The manuscripts paint a portrait of Timbuktu as the Cambridge or Oxford of its day, where from the 1300s to the late 1500s, students came from as far away as the Arabian Peninsula to learn at the feet of masters of law, literature and the sciences. At a time when Europe was emerging from the Middle Ages, African historians were chronicling the rise and fall of Saharan and Sudanese kings, replete with great battles and invasions. Astronomers charted the movement of the stars, physicians provided instructions on nutrition and the therapeutic properties of desert plants, and ethicists debated such issues as polygamy and the smoking of tobacco. Says Tal Tamari, a historian at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, who recently visited Timbuktu: "[These discoveries are] going to revolutionize what one thinks about West Africa."