[3] The centre holds approximately 20,000 manuscripts covering Mali's history, including the Tarikh al-Sudan.

The majority of the manuscripts are from the 14th to 16th centuries, and most are written in Arabic but others are in local languages, such as Songhai, Tamashek and Bamanankan, or even in more distant ones, one each in Turkish and Hebrew, with topics covering medicine, astronomy, poetry, literature and Islamic law.

[2][3] A program to digitize the manuscripts is under way, run by Norway and Luxembourg under UNESCO supervision, with only a fraction of them having been scanned as of January 2013.

[2][3] On January 28, 2013, as French-led Malian troops captured the airport of Timbuktu, fleeing Tuareg Islamists set fire to the building which they had been using as sleeping quarters.

In July 2014 UNESCO joined the Ahmed Baba Institute in an urgent appeal for financial assistance to preserve, restore, and digitize the manuscripts.