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The book smugglers of Timbuktu : the quest for this storied city and the race to save its treasures by Charlie English is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is The book smugglers of Timbuktu : the quest for this storied city and the race to save its treasures about?

Two tales of a city: The historical race to reach one of the world's most mythologized places, and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians, fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al Qaeda, added another layer to the legend. To Westerners, the name "Timbuktu" long conjured a tantalising paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for "discovery" tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, the climate, and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way too. A medieval centre of learning, it was home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts, on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, law to history, pharmacology, and astronomy. When al-Qaeda-linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012, threatening the existence of these precious documents, a remarkable thing happened: a team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the manuscripts into hiding. Relying on extensive research and firsthand reporting, Charlie English expertly twines thes

Who reads The book smugglers of Timbuktu : the quest for this storied city and the race to save its treasures?

Author

Charlie English

Publisher

HarperCollins Publishers; William Collins

Published

2017

Language

EN

ISBN

9780008126643

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Fiction, Islam, History