Timbuktu Manuscripts appeal to preserve the Timbuktu Manuscripts. A former Malian presidential aide, as well as several other people involved with preserving the manuscripts, said that the documents had been evacuated into a safe location in 2012 before the fighters invaded Timbuktu. U.S. based book preservation expert Stephanie Diakité and Dr. Abdel Kader Haidara, curator of one of the most important libraries of Timbuktu, a position handed down in his family for generations, organized the evacuation of the manuscripts to Bamako in the south of Mali. Timbuktu has a long tradition of celebrating and honoring family manuscript collections. It is traditional for
Fall of Timbuktu (2012) international intervention to restore Bamako's writ; he was supported by Niger. It was also affirmed at the same forum by Ivory Coast, who had a similar external intervention during the 2010–2011 Ivorian crisis, and former imperial overlord France's Francois Hollande who supported an African intervention. The head of the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project at the University of Cape Town, Shamil Jeppie, said that the destruction was akin to that of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. "It's a real loss for people in the town, in the region and on the continent. Timbuktu was a center of Islamic learning, a very significant center