Libraries in Timbuktu

A reminder that other parts of the world have bigger problems than we do comes from Timbuktu.  The manuscript collections in Timbuktu are a hugely important part of Muslim culture.  Before Vasco de Gama, it was the centre of an enormously wealthy African kingdom, so the collection there is one of the most important collections of medieval manuscripts in the world.  It is rather like the British Musuem being under threat of looting.