In the Middle Ages, Timbuktu was not only a prosperous trading hub for Tuareg caravans that brought salt, gold and slaves from the south to Egypt and Morocco but also the capital of Islamic intellectual life in West Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries. Hundreds of thousands of manuscripts from this period still exist today, hidden, buried and forgotten just waiting to be rediscovered. They are the lost libraries of Islamic world knowledge.
