Appalling news today that the fighting in Mali has led to the destruction of the new Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu, with its extraordinary manuscript collections. The website of Tombouctou Manuscripts Online gives some idea of the riches of the Institute’s library, which testified to the vibrant literary culture of this commercial crossroads during its sixteenth-century heyday, when a library of 1600 books made you one of the less distinguished local scholars. Leo Africanus (al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi), in his 1526 treatise on Africa, described Timbuktu as a city where the King honoured learning, and where the trade in manuscripts generated more money than any other form of commerce.

The city’s mayor puts it very succinctly when he says: ‘This is terrible news. The manuscripts were a part not only of Mali’s heritage but the world’s heritage’. Let’s hope that something can be salvaged from the rubble.