OT: Fascinating BBC documentary about Timbuktu, related to FNB’s Page The Price of War: Ancient African Archives Set on Fire in Timbuktu and recent events in Mali.

Youtube Video

A bit of good news regarding the fire:

Time magazine’s Vivienne Walt reports that some experts on the ground in Mali say many of the manuscripts were saved before the Islamists’ pillage:

Realizing that the documents might be prime targets for pillaging or vindictive attacks from Islamic extremists, staff left behind just a small portion of them, perhaps out of haste, but also to conceal the fact that the center had been deliberately emptied.

“The documents which had been there are safe, they were not burned,” Mahmoud Zouber, Mali’s presidential aide on Islamic affairs, told Time, “They were put in a very safe place.”

Other experts confirmed that while there were “a few items” in the Ahmed Baba library, the rest were protected in an undisclosed hiding place. […]

More at The Washington Post….

Woohoo—chalk up one for the good guys! They’ve been through this before and were ready for it. I think I’m gonna Page that.