The Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Studies and Islamic Research of Timbuktu

Summary

The Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Studies and Islamic Research of Timbuktu, in the original French version Institut des Hautes Études et de Recherches Islamiques Ahmed Baba de Tombouctou—IHERI-ABT (previously Centre de documentation et de recherche Ahmed Baba—CEDRAB), is the largest public repository of Arabic manuscripts in West Africa, with c. 39,000 manuscripts held as of 2024. The institute was founded in the 1970s by the Malian government as part of a larger intellectual project to establish an independent African history involving scholars from across the globe. Struggling to take off due to financial constraints, the institute developed in the 1980s and more markedly in the 1990s and the 2000s. In these years, the institute lost its role as the sole repository of Arabic manuscripts in Timbuktu. This was due to a new challenge: the establishment of private libraries in the city, one consequence of the 1991 democratic turn in Malian history. The war that erupted in 2012 and still plagues Mali abruptly disrupted the institute’s activities at its peak, and many manuscripts have since been first relocated to Bamako and then returned to Timbuktu in . Despite these challenges, the institute continues fulfilling its mission of collecting, preserving, digitizing, teaching, and studying West African Arabic manuscripts; it is, in fact, as active as ever in training new scholars, publishing editions of primary sources preserved in its collection as well as scholarly works, and continuing its task of acquiring and cataloging Arabic manuscripts—amid financial shortage and political instability.