Letras Africanas: Ismael Diadié Haidara en Agüimes

The historian, philosopher, expert in cooperation and responsible for the conservation of the Kati Fund, Ismael Diadié, will participate in the 27th edition of the Sur-Encuentro Teatral Tres Continentes Festival as part of African Letters, a Casa África programme that was founded in 2009 with the aim of bringing the Spanish public closer to the key voices in contemporary African literature.

Literature is without a doubt one of the essential ways of bringing us closer to the African continent's social, political and cultural reality. However a Spanish reader's access to that literary production is very limited, for reasons such as translation and the lack of inclusion into our country's book market.

With this project Casa África wants to contribute in remedying this shortage, by helping several the continent's most important writers to appear in several Spanish cities, giving special priority to authors published in the Casa África Literature Collection.

This way, African Letters has allowed authors like Henri Lopes (Democratic Republic of Congo), Germano Almeida ( Cape Verde), Fatou Diome (Senegal), Moussa Konaté (Mali), Tanella Boni (Ivory Coast), María Nsue (Equatorial Guinea, Veronique Tadjo (Ivory Coast), Achmat Dangor (South Africa), Abasse Ndione (Senegal), Jamal Mahjoub (Sudan), Boubacar Boris Diop (Senegal), Fatou Diome (Senegal), Emmanuel Dongala (Congo), or Alain Mabanckou (Congo) to appear in Spain.

Now comes the turn of Ishmael Diadié Haidara, historian, philosopher, expert in cooperation and responsible for the conservation of the Kati Fund, the largest alAndalus documentary legacy outside of Spain. As part of African Letters, Ismael Diadié will participate in the 2014 edition of the Festival del Sur-Encuentro Teatral Tres Continentes held annually in Agüimes (Gran Canaria). It will be in Conference Hall of the Auditorium Theatre of Agüimes on Saturday 18th at 7 p.m. with the conference "From Toledo to Timbuktu: the journey of the Kati Fund."

The manuscripts that Ishmael Diadié keeps on the alAndalus footprint  have been preserved from the 15th century. He carried out with his father the arduous task of bringing them together, as they were scattered among many family members, although he had to disperse much of the fund again to save it from the Jihadists who invaded Mali, for surely they would have destroyed it.

The alAndalus Library of Timbuktu is one of the main references of Al-Andalus, with more than 7,000 documents from various eras.