UNESCO and the Future of Cultural Patrimony
Twenty-five miles east of Timbuktu, amidst the scattered acacias and sandburs that alone populate this desolate corner of the Sahel, lies the cemetery of Cheikh Sīdi al-Wāfi al-Amīr al-Arawāni. The moment this mausoleum was established, back in the early eighteenth century, it began its gradual surrender to the abrasive sand and dust borne along by north-easterly harmattan winds. Centuries of scouring have left the site, according to UNESCO’s 2014 Étude sur les mausolées de Tombouktou, “non-repérable”. It was to this forlorn place that the remains of the great librarian Ahmad bin Mbarak bin Barka bin Muhammad Bul’arāf were conveyed upon his demise in 1955. Renowned as he was for having amassed a library of 2076 invaluable manuscripts, for having penned the influential “Essay on the Importance of History”, and for having compiled a wide-ranging biographical dictionary, or tarjamah, of scholars from Takrūr, the Sahara, and Chinguetti, Ahmad Bul’arāf’s death…
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