New Delhi, Nov. 18 -- Thirteen years ago, Abdoulaye Cisse risked his life to smuggle tens of thousands of fragile manuscripts out of Timbuktu as al-Qaida -linked extremists swept into the desert town.

At night, he loaded crates of manuscripts from the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Research onto donkey carts, aware that their pages carried evidence of his people's glorious past. They were taken to the river, where wooden boats and then buses took them to Mali's capital, Bamako - a 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) journey.

"It was dark, but we knew the route by heart," said Cisse, the institute's general secretary.

Moving the manuscripts took a month. The institute's staff knew they risked their lives.

The 28,000 manuscri...