Many of the manuscripts were reported destroyed in January 2013, along with many other monuments of medieval Islamic culture in Timbuktu, by the Islamist rebels of Ansar Dine in the Northern Mali conflict. The Ahmed Baba Institute and a library, both containing thousands of manuscripts, were said to have been burnt as the Islamists retreated from Timbuktu. Journalists, however, found that at least one of the libraries was largely undamaged, and that only a few small piles of ash were present, suggesting that at least some of the documents survived.