“The exploration of the literary resources of the Timbuktu Manuscripts leads us to discover what we do not expect: texts that both resemble historical novels and popular literature, to the glory of Imam Ali and his son al-Husayn.” That is how the Geuthner editions present this new book, which will be published in the collection “manuscripts saved from the sands.”
“The prowesses of Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib and his son al-Husayn” has been translated and annotated by three authors, two of whom are researchers at the ENS de Lyon:

• Georges Bohas, professor emeritus at the ENS de Lyon (ICAR laboratory), who for many years has devoted a large part of his scientific work to the Timbuktu Manuscripts.
• Abderrahim Saguer, research engineer in the team “Cédilles” at the ICAR laboratory, who holds a PhD in Arabic language and literature and works full-time on Sub-Saharan Arabic manuscripts.
• Ahyaf Sinno, professor emeritus at Saint Joseph University in Beirut. He has published numerous works, particularly on the Koran’s rhetoric, texts by Arabic grammarians and the Timbuktu Manuscripts.

Moreover, Georges Bohas has just published at the Presses Universitaires de Rennes (PUR) “The Illusion of the arbitrariness of the sign.” This work empirically demonstrates an innovative hypothesis: that phonetics is relevant to lexical structure. Thus emerges a new paradigm in language sciences, based on the premise that form is not arbitrary when it comes to meaning.