Saving Timbuktu's Manuscripts
Odysseys
•
15m
For centuries the city of Timbuktu was famed as a golden metropolis situated on the southern fringes of the Sahara; tales of its immense wealth and its reputation as a key centre of learning obsessed travellers and adventurers for many hundreds of years. Timbuktu certainly has one of the most illustrious histories in Africa; yet its recent history is much more turbulent and in 2012 the city suffered heavily after it was captured by Tuareg separatist Islamist forces. Recently Dan visited the once-gleaming Timbuktu with the International Committee of the Red Cross to learn more about its history and its vast collection of manuscripts - the most important set of documents in the history of sub-Saharan Africa...
Up Next in Odysseys
-
HMS Terror and Erebus: With Sir Micha...
In 1845, a British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin departed England aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. The expedition was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help ...
-
Secrets of Hitler's Island Fortress
Guernsey and its neighbouring islands have a unique distinction which sets them apart from the rest of the British Isles. Together with the rest of the Channel Islands, they were the only part of the British Isles to fall to Nazi Germany in the Second World War. In this documentary Dan Snow disco...
-
Total Victory: The Battle of Trafalgar
Victory was total. An enemy fleet obliterated. The course of a great war determined. A hero struck down and a legend born. In October 1805 the British Royal Navy defeated the combined battle fleets of the French and Spanish empires 20 miles northwest of a promontory of rock and sand in southern S...
