HMML’s largest project to date focuses on the West African Islamic traditions found in the manuscripts of Timbuktu and Djenné. HMML has worked with Malian partners at SAVAMA-DCI to digitize hundreds of thousands of manuscripts evacuated from Timbuktu to Bamako, Mali’s capital, before the rebel occupation of the desert city in 2012. HMML has also worked with the family libraries that remained in Timbuktu and with the Djenné Manuscript Library. The Mali library tradition centers on family library collections used, safeguarded, and kept within learned families for generations. The SAVAMA collection contains many small and large family libraries, including the family library of SAVAMA’s founder, Dr. Abdel Kader Haidara—the Mamma Haidara Library—and the libraries of Aboubacar Abass, Attaher Mouaz, Almoustapha Abdoulahi, and others. HMML and SAVAMA partner with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures to build local capacity in conservation, description, and digitization of manuscripts. In Timbuktu, HMML partnered with the EAP for the Endangered Libraries of Timbuktu (ELIT) project based at the Imam Ben Essayouti Library, located next to the famous Dyingerey Ber Mosque; Al-Wangara Library at the Sidi Yahya Mosque; and the Al-Cady Al-Aqib Library at the Sankore Mosque. HMML is also currently working in Djenné at the Djenné Manuscript Library.

As of July 2022, HMML's Mali projects have resulted in 3.6 million unique image files, representing 249,000 manuscripts. Of these, 18,483 manuscripts are cataloged and viewable online at vhmml.org/readingRoom.

Mali Stories

•   A Scribble of Scribes: Men, Women, and Children Copyists Across Mali’s Manuscript Collections
•   Why so Many Fragments? Incomplete Manuscripts in the Timbuktu Collections.
•   Where We’re Working: Mali
•   Smoking in the Desert — Between Supporters and Opponents of Tobacco
•   The Story of the Talking Camel and the Exploits of Ali Genre in West Africa
•   Travelers and Texts Crossing the Sahara
•   Medical Texts From Timbuktu — Local Pharmacological Remedies with Qur’anic Verses
•   Yeɗi Sanba Ɓooyi, a Fulani Scholar and Poet
•   Creating Cataloging Standards for Regional Names
•   Postscript — A Fāʼidah
•   Database Partnership Expands Access to West African Manuscripts