viz.

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve always been amazed that our ancestors lost copies of gospels we think existed, Ciceronian tracks we know were read, and Shakespeare plays we know to have been performed. How do such valuable things disappear? Who’s accountable for these losses? Who ever commissioned Vasari paint a fresco over da Vinci’s The Battle of Anghiari in the Palazzo Vecchio’s Salone dei Cinquecento? (No one today would dare destroy the Vasari – a masterwork in its own right – to see if the da Vinci lay underneath; though we’re 95% sure the da Vinci lies under it, I’d say.) In truth, the real history of these lost artifacts is much more complex, and it’s kind of hard to hold anyone accountable for the losses. Different cultures in different times appreciate different treasures from our past. There exists a whole bookshelf’s worth of scholarship about Shakespeare’s only moderate popularity in his own day, explaining perhaps how Love’s Labour’s Won or Cardenio could have fallen through the cracks. Nor should Vasari feel bad for taking a da Vinci battle painting from us. Leonardo was experimenting with a new painting technique after a bad experience with variations of the fresco medium in The Last Supper, and in The Battle of Anghiari we think he used a thick undercoat of something (possibly a wax) to help preserve the finished product. But the medium used in The Battle of Anghiari was even more prone to decomposition than that of The Last Supper, and thus the painting remained damaged and unfinished for over 100 years before Vasari picked up his brush. The drawing above is a 1603 copy by Peter Paul Rubens.

(Image credit: Foreign Policy blog)

I’ve been thinking about all this since last Friday, when news broke that libraries in Timbuktu had been destroyed in Mali’s ongoing chaos. As Lila Azam Zanganeh reports in the New Yorker’s blog, up to three of the city’s eight libraries were probably destroyed by rebels during their rampage. These archives contained centuries of learning. The most important of them was the Ahmed Baba Centre, which contained up to 100,000 different pieces of writing, many of them dating back to the thirteenth century. The writings cover such diverse topics as political science, history, botany, poetry, anatomy, women’s rights, and music. These are all topics that, as Zanganeh reports in the New Yorker blog, are typically deemed evil by Islamic fundamentalists. (Although, ironically, the city’s medieval universities were always Islamic).

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

Understanding how remote Timbuktu, situated on the southern extremity of the Sahara Desert, came to be the center of learning is important. Many valuable trade routes passed through the city from the fifteenth century onwards (see map above), and this commerce, coupled with the town’s mosque and university, produced a significant culture of intellectual pursuit. Scholars and scribes in Timbuktu wrote about a range of topics, and they assumed a fundamental value in recording these advancements for future generations. In the quick three to four hours that I have in my schedule this week to post a blog entry for your delectation, I couldn’t ascertain what the shifting borders of the medieval Sahara were. So it’s hard for me to say with any authority whether the city has always found itself in such a sparse environment (look it up on Google Maps), but it’s fair to assume that Timbuktu has at certain times enjoyed greater wealth and lushness than at present. Just the same as it once enjoyed a more vibrant intellectual culture. I suppose part of what the rebels must have been after in destroying these libraries was a visual articulation of their poise. They wanted outsiders to look over at Mali and see that they mean business. What this suggests to me, however, is the importance of learning to all peoples, and the extent to which intellectual hubs can come and go. Central Texas, where I live, is currently experiencing an extended drought. The price of drinking water is sure to skyrocket over the next 50 years. Who knows what effect these economics will have on our archive, the Harry Ransom Center, much less the city’s vibrant culture.