JOHANNESBURG/BAMAKO – Islamist extremists damaged or stole only a limited number of manuscripts in Timbuktu in Mali before they fled the fabled desert city, a South African university said Wednesday.
People in the north Malian city who have knowledge of the documents reported that there was no malicious destruction of any library or collection, said the University of Cape Town, which helped fund a state-of-the-art library to house manuscripts.
“The custodians of the libraries worked quietly throughout the rebel occupation of Timbuktu to ensure the safety of their materials,” said the university. Islamist rebels have been in control of Timbuktu for nearly 10 months.
The university said that a report from Britain’s Sky News that 25,000 manuscripts had been burned was false. Other news reports quoted the city mayor, who wasn’t in the city, saying manuscripts had been destroyed, the university said.
With its Islamic treasures and centuries-old mud-walled buildings, including an iconic mosque, Timbuktu is a U.N.-designated World Heritage site.
Most of the manuscripts, some of which are as old as 900 years, were gathered between the 1980s and 2000 from all over Mali for the Ahmad Baba Institute for Higher Learning and Islamic Research, which moved into its new home in 2009.
Media reports said that the Ahmad Baba Institute had been ransacked by the militants. But the university said a senior researcher at the institute, Mohamed Diagayete, said the majority of the manuscripts were stored in an older building elsewhere in the city.
The manuscripts cover subjects from science, astrology and medicine to history, theology, grammar and geography. They date back to the late 12th century, the start of a 300-year golden age for Timbuktu as a spiritual and intellectual capital for the propagation of Islam.
Islamist extremists decimated tourism in 2011 when three Europeans were taken hostage from a Timbuktu restaurant that November. Last April, Tuareg nationalist rebels seized control of Timbuktu from government troops. A day later Islamist insurgents moved into the city. They banned music, insisted women cover themselves and began carrying out public executions.
On Tuesday, Timbuktu was in control of French and Malian troops, including some 250 French paratroopers dropped from the sky. The extremists melted into the desert without firing a shot. Townspeople were jubilant at the city’s liberation from their intolerant captors.
France called for peace talks between Mali’s government and “legitimate representatives” from the north after French troops took up positions at Kidal, the last city held by Islamist forces.
“This political process now has to advance concretely,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said Wednesday. He called for talks with the legitimate representatives of the northern peoples and “nonterrorist armed groups” that recognize the integrity of Mali.
“Only a north-south dialogue will prepare the ground for the Malian state to return to the north of the country,” he said.
The United States also called for Malians to refrain from revenge attacks on Tuaregs or other ethnic minorities.
Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traore, on Thursday ruled out talks with the Islamist groups but said he was ready to meet Tuareg activists.
French troops arrived at Kidal airport in the early hours of Wednesday, just days after the capture of Gao and Timbuktu and after a lightning push north, which Paris hopes now to wind down with a handover to African forces.
French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Wednesday the troops at Kidal had been unable to leave the airport there because of a sandstorm.
But a spokesman for the newly formed Islamic Movement of Azawad (MIA), which on Monday announced it had taken control of the town, said its leader was speaking to the French there.
The MIA says it has split from the homegrown Islamist group Ansar Dine (“Defenders of the Faith”), that it rejects “extremism and terrorism” and wants to find a peaceful solution to Mali’s crisis.
On Wednesday, the group appealed to the international community to prevent the deployment of Malian and West African troops in the Kidal region before a political solution had been found.
Kidal lies 1,500 km northeast of the capital, Bamako, and until recently was controlled by the Islamists of Ansar Dine.
Ansar Dine and two other Islamist groups took advantage of the chaos following a military coup in Bamako last March to seize the north.
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