WASHINGTON — “Our ceilings are not very tight,” says Abdel Haidara of the houses in his native Mali. He was talking recently at the Library of Congress in one of the library’s more ceremonial rooms.

Timbuktu. The name alone conjures mystery, obscurity and curiosity: Is that really a place? Where the heck is it? Timbuktu is in Mali, a West African country bordered by seven others, including ...

After a brutal ten-month occupation of Timbuktu, jihadists fled that city in Mali in February of this year—but not before burning all the ancient manuscripts they could find. The city’s Muslim ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The Church publishes the Monitor ...

Even when you get past the eerie-coincidence level of Abderrahmane Sissako’s Oscar-nominated “Timbuktu” — a film about the causes, consequences and contradictions of Islamic extremism, made by an ...

Our adventure in the great African desert was triggered by an invitation extended from the Wheeler Opera House stage in fall 2004. Habib Koite, a Malian performer, spoke of the Festival of the Desert.

JOHANNESBURG – An Islamic extremist can't summon the necessary fervor while making a video hailing the jihadi cause in a scene from "Timbuktu," an Oscar nominee for best foreign language film that is ...

When it comes to distant destinations, no name is quite so evocative, so utterly haunting, as Timbuktu. Used by us all to connote a far-flung spot off all the maps, it's somewhere that a great deal of ...

JOHANNESBURG – A South African university says a limited number of manuscripts in the fabled city of Timbuktu in Mali were damaged or stolen by Islamist extremists as they fled the city. The ...

Chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown is writing from Mali, where he is reporting for his series “Culture at Risk,” exploring the problems and solutions to arts and culture threatened by war, natural ...