As the desert inches south into the city of Timbuktu, the sand settles on your skin and the air feels heavy in your lungs. When I travelled there nine years ago, the mythical city, home to the shrines ...

It has all the elements of a classic adventure novel. An intrepid librarian ventures across deserts and through jungles to unearth ancient manuscripts, building a great library in a legendary city, ...

SEVARE, MaliSEVARE, Mali — Timbuktu, the fabled desert city where retreating Muslim extremists destroyed ancient manuscripts, was a center of Islamic learning hundreds of years before Columbus landed ...

Stepping through a low doorway into his small house, Fida Ag Mohammed sits at a table and pats a pile of books in front of him. Even in the dim light it’s clear that these are no ordinary volumes. The ...

BAMAKO, Mali — The Malian military government on Monday started returning home the historic manuscripts of Timbuktu that were spirited out of their fabled northern city when it was occupied by Al ...

“No. 2256. Copyist: Musa b. Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Kansusi from the area of Takrakar. Copied in 1144 H / 1731 G in Takrakar (Gao, Mali).” Robert Goldwater Library The main library in Timbuktu is full ...

It was early in the summer of 2012, and at the Mamma Haidara Library in Timbuktu, a clandestine operation was under way. Night after night, a team under the direction of the library's founder, Abdel ...

GAO, Mali (Reuters) - French and Malian troops retook control of Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site, on Monday after Islamist rebel occupiers fled the ancient Sahara trading town and torched ...

Timbuktu, the fabled desert city where retreating Muslim extremists destroyed ancient manuscripts, was a center of Islamic learning hundreds of years before Columbus landed in the Americas. It is not ...

BAMAKO, Mali — The Malian military government on Monday started returning home the historic manuscripts of Timbuktu, which were spirited out of their fabled northern city when it was occupied by ...

Preservationists (including Allimam Achahi, far left, and Abdel Kader Haidara) are trying to rescue the city's rare manuscripts from centuries of neglect. "They must be protected," says Haidara.