Mali’s Ancient Manuscripts on Display: Coercion or Advancement?
Earth Talk: Mali’s Ancient Manuscripts on Display: Coercion or Advancement?
Acquisition of documents, cultural items and spiritual relics by foreigners is certainly not a new invention; whether it is bodies exhumed from the pyramids in the land today known as Egypt or cherished items from the Iraqi museums and temples, foreign looting and plundering is as old as war. Interestingly, in today's global market and with today's aggressive politics, outright looting and stealing is often replaced with consensual extortion, and governments seen as weaker (or puppet governments) are "convinced" to turn over their country's valuables willingly and gratefully, whether it be raw materials, labor, their dead, antiquities or cultural valuables. The politics and hidden agendas of superpower governments are intricate and often leave their victims living in a shadow of falsities and misinformation. One must be at the top of their game when dealing with these governments, whether one is another government, organization or individual, to prevent being taken for a fool and used solely for the gain and advancement of their agenda. There have been countless victims, and there will be countless more. Many of the victims do not even realize that they are victims until it is too late... Abdoul Kader Haidara, the director of the Mamma Haidara Library, is but one example.
Haidara has turned over priceless artifacts to the American Government, and has done so with excitement and glee.
Abdoul Kader Haidara is the proud owner of a collection of thousands of manuscripts that his family had saved and preserved over generations for the benefit of future generations. Haidara, not being a stupid man, realized the value of the manuscripts that were originally kept in trunks and boxes. Realizing that the valuable manuscripts and the knowledge they contained were becoming victim to heat, rain and insects, Haidara began cataloging and preserving the writings. The Mali Ministry of Culture granted Haidara permission to begin his own library, and the Mamma Haidara Library was born.
The library was originally funded by a Muslim foundation in England. As Haidara quietly continued his labor, Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University stumbled upon the library in 1977 as he was filming footage for a documentary on Africa. Gates seized the opportunity and secured funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to build a new library in Timbuktu. In 2000, Haidara was accompanied by the First Lady of Mali, the Mali Minister of Cultural Affairs and the Moroccan Minister of Cultural Affairs and the Moroccan Minister of Cultural Affairs to dedicate the new library. Since then, the Al-Furquan Foundation of Islamic Heritage n London has published a three-volume guide to Haidara’s massive collection. Recently, the US Government itself has gotten its tainted hands on the collection; some of the manuscripts were featured as a display at the Library of Congress that opened June 24, 2003.
Advancement?
Haidara views the Library of Congress' exhibition of his manuscripts in a positive light. Haidara, who feels that he "rescued the manuscripts from living in boxes," wishes the writings to be seen and used by all who are interested. Haidara criticizes other owners of libraries in the area for not being as open with their treasures as he. Haidara claims that there are about 100 private libraries in Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Burkina Faso with over 5 million manuscripts dating from antiquity to the 1800s, but that the owners are secretive with their collections. He also complains that some have buried their manuscripts to protect them from usurpation.
Haidara hopes to publish the fourth catalog of the manuscripts by the years end. He also plans to have them microfilmed, bound and restored so that they are preserved enough that the public, whomever they may be, can "handle them without fear of their being damaged and so that more scholars will be able to study them." He also wants the manuscripts to be translated into French and English, as 70% of them are in Arabic or African languages.
The Library of Congress apparently agrees with Haidara (or, perhaps, Haidara "agrees" with the Library of Congress?). Manuscripts from Haidara's collection are on display in the exhibition and will become a permanent part of the library's extensive Africana collection. Those manuscripts on display are "Kashf al-Gummah fi Nafa al- Ummah" (Important Stars in the Multitudes of the Heavens, an astronomy text copied at Timbuktu in 1733); "Arbab al-Khartumi, al-Jawahir al-Hissan fi Varifat Arkan al-Iman" CA Jewel of Beauty for Learning the Pillars of Faith. a textbook teaching the basic tenets of Islam); "Said Ahmad ibn Amar a-Raqadi al-Tumbukti al-Kunti, Shifa al-Saqam al-Aridah fi al-Zahir wa al-Batin" (Curing Defects and Diseases, Both Apparent and Hidden, a study of diseases, their remedies and medications). Other works include titles translated as "Ahmad Baba Answers a Moroccan's Questions About Slavery", "A Summary Explanation of the Pronouncements of the Scholars and Theologians", "Knowledge of the Movement of the Stars and What it Portends in Every Year" "Explanations of the Problems in Arithmetic with Examples", and "Guinea Proper, Not Including the Whole of Africa, but Only That Part Known to the Geographers as Lower Ethoipia", among many other titles.
Before the Moroccan troops invaded and destroyed the Songhai empire, Timbuktu was once considered West Africa's Mecca and was a commercial, cultural, religious and intellectual center. Over 100,000 residents of Timbuktu were rich from gold, ivory, kola nuts and salt. It was a city rich in culture and knowledge. The city's wisdom and knowledge was not lost after stashed away in boxes and animal-skin containers. Haidara's collection of manuscripts is highly valued for its content. Scholars and researchers are salivating at the thought of having ancient knowledge from West Africa at their fingertips, and are working to ensure this becomes a reality.
Behind the Curtain of Education -
A Hidden Agenda?
Most people do not know very much about the Library of Congress, except that it is considered "America's Library" Visiting their website (www.loc.gov), one easily obtains the library's own definition of its purpose, mission and agendas. "The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, and it serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with more than 126 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include nearly 19 million books, 2.6 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 56 million manuscripts. The Library's mission is to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations. The Office of
the Librarian is tasked to set policy and to direct and support programs and activities to accomplish the Library's mission." The website states in a letter from James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress. Digging deeper into the Library of Congress mission, one can easily find that its purpose and mission is as follows:
"The First Priority of the Library of Congress is to make knowledge and creativity available to the United States Congress... to make this material available and to identify, analyze and synthesize the information it contains to make it useful to the lawmakers who are the elected representatives of the American people." The United States Congress is divided into two sub-divisions: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Congress, collectively, makes laws and policies and works with the US President of the United States.
"The second of the Library of Congress is to acquire, organize, preserve, secure and sustain for the present and future use of the Congress and the nation:
A comprehensive record of American history and creativity; The record of American history and creativity has to be maintained in order to fulfill the mandates which are twofold: to protect intellectual property rights (a constitutional mandate statutorily exercised by the Copyright Office) and to preserve the record of the past for the sake of present and future creativity (the constitutional mandate "to promote the Progress of Science and useful agriculture and clinical medicine, which Arts*).
a universal collection of human knowledge.* A universal collection is essential to meet the present and potential needs of the Congress (the statutory work of the Congressional Research Service) and of the government more broadly (Law Library Federal Research Division, general reference services). All other services and activities of the Library of Congress support the core mission of maintaining and continuing to build on the world’s greatest treasury of recorded human knowledge.* except for technical are covered by the National Agricultural Library and the National Library of Medicine respectively.”
“The third priority of the Library of Congress is to make its collections maximally accessible to (in order of priority)
The Congress
The U.S. government more broadly;
The public
“The fourth priority is to add interpretive and educational value to the basic resources of the Library in order to enhance the quality of the creative work and intellectual activity derived from these resources, and to highlight the importance of the Library’s contributions to the nation’s well-being and future progress.
The Library of Congress as stated on its website and mission statement, is a governmental sector with the primary purpose of making information available to the Congress and other government agencies (including, but not limited to, the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies). Its extensive collection is there primarily for governmental use and research, and it is not unforeseeable that sensitive information may be kept from the public eye.
It is a well-known and documented fact that the origin of astronomy, medicine, civilization and agriculture came from Kemet (Africa) tens of thousands of years ago. In fact, astronomy of today (which just recently discovered the small Sirius star) is like a first-grade elementary student compared to the wealth of knowledge reference services). All other services and activities of the Library of Congress support the core mission of maintaining and continuing to build on the world's greatest treasury of recorded human that is held in Africa, especially among the "secret societies" and "mystery schools" of the Dogon and Gourmantche people who are the rightful owners of much of Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo and Niger. It is no coincidence that the Library of Congress (and thus, the US Government) would be actively attempting to gain this knowledge, and it is no coincidence that the among the titles now on display in the Library of Congress are on topics such as astronomy and medicine! One must be very wary of the
Library of Congress' and the US Government's real agenda with these manuscripts. The Gourmantche and Dogon people, before the colonialization of Africa, were owners of the very land that Timbuktu calls home (among many other territories), and the Dogons are a people of high interest for anyone seeking deeper knowledge of astronomy, spirituality, healing, and many other disciplines.
Abdoul Haidara has strayed from the prevailing attitude of preservation and secrecy that is held tight by most of the private owners of such valuable manuscripts by allowing foreign colonial governments to have knowledge of and access to ancient texts. As with most African "intellectuals", Haidara seems to have been brainwashed by Western propaganda and thinking, and now the efforts of his ancestors that were meant for the upliftment of Africa and Africans will now become a benefit and asset to Africa's colonizers and the pirates who have been looting from her for thousands of years.
Knowledge of these ancient manuscripts by foreigners is not something new, as German and French explorers know about some of them in 1850, which were translated into French. "I think there are a number of manuscripts dealing with fields we don't even know about, since we don't have full accounts of lots of libraries," says John Hunwick, professor of African history at Northwestern University and founder of the Institute of Islamic Thought in Africa at Northwestern, the only center at an American university dedicated to this history of Islamic culture in sub-Saharan Africa. While many of Haidara's manuscripts are from the Islamic tradition and are written in Arabic, others are written in other African languages. The depth of the knowledge of Haidara’s manuscripts is yet to be known ... will Haidara inadvertently reveal secrets of the Dogons or "mystery schools"? Will the manuscripts contain valuable knowledge of astronomy and healing that will be stolen and claimed as their own by colonial governments? It is not unrealistic to think that this may be the case and that the Library of Congress or US Government may be hoping for this outcome.
Unfortunately, Mali has no law to protect literary patrimony. This means that all of the manuscripts can legally be sold or removed from the country. Perhaps that is what the Library of Congress wants to do.
Regretfully, Mr. Haidara seems to have made a grave mistake. His emotions may have overshadowed his intellect when he made the decision to make his manuscripts available to the Library of Congress and other governmental agencies, and the integrity of Africa may continue to suffer because of his actions. After all, colonial thieves stole books and manuscripts from Thebes, Memphis, Alexandria and other centers of ancient African knowledge, later to usurp the credit for the knowledge to perpetuate their new "order" in the world. Medical students learn that the father of medicine was Greek and that the father of mathematics was Roman...all lies. Why would they stop now?
Perhaps Chris Murphy, Near East Area Specialist for the Library of Congress, sums it all up for us. He said, "These manuscripts demonstrate that West Africa was very much a part of the old world culture." His statement only shows his ignorance, as West Africa was and is one of the strongest centers of vital cultural, spiritual and practical knowledge of the world. It is Western governments and societies who are late in realizing this fact, and they intend to gain as much of this knowledge as possible, in whatever way possible. Luckily for them, people like Haidara are susceptible to their rhetoric and are willing to sacrifice all of Africa for their own personal agendas.