AHMED BĀBĀ INSTITUTE, also known as the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Research, a library, research, and archival center located in Timbuktu, Mali. The institute was conceptualized in 1967 at a meeting assembled by UNESCO and established in 1973, funded primarily by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Eventually the institute would grow to accommodate nearly forty thousand ancient manuscripts, a small percentage of the estimated seven hundred thousand that have survived in Timbuktu alone. The institute is named for the celebrated seventeenth-century Sunni Islamic scholar Aḥmad Bābā al-Timbuktī, full name Abū al-Abbās Aḥmad ibn Aḥmad ibn Aḥmad ibn Umar ibn Muhammad Aqit al-Takrūrī Al-Massufi al-Timbuktī. Aḥmad Bābā studied in Timbuktu for many years alongside his father, eventually teaching students of his own in the city’s mosques.
In 1591 Timbuktu was captured during the Moroccan invasion of the Songhai Empire. Aḥmad Bābā was outspoken in his criticism of the Moroccan sultan and conquest of Timbuktu, which resulted in his deportation to Morocco on charges of sedition in 1593, where he remained until 1608. It was during these years in exile that Aḥmad Bābā wrote many of his best-known works, including a biography of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-Maghili, a pivotal figure in the Islamization of West Africa.
Serving as the heart of African Islamic scholarship for many centuries, Arabic education in Timbuktu was fractured by French colonial rule in Mali beginning in 1892. The imposition of the French language forced many ethnic groups to stop communicating in their ancestral languages, which rendered some manuscripts incomprehensible. Under colonization the manuscripts were devalued and many were destroyed, sold off, looted, or ended up in French museums and universities. During this time many families buried or concealed their manuscripts, fearing that otherwise they would be destroyed.
After sixty-eight years of colonial rule, Mali declared independence in 1960. The rapid departure of the French forced the newly independent Malian state to prioritize more pressing social concerns over the preservation of Africa’s scholarly materials; though the issue loomed large as an opportunity to unify Malian cultural pride, there was simply too much to be done in the immediate postcolonial period. Instead the preservation effort was taken up at the grassroots level; it is estimated that between sixty to eighty private collections and libraries worked to gather and conserve manuscripts after independence.
During the first eleven years of its existence, the Ahmed Baba Institute was able to gather only around 3,500 manuscripts. The pace of acquisition quickened, however, with the hiring of Abdel Kader Haidara in 1984. Abdel came from an influential family and had inherited its immense personal collection; between 1984 and 2002 he was instrumental in obtaining over sixteen thousand manuscripts, often traveling from village to village in Mali and all over West Africa.
Abdel’s success in expanding the collection posed a new challenge since the volume of accumulated manuscripts soon surpassed the capacity of the institute’s building, which was crumbling and unable to properly store materials. In 2001 South African president Thabo Mbeki signed a bilateral agreement with the government of Mali pledging funds for the construction of a new building for the Ahmed Baba Institute. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development adopted the plan as its first cultural project.
In 2009 the $8.3 million, fifty-thousand-square-foot new building was unveiled. Equipped with advanced storage and conservation facilities, including air-conditioning and an automatic fire-fighting system, it featured a public library, auditorium, outdoor amphitheater, and guest rooms. It was designed by South African architect Andre Spies, who sought to juxtapose ancient and modern Timbuktu. For materials Spies chose mud mixed with concrete, which both prevented rainfall damage and respected Timbuktu’s architectural homogeneity.
In 2012 civil war broke out between the northern and southern parts of Mali as multiple insurgency groups fought to establish an independent state in the north. The militant group Ansar Dine soon took control of Timbuktu, triggering French intervention. On January 28, 2013, as French-backed Malian troops captured the airport in Timbuktu, fleeing members of Ansar Dine set fire to the Ahmed Baba Institute, which they had been utilizing as sleeping quarters, an act met with international condemnation.
The institute had been occupied for ten months, and much of the valuable equipment for conservation and digitization was stolen or destroyed. Owing to the heroic efforts of Abdel Kader Haidara, however, more than 350,000 manuscripts had already been spirited out of the institute and into safe hands by the time of the fire, and only around 4,000 were burned by the Islamists.