Timbuktu Seeks Rebirth After Islamist Militants’ Destruction

Timbuktu, the centuries-old Malian center of Islamic learning on the southern edge of the Sahara desert, is rebuilding after Islamist militants razed some of its most revered shrines built in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Reconstruction is taking place brick by brick, as workers use banco, a mixture of mud and straw, to restore 14 of the 16 mausoleums destroyed or damaged by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar Dine, or “defenders of the faith.” Those two groups follow Islam’s Salafi movement which regards the practices of the Sufis in Timbuktu as sacrilegious.