The light of the day · Wednesday 9 September
Timbuktu's manuscripts were smuggled out in footlockers
When armed groups took Timbuktu in 2012, the city's libraries held centuries of manuscripts on law, astronomy, medicine, poetry and mathematics, many still owned by the families who had copied them. Abdel Kader Haidara, a librarian, organised an evacuation. Volunteers packed manuscripts into metal footlockers and rice sacks, moved them out of the city a few at a time by car, donkey and boat down the Niger, through checkpoints, and stored them in houses in Bamako. By early 2013 an estimated 350,000 manuscripts had been moved. Some were burned in Timbuktu, but far fewer than first reported. The collections are now being conserved and digitised in the south of the country.
Timbuktu to Bamako · 2012 to 2013
Wednesday 9 September 2026 · 26 Rabi al-Awwal 1448 AH
The word · Worship
خُطْبَة
Khutbah
The sermon given before the Friday prayer and after the two Eid prayers.
The Friday khutbah comes in two parts with a brief sitting between them, and it is delivered before the prayer, not after. Scholars explain it as standing in place of two of the four Dhuhr rak'ahs, so listening to it is part of the worship, and most hold that talking while it is delivered is forbidden. The Eid khutbah works the other way round: it follows the prayer, and staying for it is recommended rather than…
The Path · chapter 32 of 71
الإسراء والمعراج
Isra & Miraj: Buraq
Night journey to Jerusalem, then the seven heavens. Fifty prayers reduced to five.
Consolation after the Year of Sorrow and Ta'if
The library
The whole library, free
No ads, no account, no tracking. Every room on the phone, under the thumb.