A burden is placed upon Ishmael - illegitimate first born son of the prophet Abraham - when he and his slave mother are cast away from the family and into the dessert. Ishmael is instructed to compile an Almanac and entrusted with a powerful secret to be employed with great discretion in the defense of history. This burden and its Almanac have been continuously maintained throughout the millennia in the world's oldest and least known university, forgotten at the proverbial end of the world, in the basement of Timbuktu's Sankore Madrasah. Professor Thomas Robinson of Princeton University is...