TIMBUKTU // The shrine of Sidi Mahmoud is cracked and crumbled, with bleached stones that were once ornamental doors and walls sinking into the fine Sahara sand.
A tourist guide who brought visitors to Timbuktu before the town was taken over by Islamist rebels recounts local beliefs about the saint. It is said that the man, who is thought to have lived in the 16th century, was sighted in Mecca, while remaining physically here, that when it rained he did not get wet and that if you prayed at his grave you would be blessed with children.
But 500 years of veneration in Timbuktu came to an abrupt end last summer, when militant Islamists imposed a brutal set of rules on the town and denounced the tombs of Muslim saints as idolatrous. They smashed up this graveyard on the edge of town, where ordinary people's resting places are marked with clay pots alongside the elaborate tombs.
Abdelrahman Al Aqib is the imam of the Sankore mosque. Wrinkled and white-robed, with a shaft of sunlight falling on him as he sits in his darkened diwan, it would be difficult to say whether the man or the mosque has the closer ties to Timbuktu's storied past.
"Sidi Mahmoud was my ancestor," says the imam sternly. "A saint. It was the first tomb they broke." The desecration, he said, caused him physical pain. "There is pain even now. I don't want to talk about that."
The invaders had Timbuktu's antiquities in their sights, including collections of centuries-old manuscripts in libraries and private collections, a huge archive handed down from days when Timbuktu was a centre of Islamic learning. After months of occupation, the militants affiliated to Al Qaeda burnt some of the manuscripts.
But the majority were smuggled to safety by a population with a deep connection with the past and sense of the value of heritage, for whom the writings and the shrines are not fragments of a distant history but part of traditions still alive and vibrant today.
Imams and judges with the Aqib family name have been recorded serving and restoring the Sankore and other Timbuktu mosques since at least the 16th century.
The mosque itself was built 1,000 years ago, later remodelled into a scaled-down, mud replica of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, by one of the Al Aqib family. It formed a central part of a university that was said at its height to have 180 Quranic schools and 25,000 students. Sidi Mahmoud, the saint, was the great uncle of one of the school's foremost scholars, Ahmed Baba - a historian on the cusp of the 17th century - to whom today's imam also traces his lineage.
Mr Al Aqib said that when the militant Islamist groups first took over Timbuktu as they seized the whole of northern Mali in April last year, their leaders came to him and asked to pray in the Sankore mosque.
"I told them they couldn't pray in the mosque," he said. "I want nothing to do with them." They left him alone - although he says they disrespected his colleagues. But they then turned their attention to the Ahmed Baba Institute, just across the square.
The Institute's handsome new building, mud-coloured but built with modern materials, has climate-controlled storage, reading rooms, a conference area, elegant lamps. But though the South African-funded centre was opened in 2009, its employees say that only 2,000 manuscripts had actually been transferred from an older library into the centre.
Before the militants worked out to look in an older building for the remaining 28,000 manuscripts, said Abdoulaye Cisse, the acting director of the institute, he and the other archivists and employees quietly began to smuggle them out of the city. They piled centuries-old investigations of law and geography, the volumes known in Arabic as the Histories of the Sudan, and Islamic scholarship, into rice sacks.
Taking care to travel at prayer time and take back roads, so as to avoid the zealots, four or five employees working for two weeks gradually moved the papers to the home of the director of the institute, Abdul Kader Haidara. From there, he sent them down the river Niger in metal suitcases on canoes, or moved them by road to the capital, Bamako, and safety.
"The jihadists came to the house of Haidara, and said 'you have been helped by Americans to build your library, so we will take the manuscripts,'" said Mr Cisse. "But it was one week after they had gone."
"We are very proud of what we did," said Khalif Al Hadji, an archivist. "We did it for three reasons. The first, is that if we lose these manuscripts, we won't find them again. Two, we work in the library. Three, we are all Malians and we know exactly how valuable these manuscripts are to us."
Mr Cisse added proudly that the rich archive of thousands of books belie the myth that Africa relies on oral tradition as opposed to written history and scholarship. "It's enormous," he said. "The culture, the history."
Even as the men spoke, in a courtyard of the new building, ashy fragments of burnt manuscripts eddied in the breeze. Just before a French-led intervention had pushed the militants out of town, some of the rebels pulled around 1,000 manuscripts off the shelves and built a bonfire. The charred scripts are still discernible, but the treasures are lost.
French soldiers have now left Timbuktu, and there are fears that the militant Islamists could creep back, and a similar fate could await any of the manuscripts returned to the institute. Under the circumstances, the manuscripts are unlikely to go home for some time, said Shamil Jeppie, head of the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project at the University of Cape Town.
For now, he added, "our concern is more neglect." Without archivists and conservators to keep the paper at a stable temperature, the fragile books are at risk. They will also need re-cataloguing.
Yet he remains optimistic. "It's bad. But it's not all that bad," he said. The city has been invaded many times before, and there are through the centuries tales of copyists making new versions of the manuscripts, or burying them in sand to hide them from colonial-era French thieves. The pragmatic approach to storing books, he said, belies the idea that one needs an imposing building to form an archive - this rich culture is built more on a "mobile archive" that improvises and has existed for centuries.
"They copied things, they conserved the content of the manuscripts. There's lots of subtlety there," he said. "People are almost genetically trained to preserve things."
afordham@thenational.ae
T10 Cricket League
Sharjah Cricket Stadium
December 14- 17
6pm, Opening ceremony, followed by:
Bengal Tigers v Kerala Kings
Maratha Arabians v Pakhtoons
Tickets available online at q-tickets.com/t10
RACE SCHEDULE
All times UAE ( 4 GMT)
Friday, September 29
First practice: 7am - 8.30am
Second practice: 11am - 12.30pm
Saturday, September 30
Qualifying: 1pm - 2pm
Sunday, October 1
Race: 11am - 1pm
Cinco in numbers
Dh3.7 million
The estimated cost of Victoria Swarovski’s gem-encrusted Michael Cinco wedding gown
46
The number, in kilograms, that Swarovski’s wedding gown weighed.
1,000
The hours it took to create Cinco’s vermillion petal gown, as seen in his atelier [note, is the one he’s playing with in the corner of a room]
50
How many looks Cinco has created in a new collection to celebrate Ballet Philippines’ 50th birthday
3,000
The hours needed to create the butterfly gown worn by Aishwarya Rai to the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
1.1 million
The number of followers that Michael Cinco’s Instagram account has garnered.
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
Company%20Profile
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WISH
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RESULTS
%3Cp%3E5pm%3A%20Wathba%20Stallions%20Cup%20%E2%80%93%20Handicap%20(PA)%20Dh70%2C000%20(Turf)%202%2C200m%3Cbr%3EWinner%3A%20RB%20Sarab%2C%20Allaia%20Tiar%20(jockey)%2C%20Khalifa%20Al%20Neyadi%20(trainer)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E5.30pm%3A%20Mamsha%20Alkhair%20%E2%80%93%20Handicap%20(PA)%20Dh80%2C000%20(T)%201%2C600m%3Cbr%3EWinner%3A%20Mutaqadim%2C%20Ray%20Dawson%2C%20Ibrahim%20Al%20Hadhrami%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E6pm%3A%20Emirates%20Fillies%20Classic%20%E2%80%93%20Prestige%20(PA)%20Dh100%2C000%20(T)%201%2C600m%3Cbr%3EWinner%3A%20Almotajalliah%2C%20Ray%20Dawson%2C%20Ibrahim%20Al%20Hadhrami%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E6.30pm%3A%20Emirates%20Colts%20Classic%20%E2%80%93%20Prestige%20(PA)%20Dh100%2C000%20(T)%201%2C600m%3Cbr%3EWinner%3A%20Fadwaan%2C%20Antonio%20Fresu%2C%20Ahmed%20Al%20Mehairbi%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E7pm%3A%20The%20President%E2%80%99s%20Cup%20%E2%80%93%20Group%201%20(PA)%20Dh2%2C500%2C000%20(T)%202%2C200m%3Cbr%3EWinner%3A%20Mujeeb%2C%20Richard%20Mullen%2C%20Salem%20Al%20Ketbi%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E7.30pm%3A%20The%20President%E2%80%99s%20Cup%20%E2%80%93%20Listed%20(TB)%20Dh380%2C000%20(T)%201%2C400m%3Cbr%3EWinner%3A%20Western%20Writer%2C%20Richard%20Mullen%2C%20Bhupat%20Seemar%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Dates for the diary
To mark Bodytree’s 10th anniversary, the coming season will be filled with celebratory activities:
- September 21 Anyone interested in becoming a certified yoga instructor can sign up for a 250-hour course in Yoga Teacher Training with Jacquelene Sadek. It begins on September 21 and will take place over the course of six weekends.
- October 18 to 21 International yoga instructor, Yogi Nora, will be visiting Bodytree and offering classes.
- October 26 to November 4 International pilates instructor Courtney Miller will be on hand at the studio, offering classes.
- November 9 Bodytree is hosting a party to celebrate turning 10, and everyone is invited. Expect a day full of free classes on the grounds of the studio.
- December 11 Yogeswari, an advanced certified Jivamukti teacher, will be visiting the studio.
- February 2, 2018 Bodytree will host its 4th annual yoga market.
UAE WARRIORS RESULTS
Featherweight
Azouz Anwar (EGY) beat Marcelo Pontes (BRA)
TKO round 2
Catchweight 90kg
Moustafa Rashid Nada (KSA) beat Imad Al Howayeck (LEB)
Split points decision
Welterweight
Gimbat Ismailov (RUS) beat Mohammed Al Khatib (JOR)
TKO round 1
Flyweight (women)
Lucie Bertaud (FRA) beat Kelig Pinson (BEL)
Unanimous points decision
Lightweight
Alexandru Chitoran (ROU) beat Regelo Enumerables Jr (PHI)
TKO round 1
Catchweight 100kg
Marc Vleiger (NED) beat Mohamed Ali (EGY)
Rear neck choke round 1
Featherweight
James Bishop (NZ) beat Mark Valerio (PHI)
TKO round 2
Welterweight
Abdelghani Saber (EGY) beat Gerson Carvalho (BRA)
TKO round 1
Middleweight
Bakhtiyar Abbasov (AZE) beat Igor Litoshik (BLR)
Unanimous points decision
Bantamweight
Fabio Mello (BRA) beat Mark Alcoba (PHI)
Unanimous points decision
Welterweight
Ahmed Labban (LEB) v Magomedsultan Magomedsultanov (RUS)
TKO round 1
Bantamweight
Trent Girdham (AUS) beat Jayson Margallo (PHI)
TKO round 3
Lightweight
Usman Nurmagomedov (RUS) beat Roman Golovinov (UKR)
TKO round 1
Middleweight
Tarek Suleiman (SYR) beat Steve Kennedy (AUS)
Submission round 2
Lightweight
Dan Moret (USA) v Anton Kuivanen (FIN)
TKO round 2
Company Profile
Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million
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Results
5pm: Handicap (PA) Dh80,000 (Turf) 1,600m; Winner: Nadhra, Fabrice Veron (jockey), Eric Lemartinel (trainer)
5.30pm: Maiden (PA) Dh80,000 (T) 1,400m; Winner: AF Dars, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
6pm: Handicap (PA) Dh80,000 (T) 1,400m; Winner: AF Musannef, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
6.30pm: Handicap (PA) Dh80,000 (T) 1,200m; Winner: AF Taghzel, Malin Holmberg, Ernst Oertel
7pm: Wathba Stallions Cup Handicap (PA) Dh70,000 (T) 2,200m; Winner: M’Y Yaromoon, Khalifa Al Neyadi, Jesus Rosales
7.30pm: Handicap (TB) Dh100,000 (PA) 1,400m; Winner: Hakeem, Jim Crowley, Ali Rashid Al Raihe
Company%20Profile
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What is graphene?
Graphene is extracted from graphite and is made up of pure carbon.
It is 200 times more resistant than steel and five times lighter than aluminum.
It conducts electricity better than any other material at room temperature.
It is thought that graphene could boost the useful life of batteries by 10 per cent.
Graphene can also detect cancer cells in the early stages of the disease.
The material was first discovered when Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were 'playing' with graphite at the University of Manchester in 2004.