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Among the most important, albeit widely unknown, cultural treasures of mankind are the century old libraries in west Africa. The Science Centre in Timbuktu (Mali) is legendary. Yet few Europeans are aware that in the Mauritanian Tidjikdja oasis alone, there are 19 libraries with the most precious of Arabic manuscripts.
This oasis in the centre of the Sahara in
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Mauritania lies at the crossroads of several old caravan routes and is an ancient important station in trans-Sahara trade. Tidjikdja was founded in 1660 by a number of families who had left the Chinguetti oasis in the north of the country with all their belongings, which of course included the knowledge documented in their scripts. So Tidjikdja became, from the very beginning,
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