The demise of 'the Manuscript of the Week'...

I am really quite cross.

During the last few years of working with the three great libraries of Timbuktu I used to put up a ‘manuscript of the week’ on the Facebook page I  created for the project www. https://www.facebook.com/ELITTOMBOUCTOU  This was in order to show what is found in the manuscripts- because most of the time people are not aware of the content of these documents- they just believe what they are told, i.e. that the manuscripts are a fount of all wisdom, and that it is possible to find every subject matter in them. This is something of an exaggeration. They are very interesting for many reasons, but the large majority of them are copies of canonical Islamic texts, or often talismans or recipes for various forms of ‘maraboutage’.

To me, who is not an Arabist, the subject matter nevertheless became known to me in quite some detail because when we were working at Djenne in  connection to the British Library, I had to translate the descriptions of each manuscript’s subject matter, which had been entered by the Djenne archivist  in French. This was something which I really enjoyed. It brought the manuscripts alive for me, and made the work seem all the more interesting and worthwhile.

One recurring problem during my 12 years of working with the manuscripts of Mali has been the reluctance of the manuscript owners to publish anything online- this is of course a problem when the project’s aim is to digitize and make available to scholars online the contents of the libraries!

However, that hurdle has been successfully crossed and the projects continue. Nevertheless, here we are again, up against the same old problem: we have been told to stop the publication  on our Facebook page online of the Djenne manuscripts: https://www.facebook.com/DjenneManuscriptLibrary where I have published over the last year or so, images and descriptions of the Djenne collection which is being digitized. And every time we publish on Facebook we make sure that we do it with the consent of the manuscript owner!

And now, last July, a conference was held in Bamako, organized by UNESCO, at which the representative of the Djenne Manuscript Library was asked to cease the Face book publications! Asked by whom? This remains something of a mystery to me, but I have been told that the concensus of the assembled grandees was that we must stop. 

No one said anything during our three years publications on Facebook of the Timbuktu manuscripts!

And what exactly are we told to stop? Who has the right to tell the Djenne Manuscript Library that they should not publish on Facebook?

It is almost  entirely  a question of images from Qur’ans with beautiful calligraphy, or handsomely illustrated Dalā’il al-khayrāt  (Prayers upon the Prophet.) which have, as I said, been admitted for publication by their owners! I can only guess that our lively presence on Facebook is making others jealous? 

Here are two examples:

                                      

"The manuscript of the week comes from the Traoré 23 family.It is an exegesis of the Qur'an from the 19th century. The pale writing is the quotations from the Qur'an, the black sections contain the commentary. It has many marginal annotations in Ajami- Bozo and Songhoy, two main languages of Djenne.

تفسير الجلالين

Tafsīr al-jalālayn. Exégèse du Saint Coran"

 And another Week's special manuscript:

جزء من المصحف الشريف

Djenne continues to delight with the beautiful manuscripts that the population keeps bringing in to the library.The manuscript of the week is another lovely 19th century Qur'an from the Yaro family.