Posted on March 20, 2008

Arts and Culture

Since 2000, the Ford Foundation has invested more than $3.3 million to preserve the heritage of Timbuktu, in present-day Mali. The foundation's latest efforts include an ambitious preservation project for more than seven hundred thousand ancient manuscripts, mostly written in Arabic, which provide a detailed record of the daily and intellectual life of people in Timbuktu since the twelfth century. The slideshow, "Recapturing the Wisdom and History of a Region," features a map, historical information about the region, and photographs of some of the rare and beautiful documents.