scrapped.
And, on the other hand, external or public activity is more of a drug
than this solitary toil which often seems so pointless."
That ends the Eliot quote, and Seamus Haney now continues.
"Here is the great paradox of poetry
and of the imaginative arts in general.
Faced with the brutality of a historic onslaught,
they are practically useless.
Yet, they verify our singularity.
They strike and stake out the ore of self which lies at the base
of every individuated life.
In one sense, the efficacy of poetry is nil.
No lyric has ever stopped a tank.
In another sense, it is unlimited.
It is like writing in the sand in the face of which accusers
and accused are left speechless and renewed."
From his writing, it is clear that Seamus Haney believed deeply,
as do Timbuktu scholars and as do I, in the power and in the importance
of the word and of the book.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you so much.
Your meaning of the word and the scholarship that has been with us
for centuries, from the area we call Timbuktu.
And with that, I would love [inaudible] entertain any questions
that you may have Ms. Huddleston and the materials
and information she brought to you on the manuscripts.
>> First of all, I want to thank you so much for your very,
very entertain program and presentation.
And I think you raise very fundamental issues because with art,
with your photographs and your particular focus on photography
as art, you add, you know, several dimensions.
First of all, you add the memory dimension, and it is this memory
which is kept through art by painting, by music, by,
it is the memory that transcends war,
and people can then remember it was better or in other words,
before the war, before destruction.
And I think it is critical because art also preserves culture,
and once there is war, countries often destroyed [inaudible].
And yet it is only the works of art that are best preserved [inaudible].
But my question is more in terms of excess.
You said you spent ten months in Timbuktu.
In terms of complication, and [inaudible] question, was it,
in what language were you communicating,
and was communication an issue?
Did it, because it had, it was coming from two different countries,
[inaudible] did it have an impact in shaping your work?
>> Right.
>> So that's my question.
>> I'm sure it did.
I speak French quite well.
So I did most of my research in French,
and most of the people I spoke with could speak French.
It was a second language for both of us.
So that, you know, that's always an issue.
They, spoke it better than me in most cases.
When I, there were some people I worked with, of course,
who didn't speak French and who only spoke Songhay or Tamasheq
or preferred, in fact, to conduct the interview in Arabic,
and when that was the case, I used a translator
who translated those languages to French towards me.
I think, I mean, the great advantage I had was that I was there
for ten months, and I definitely could not have gotten the
photographs I did or the depth of understanding I did
without that amount of time.
And I think that there is, there, language is an issue, but, in fact,
cross cultural gaps in communication are perhaps even more of an issue.
So most of the people I worked with, I would explain my project to them,
and they wanted to help me.
They liked the idea.
They, I got along well with them.
They thought it was important.
I didn't face people who were trying to put roadblocks in my way,
however, most of them, you know, they didn't know,
they don't know what a photographer wants
or what even an American won't understand.
Things that are obvious to them or completely,
like the fact that you'd never throw away a scrap of paper with a verse
of the Koran written on it were completely mysterious to me.
So it was more, it was less a language issue, in fact,
more of an issue of my just having to be there for long enough
to be able to sense where those gaps were, right.
Again, not because people were trying to hide anything,
but simply because they could not imagine that I wouldn't know
or that it would interest me.
>> And I think that's another fact about art.
There is an [inaudible] that comes through artistic deduction.
That goes beyond language and beyond the [inaudible] -
>> Well, you're showing a commitment, you know, in there.
>> OK. You mentioned that the people welcomed you,
but my question is about photograph per se.
It's my understanding that in Islamic culture,
they frown upon photography, you know, taking live images and so on.
How did you get them to accept [inaudible]?
>> Well, as with many issues, there's a spectrum, right.
Islam is a world religion.
So as it manifests itself, and at different points in time,
and in different parts of the world, different strictures
and different points of faith are going to be emphasized.
So in West Africa, people really have no problems
with taking pictures.
People have, the main issue people have
with their picture being taken is [inaudible],
during the 19th century I think there were some beliefs
that actually came out of [inaudible] tradition
of being afraid of having your image taken, but, you know,
that's not a play currently in Malian culture.
Where you find difficulty in having your picture taken in West Africa,
which it is a difficult place for photographers, quite frankly,
but that is not a religious issue.
It's actually an issue of you might say due respect.
People are very conscious of their own dignity,
and so if you do not approach a situation giving them due respect
and consideration, they will be offended
by having their photograph taken.
But there are photo studios all over Mali, right.
Mali is, what, I don't know, ninety percent Muslim.
It has been, you know, for centuries.
It's a fully Muslim country, but there really are no issues
within Malian culture, within west, you know,
traditional West African Islamic culture with having images taken.
Of course, there are more people who believe
in a much stricter form of practice.
Who might have their own specific requirements.
That, I mean, as a Fulbrighter, since I was there officially
as a researcher for ten months, I did get a research permit
from the Department of Culture I think it was at the very beginning.
In Timbuktu, everybody knew what I was doing.
I had two main organizations that essentially were sponsoring me.
One thing about the Fulbright,
which I think is actually really is good is you have
to have a local sponsoring organization.
You have to.
So already before I even receive a grant,
I had set up with [inaudible], which was, still is a local NGO, a very,
very actively involved in preserving the manuscripts of Timbuktu
and helping individual families build manuscript libraries.
So they knew who I was.
They knew what I was going to do when I arrived in town.
They took me around.
So, I mean, you're not seeing, it might,
the pictures might appear candid,
but the key to getting candid photography is to sit
down with people ahead of time, explain what you're doing,
get permission to be there, and then be in the situation
and let them do what they do and take the pictures after they are,
you know, they're not bothered by your presence.
[ Inaudible Comments ]
Right -
[ Inaudible Comments ]
Right.
[ Inaudible Comments ]
First, I don't think I can answer your specific question with regards
to [inaudible] tombs, and that's because in a certain way,
my book is like an overview, you know.
It wasn't, I'm not a Ph.D. in ethnography, alright.
So I wasn't there probably as you were to do the kind,
this kind of very in depth questioning.
I was there really to document the cultural matrix as a whole
and hopefully do so in a way through photography
that could make it all this, you know,
people like John [Inaudible] have studied these issues before I got
there, but his work is not going to be accessible
to the general public, right.
So my goal was to do this in a way through photography
so that the photography could act as a bridge, right, between the culture
in Timbuktu and people who are interested outside of Timbuktu.
And in some ways, like, if you read the captions, I even,
I realize this now even more if you read the captions
through the different photographs, it, they're almost
like if you wanted to do a research subject, here's a research subject
that not a lot of people.
You can do your whole Ph.D. beyond this,
and here's another subject you can do your entire Ph.D. on.
And, oh, by the way, here's another subject you can do your entire Ph.D.
on, and I'm not doing a Ph.D. on any specific thing.
I'm basically kind of presenting this, and all this information
in a way that is interesting to scholars
but also accessible to the general public.
But in terms of your general question,
people having different interpretations,
my general answer is going to be kind of annoying
because it's going to be yes and no.
Because for those of you who have been to Mali,
I think you'll understand what I'm saying when I think it's the most
on message culture I've ever been to.
And it's, like, there are certain catch phrases for things
that are used constantly from north to south, which seem to be
that the sort of understood major way of explaining something.
And actually if you sort of read a survey of articles written
by different journalists about the manuscripts of Timbuktu,
I think you'll start to see that come through.
At the same time, of course, you know, in every single culture,
every single individual is going to have a different interpretation
of any ritual, any object, and it's going to be determined
by who they were taught by, what teacher in their school,
in their home, what their personal experience, you know,
how their personal experience shaped their interaction.
Now the interesting thing is that this very answer of mine,
it would be probably heresy in a very orthodox culture to say
that there are always intrinsically
by human nature multiple interpretations of beliefs
and objects and events, but that's something I believe.
>> Were there any things that were absolutely forbidden to you
as [inaudible] person because, you know,
in a lot of different religions, it's, like, things,
certain things can be opened up, other things are strictly reserved
for people who are within the faith -
>> Right, right.
Yeah. Actually, you know, when I first visited Timbuktu in 2003,
you could actually go in the Great Mosque and visit as a tourist,
which I did, but probably in response or I should say certainly
in response to this growing pressure of outside preachers coming in,
preaching a more conservative Islam as well as some events that are hard
to know if they actually occurred or if they're just [inaudible]
about tourists not acting properly in various mosques,
by the time I was there back in 2007,
non-Muslims couldn't go into mosques.
So none of my photographs are inside a mosque.
Most of the teachers of the [inaudible] I asked
that I could photograph said yes, no problem.
When I worked in Timbuktu, I dressed,
you know, fairly conservatively.
Always long pants, long sleeves.
I didn't wear a head scarf, but I wore a, like, a bandana covering
on my head, which quite frankly was just practical when the desert.
So you want to dress that way anyway.
And I only had one [inaudible] who when I went
into photograph his [inaudible], he wanted me to wear a skirt.
That was fine.
I did. No problem, and I met one other [inaudible] who didn't want me
to photograph him, and that was fine, but, you know, that's out of,
I don't know, 10, 15 or more people.
>> [Inaudible] war changes things, war changes people.
[Inaudible] do you plan to go back [inaudible]?
>> I would really like to for sure.
I think I'll probably, well, Timbuktu for sure I have
to wait a bit, and in terms in the south of Mali, I think it's, for me,
it's probably still wise to wait a little longer.
But, you know, I first went to Mali when I was six years old.
I went to the French school there, [inaudible], for three years.
And so it, you know, it's a place that's very important to me,
and so for sure, I would like to go back.
Yeah.
[ Background Sounds ]
[ Inaudible Comments ]
So actually a large portion of the manuscripts are
in the government library.
Manuscript library that I guess in 2008 was actually, after I had left.
While I was there, they had a building
for it, but it was pretty basic.
Nice but basic, and then
in 2008 this South African funded [inaudible] very beautiful building
to house the government connection in Timbuktu was built.
And then, so you had that as kind of the center, right, the center piece,
and then you had many families
with manuscript collections of various sizes, right.
Some like the [inaudible] library,
I think they have, like, 9,000 manuscripts.
The Cati foundation, I lived with them, they have over 7,000,
and then other families it could vary from 100 to, you know,
a couple books because manuscripts, essentially,
if you think about what they are,
the term manuscript is a really loaded term.
It sounds kind of sexy, right.
But what are manuscripts?
Manuscripts are also legal documents, contracts for ownership
of property, marriage contracts, and all the rest.
So most non-standing families in Timbuktu are going to have a few.
That makes sense.
So when I was there in 2007, the big push was to help the families
who still wanted to keep the manuscripts
in their own possession rather than give them to a government library
to provide, to build rooms and shelving, etc.,
that could properly protect them
from dangers all manuscripts have in normal times, right.
Humidity and flooding and mice and insects, right.
So have, you know, anti-insect treated,
insecticide treated shelving and have it in a room,
probably not air conditioned because you can't rely on the, you know,
on the electricity, but that was pretty, a room that was
in a fairly stable location [inaudible].
That was the big push, and, of course, to digitize them.
I will say that even when I was there in 2007,
people had already been kidnapped, right, in the region.
I would have loved to have gone to [inaudible] and other places
that had manuscript collections way out in the middle of the desert,
and I chose not to because the people, the Malians I spoke with,
you know, told me they can guarantee my safety in Timbuktu, but,
you know, whenever you take a four by four out into the desert,
there's always some risks.
So even at that time, you know, the potential for unrest was known,
and I had very, unfortunately, of course, that all exploded
in the most extreme form in 2007.
I mean, 2012, sorry.
And what happened at that time,
is that a lot of the manuscripts were smuggled,
and many of you have probably heard the story in the press, right,
were smuggled by donkey and by [inaudible] in this kind
of amazing clandestine effort, were smuggled to the south.
Some of them were just hidden locally, too, right,
depending on where they were and what kind
of higher [inaudible] location they were in.
So what the danger was.
And then now, so now, what you have is you have hundreds of thousands
of manuscripts hidden in the north and some not hidden,
that in secret location in Bamako where, of course,
it's much, much more humid.
So there have been quite a number of efforts by,
with the Ford Foundation, the [inaudible] Foundation,
some private crowdfunding, too, to raise funds to,
for at least the manuscripts in the south to find the materials, the,
like, boxes with humidity traps and all the rest to properly house them
in a fairly stable manner until hopefully in the future,
they can be returned to Timbuktu.
[ Inaudible Comments ]
You know, I only photographed a few of the [inaudible] partly
because it's, you know, I think you asked before about situations
that were difficult to photograph.
The praying at the tombs of the saints,
what happens inside a cemetery, and they're, like, I'm not sure five
or six very important cemeteries in Timbuktu, and I never felt
that it was right for me to enter the cemeteries.
So when I would photograph that, it was always from outside the gate,
which seemed, no one had any trouble with that.
So largely, often, most of the time when people are buried
within the Muslim religion, there isn't much of a structure, right.
There's not a, there's not even, like, a headstone.
In Timbuktu, often there'll be pots and other things in the area,
but people know where their family's buried because they know.
So some of the structures to the saints are large and identifiable,
but others are much less so.
The militant targeted the large and identifiable structures
and destroyed, from what I can gather, most of those.
And what was really unfortunate especially is some
of the saints were buried in the retaining wall of the main mosque
in [inaudible], and they destroyed the part of the mosque
that contained that, those shrines.
>> One more question.
>> I was intrigued by the kind of [inaudible] question.
The 333 saints shrines, now is 333 a real number,
or is it a symbolic number?
Is there something, you know, sacred about the number?
>> From what I can gather, it's very much a real number.
I myself could not list all the saints, but from my understanding,
there are, you know, those knowledgeable in Timbuktu who could.
For sure, it's also a very sacred number within the kind
of the mythological numerology.
Actually around the world, not just in, you know,
Sufi-influenced cultures.
A basic question, what if there was a new saint,
would you have to move it to 334?
I think there would be some cultural resistance to that because it's
such a, an enshrined number in the cultural consciousness of Timbuktu,
and, in fact, you know, it, that is how Timbuktu is known, right.
You know, it's, like, we have, well, I don't know just like,
but New Mexico is the state of enchantment, right.
And we have that on our license plate,
and that's kind of, that's a catch phrase.
Land of enchantment.
Timbuktu is the city of 333 saints.
The, that phrase goes whether Timbuktu in Mali culturally
in the same way that, you know, Land of Enchantment, New Mexico,
what is DC, I don't know.
[multiple speakers] They kind of have,
they have some new cultural [inaudible] happening, but,
you know, what is it, who, which is the Constitution state?
One of them.
Right. So, but a lot of states have kept their old catch phrases
in the same way.
So, and in the central plaza of Timbuktu, you know,
there was a painted sign that said the city of 333 saints,
and when the [inaudible] came, they blacked out that sign
because the very idea of the importance of saints
in the more conservative [inaudible] tradition is very,
very frowned upon.
And, in fact, this battle between, you know, the [inaudible] battle,
which, you know, that's what I think Seamus Haney is a really relevant
person to quote, right.
Protestant Catholicism, fighting it out in northern Ireland,
you have an interesting kind
of parallel going on in the Muslim world.
It's not just Mali where this is happening.
Sufi shrines have been attacked in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Afghanistan,
all over the Muslim world, and, in fact, the fact that it entered,
that in this instance in Timbuktu the issue entered the front page
of international press worldwide was kind of a first,
but it's something that's been occurring for years.
>> Well, I would like to thank Alexandra again
for your very important [inaudible] research that you did
on the manuscripts, and I, at this point in time, I want everyone
to take, have an opportunity to actually see your book
and have you sign the book that they would like to get at this point
in time, and I want to give you a round of applause [inaudible].
>> Thank you all for coming.
[ Pause ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
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