Nearly nine years after the burial of Timbuktu’s tombs and five years after their reconstruction, the inhabitants have regained their religious treasures, inseparable from the very identity of “333 holy cities.”
From our special correspondent in Timbuktu,
A few steps from Djingareyber’s large mosque, the gates to a cemetery. On the sandy ground, sober sign shows the places of the graves. In the middle, three mausoleums of light stone rise by about two meters.
Alpha Ibrahim Ben Essayouti, Deputy Imam of Djingareyber’s Grand Mosque, is present at the scene. “Those who are buried are great personalities who have marked the times by their erudition and their moral probability,” says the Imam. Then he continues: “The ritual exercise around mausoleums consists of meditating there. Not to come and make a request to the holy man, but to ask Allah to pour out His mercy and forgiveness on him. No one throws themselves in front of a mausoleum. The sacred formulas of the sacred book are recited there. ”
Cooling memory of destruction
An explanation that the imam holds, because it is because they insult the Timbuktans because they have adored them that the jihadists in Ansar Dine destroyed 24 of the city’s mausoleums.
Abdoulaye Cissé, a trader, testified: “I saw with my own eyes. I have my shop in front of “The door that does not open”. Sanda (a leading member of Ansar Dine, editor’s note) came to meet me and he said “today we will open it and we will see if the world will end”. A week later, they came back with money, pickaxes, pickaxes, and they destroyed it. It’s a very bad memory that we do not want to see come back … ”, says the store owner.
Undo the mausoleums
More than 700 years after the oldest were built and three years after the destruction, the mausoleums in Timbuktu have been rebuilt using traditional methods. Since then, residents have re-adapted mausoleums, such as Sandi Ben Sidi and Mahamane Abdou, found on the market.
“Every Friday, if I leave the mosque, I go there, next to the Kounta tribes’ guard camp. All Muslims born in Timbuktu did so, says Sandi Ben Sidi, who appreciates the reconstruction of the mausoleums: “Before it was old, now it is just as good, they have been rebuilt. There’s no difference. “Mahamane Abdou, he can rent.” Friday, quite recently, I did not pray for the saint, but for all Muslims buried in the cemetery. I am going to Sheikh Sid Mahmoud ben Amaret’s mausoleum for others. ”
The Transitional Authorities and the International Criminal Court will hold a symbolic repair ceremony on Tuesday, March 30, in the case of Timbuktu’s mausoleums. It follows the ICC’s belief in 2016 about Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, a CEO of Ansar Dine who had commissioned the destruction of the mausoleums in 2012A first in a case of destruction of cultural heritage.
