Timbuktu Manuscripts decline of traditional education in French Sudan). Their subject matter ranged from scholarly works to short letters. The manuscripts were passed down in Timbuktu families and were mostly in poor condition. Most of the manuscripts remain unstudied and uncatalogued, and their total number is unknown, affording only rough estimates. A selection of about 160 manuscripts from the Mamma Haidara Library in Timbuktu and the Ahmed Baba collection were digitized by the "Tombouctou Manuscripts Project" in the 2000s. With the demise of Arabic education in Mali under French colonial rule, appreciation for the medieval manuscripts declined in Timbuktu, and many were
Timbuktu Manuscripts book, "The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu" by Joshua Hammer, provides vivid details about the collection of the manuscripts into libraries, and subsequent efforts to remove them to safety during the dangerous conflict, in which the Islamist jihadis threatened to destroy them. In 2017, Charlie English published "The Storied City : The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save Its Past" which tells in alternating chapters the history of European expeditions (1795 – 1860) in search of the mystical city and the Herculean rescue efforts undertaken by Haidara and others to save the manuscripts from destruction by the jihadis