HISTORY FOR TIMBUKTU: AḤMAD BUL‘ARĀF, ARCHIVES, AND THE PLACE OF THE PAST

Aḥmad Bul‘arāf died in September 1955 and was buried in his adopted Timbuktu. He was laid to rest in the town’s Sīdi al-Wāfi al-Amīr al-Arawāni cemetery but it would be hard to identify his grave. Gravestones soon disappear into their natural sandy settings. At the time he was widely eulogized for his life’s work as a man of religion, culture, and knowledge. Well-known scholars and copyists of his era composed panegyric verses in his honour. One wrote: What a pity on the sciences and their books/On their owners when this calamity occurred/Their schools and places have become deserted/There’s no one in them except crows and vultures/Suddenly today there is a caller and no one to respond/Except the echoes and the tunes of the winds/By Ahmad Bul ‘arāf they were granted a gift/How many lessons were conducted and/You have upheld their loftiness, established their origin/You maintained their essence with your honorable books.1 Decades later he still lives on in the memories of scholars as a “great her