Timbuktu in the sixteenth century was a commercial city whose principal import and export was books. Manuscripts came across the Sahara from Cairo and Fez, were copied locally, and were held in private family libraries rather than in any public institution, which is why so many survived into the twentieth century in domestic custody. Teaching happened around the mosques of Sankore, Djinguereber and Sidi Yahya, with students attaching themselves to individual scholars rather than enrolling anywhere.
Ahmad Baba belonged to the Aqit family, one of the scholarly lineages at the centre of this, and the remark for which he is most often quoted is a complaint: that the Moroccans took 1,600 volumes from him, and that his was the smallest library of his relatives. Whatever the exact number, the claim gives a sense of scale that archaeology cannot.
The tradition did not end with the Saadian conquest. Families in Timbuktu and the surrounding region went on copying, collecting and inheriting manuscripts, and the state institute that carries his name was built in the twentieth century to gather and conserve what remained. When armed groups occupied the city in 2012 and 2013, the greater part of the collection was moved out by custodians and families, which is a continuation of exactly the private stewardship that preserved it in the first place.