The fight to save Timbuktu's intellectual history

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Humanity: 1
Fundamentalist asswipes: 0

FTA- They included an 1853 letter from Sheik al-Bakkay al-Kounti, a spiritual leader in Timbuktu, beseeching the reigning sultan to spare the life of the German explorer Heinrich Barth. The sultan had barred all non-Muslims from the city under penalty of death, but al-Kounti’s eloquent plea persuaded him to release Barth unharmed. “The manuscripts show that Islam is a religion of tolerance,”

Um, wat? Islam was the reason the sultan barred all non-muslims in the first place.

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