The Djenne Manuscript Library in Peril.

After I had written the last entry from the British Library  Private view I also posted the pictures on Facebook, and I received this comment ( below in my translation) from Ousman Yaro who  works at the Djenne Manuscript Library. He is  the grandson of a celebrated Djenne poet: 

 “Congratulations and a big thanks to our coordinator  Sophie Sarin on behalf of the people of Djenne in general, and the personnel of the Djenne Manuscript Library in particular. But the awful thing is that the Djenne Manuscript Library, unless nothing is done in the coming month, is threatened with closure! All the projects are now finished. The last one came to an end only a few days ago. The personnel, with more than eight years of work experience, will have to find other activities and the manuscript owners will no longer have confidence in the library’s ability to look after their collections and will therefore remove them. Such are the consequences if the Malian state; the funding bodies and the benefactors withdraw, or don’t continue their  involvement!”

It is indeed a very serious situation. I made an appeal in my speech at the British Library for help.  Below  is  my speech,  and  the last  section is the relevant one:

“Ten years ago I had nothing to do with Malian manuscripts. That I am standing here today about to talk about these projects in Djenne is one of those twists and turns of fate one could hardly make up.

One day in 2008 two Djenne dignitaries dressed in embroidered boubous and prayer caps  arrived at my little mud hotel in Djenne. They were from the Djenne Manuscript Library: an institution I had frankly never heard of- I had been too busy looking after tourists during what was still a happy time in Mali, which was an up and coming tourist destination.  The Djenne notables invited me to come and see the library- also a mud building in the celebrated Djenne architecture, which had earned this ancient city UNESCO world heritage status.  The library needed funding. Could I help them? In those days there were not many families who had deposited their manuscript treasures there yet, but enough to make me fascinated:  so it was not only Timbuktu that had manuscripts? I should have known better of course- Djenne is actually much older than Timbuktu, and Islam penetrated here in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, during the height of the Malian empire, when the first version of the famous Djenne mosque was built. Of course there would be manuscripts here!

In the summer of 2009 the Endangered Archives Programme organized a conference here at the British Library. I went along to this and met the people in charge who seemed in favour of our putting a proposal together for our first  Pilot Project- including Cathy Collins... are you here? Cathy sent me off to SOAS to meet Dr. Dmitry Bondarev, and he  became the projects’ academic sponsor, a position he still retains, as well as a becoming a trusted advisor and good friend.

The  four  Endangered Archives Programmes in Djenne ran between 2009 and 2016 during which time the library’s collection grew from a few hundred manuscripts belonging to a handful of Djenne families to becoming an important depository for   8520 manuscripts belonging to 141 Djenne families. The subject matter of the manuscripts is varied, although with a large proportion of Islamic texts such as Korans, Islamic jurisprudence and Hadiths, or traditional stories concerning the Prophet Mohammed and his companions. There is also a very large collection of what is called ‘esoteric’ texts, which concerns magic- a speciality of the Djenne Marabouts, who are famous all over West Africa. These manuscripts include talismans and also many herbal remedies and traditional healing recipes.

The policy of the library has been to offer open access to scholars who would like to study the manuscripts in situ, but the deteriorating political situation in northern and Central Mali has meant that very few scholars have been able to avail themselves of this opportunity.

That is why this great collection of nearly half a million images from the Manuscripts of Djenne , which will now go online, together with the ongoing major project with three libraries in Timbuktu is truly an expression of what the Endangered Archives Programme Project is all about- these documents are now virtually out of bounds and they are indeed endangered, not only by the perennial hazards of climate and insects, but also by an increasingly precarious security climate.  However, this great collection is saved, at least in digital form, for posterity, and for that we thank Arcadia and the Endangered Archives Programme!

Finally, I have a request:  the Djenne Manuscript Library is now losing all its funding. The staff, in particular Garba Yaro, its devoted main archivist, will no longer have a salary. The central Government sees the library as the responsibility of the local community and of the Mairie, as part of decentralization. But the Mairie of Djenne is entirely without funding and has not paid its own staff for many months. The actual mud building of the library need a yearly recoating of mud.

The good news is that this is not a question of a lot of money: with £ 6000- £7000 a year, Garba Yaro would keep his job, the library would get its yearly  coating and a modest few light bulbs would be kept alight.  And most importantly, the Djenne families who have deposited their manuscripts in the library for safe keeping would not have to remove them again. Djenne Manuscript Library, painstakingly and lovingly built up during the last ten years into a major resource would still remain. Please will someone help me to give that wonderful news to the Djenne team on the 7^th of December in Bamako!"