Located in the West African nation of Mali, the name Timbuktu has come to embody the idea of a distant place, but this city was once famed as a center of learning, religion and trade. Today it’s still known for its imposing earthen mosques, and the hundreds of thousands of scholarly manuscripts held in public and private collections.
Those manuscripts have had a turbulent past, threatened by Islamist rebels and irrevocable loss. Now, thanks to local residents and global academics, over 40,000…
