A great surprise of writing contemporary nonfiction is how willing people are to give an account of the events they witnessed to a badly dressed man with a tape recorder. In this regard I am particularly grateful to those in Timbuktu and elsewhere in Mali whose memories I have mined, and who suffered my repeated visits with patience and good humor. No one was tested more in this way than Alkadi Maiga, who managed to find a smile however many times I appeared at the offices of the Ahmad Baba institute in Bamako. Other Malians I would like to single out for thanks include the grand imam Abderrahmane Ben Essayouti, Abdoulkadri Idrissa Maiga of the Ahmad Baba institute, and Ismael Diadié Haidara of the Fondo Kati, as well as Mohamed Diagayeté, Kader Kalil, Tina Traoré, Abdoul Wahid Haidara, and Cheikh Diouara. Abdel Kader Haidara also has my respect and gratitude for the many hours we spent together.
Reporting from distant and occasionally dangerous places is possible only with the help of others, and few were more crucial to this project than those who facilitated my interviews and, on a few occasions, recorded them on my behalf. In this I was fortunate to have the expertise of Ousmane Diadié Touré and Mamadou Tapily in Bamako, who worked long hours and traveled great distances in pursuit of this story, and Fatouma Harber in Timbuktu, who shared her extensive knowledge of her home city with me. The assistance of Tahar Haidara, meanwhile, was invaluable during my 2014 visit.
From the start, I have relied on a group of friends and colleagues who at various stages improved the idea, the state of the manuscript, or the mood of the author. These included Nicholas Blincoe, Toby Clements, Jon Hen-ley, Paul Hamilos, Charlotte Higgins, Julian Borger, Sarah Holloway, Andy Beckett, Pascal Wyse, Sam Wollaston, Ingrid Karikari, and Tom Campbell. I also drew on a handful of former West Africa correspondents—Alex Duval-Smith, Sean Smith, Afua Hirsch, and Mark Tran—who shared contacts and important travel advice. I would not have visited Timbuktu at all without knowing that Jan Thompson, Judith Soal, Jamie Wilson, and Karen Plews of The Guardian were aware of my trip, and that if things went seriously wrong, Ian Katz would at least watch the videos. Melissa Denes, Clare Longrigg, Lucy Lamble, and Charlotte Northedge aided me by commissioning articles as I went along. Charlotte Albin greatly improved my French; Juliette Courtois did most of the transcribing; Philip Oltermann rendered my freedom-of-information requests into German; Edgar Schmitz helped translate the responses.
A number of diplomats and expats in Mali also deserve my thanks. These include To and Klaas Tjoelker, Maarten Brouwer, and Mirjam Tjassing, all of the Dutch embassy in Bamako; Thomas Strieder, Günter Overfeld, and Josef Hinterseher of the German foreign service; Deborah Stolk of the Prince Claus Fund; Innocent Chukwuma of the Ford Foundation; Michael Hanssler of the Gerda Henkel Stiftung; Bassam Adnan Daghestani of the Juma al-Majid Center for Culture and Heritage; and Sally Haydock and Krystle van Hoof of the World Food Programme. Colonel Frédéric Gout generously invited me to NATO’s Brussels HQ, and shared with me a draft of his book Libérez Tombouctou! Journal de guerre au Mali, which I would recommend to students of the conflict. Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, took time out of her exceptionally busy schedule to explain the causes and effects of cultural destruction, as did Lazare Eloundou Assomo, the organization’s representative in Bamako. N’Diaye Ramatoulaye Diallo, the Malian culture minister, explained the government’s plans for the city, post-crisis.
A number of people who know this material far better than I do generously gave advice on the history of the region and its manuscripts. Chief among these were Mauro Nobili of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Bruce Hall of Duke University, who alerted me to his concerns about the evacuation story; and Dmitry Bondarev of the University of Hamburg. Further academic expertise was shared by Susana Molins Lliteras (of the University of Cape Town), Charles Stewart (also at Illinois), Georges Bohas (of the University of Lyon), and Alida Jay Boye (formerly of the University of Oslo). I was also very glad to have the advice of Joseph Hunwick, whose spectacular photographs of the city and its manuscripts can be found in The Hidden Treasures of Timbuktu. I regret that I did not begin the task early enough to have met his father, John Hunwick.
There are at least four people without whom this book would not exist. These are my two agents, Felicity Rubinstein in London and Stuart Krichevsky in New York, who nursed both manuscript and author through the tougher stages of the research and writing processes. Without them, I would not have found Rebecca Saletan at Riverhead, whose good judgment, persistence, and superlative editing skill have made the book what it is. The quartet is completed by Arabella Pike at William Collins, whose enthusiasm and support kept me on track. I would also like to thank Anna Jardine and Michelle Koufopoulos at Riverhead, and Juliet Mahoney at Lutyens & Rubinstein, for their good work on the book’s behalf.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my family: to Barbara English, who read the early drafts but more important let me drive across the Sahara as a teenager; to Hugh English, for always patching up my cars; and to Harry, Arthur, and Eddie English, who will soon be having adventures of their own.
Above all, I would like to thank Lucy Blincoe, to whom this book is dedicated, for her love and her faith.