The best explanation comes from one of the field's top private collectors, New York investment manager Richard Gilder, who, together with friend and collecting partner Lewis Lehrman, owns some 50, 000 manuscripts and printed material that date from colonial times to the present.

FORBES: It's Bunk?

It contains some 30, 000 manuscripts.

BBC: Timbuktu��s treasure trove of African history

Still, the very notion that drug companies might seed the medical literature with ghostwritten manuscripts raises hackles for some researchers.

FORBES

Some of the finest Japanese books and manuscripts to reach the West, however, were collected by a German, Engelbert Kaempfer, who was employed as a doctor by Dutch traders on Dejima.

ECONOMIST: Japanese art

Georgian Byzantine Manuscripts (Georgia) , consisting of 1, 000 works, some dating to the 5th century AD, kept at the National Center of Manuscripts in Tbilisi.

UNESCO: MEDIA SERVICES

Bamako, where the manuscripts are being held, has some of the country's heaviest rain.

CNN: SHARE THIS

The manuscripts offend the Salafists less than the tombs or graven images do, though some address the Sufi school of Islam, which they scorn.

ECONOMIST: Mali��s heritage