Don’t be fooled, Africa had a well-developed reading culture before the European invasion

The mud home and cave libraries of Timbuktu- Mali

Archaeologists have discovered tens and thousands of manuscripts, texts, scrolls and painting with short notes in the once thriving and powerful ancient Timbuktu Kingdom. In many of the cave libraries, secret texts were wrapped in mud cloth and camouflaged for safe keeping. These texts were passed on from generation to generation. In the 16th century, families of old scholars could have huge libraries with close to 1600 volumes of texts.  Over 60 libraries in Mali are still owned by local families and institutions in Mali.

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In 1970, the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Research was opened to accommodate more than 20,000 manuscripts of ancient Malian history. The texts from ancient Timbuktu alone can be close to 700,000 manuscripts.