History of Timbuktu the city before heading to Bamako and were welcomed by an ecstatic population. The city has been attacked multiple times on several different occasions, once on 21 March 2013 when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives killing a Malian soldier, creating a fierce shoot-out at the international airport killing ten rebels. On 31 March, a group of 20 rebels infiltrated into Timbuktu as civilians and attacked the Malian army base in the city killing three Malian soldiers and injuring dozens more. History of Timbuktu The following is a history of the city of Timbuktu, Mali. Starting out as a seasonal
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