History of Timbuktu movements Ansar Dine and AQMI who installed sharia in the city and destroyed some of the burial chambers. In early June, a group of residents stated they had formed an armed militia to fight against the rebel occupation of the city. One member, a former army officer, stated that the proclaimer 'Patriots' Resistance Movement for the Liberation of Timbuktu' opposed the secession of northern Mali. On 28 January 2013, French and Malian soldiers reclaimed Timbuktu with little or no resistance and reinstalled Malian governmental authorities. Five days later, French President François Hollande accompanied by his Malian counterpart Dioncounda Traoré visited
Timbuktu Manuscripts being sold off. "Time" magazine related the account of an imam who picked up four of them for $50 each. In October 2008 one of the households was flooded, destroying 700 manuscripts. In 1970, UNESCO founded an organization which included among its tasks preservation of the manuscripts, but it went unfunded until 1977. In 1998, Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates visited Timbuktu for his PBS series "Wonders of the African World". The series raised public and academic awareness of the manuscripts, which led to a pool of funding opening up. The "Timbuktu Manuscripts Project" was a project of the