TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — Thirteen years ago, Abdoulaye Cissé risked his life to smuggle tens of thousands of fragile manuscripts out of Timbuktu as al-Qaida -linked extremists swept into the desert town.
At night, he loaded crates of manuscripts from the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Research onto donkey carts, aware that their pages carried evidence of his people’s glorious past. They were taken to the river, where wooden boats and then buses took them to Mali’s capital, Bamako — a 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) journey.
“It was dark, but we knew the route by heart,” said Cissé, the institute’s general secretary.
Moving the manuscripts took a month. The institute’s staff knew they risked their lives.
The 28,000 manuscripts returned safely to Timbuktu in August after a request from local leaders and civil society. It reflected both the city’s pride in cultural preservation and concerns about the potentially damaging humidity in Bamako. Mali’s government has portrayed it as a victory.
But al-Qaida remains a threat. Its fighters attacked Timbuktu as recently as June, and affiliated fighters with the JNIM group have imposed a fuel blockade on landlocked Mali, threatening to bring down the military regime.
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Beyond the institute, which is owned by the government, Timbuktu is home to private libraries holding an estimated 377,000 manuscripts in total. All were smuggled to the capital, where they remain.
“What we find in these documents does not exist anywhere else in the w …