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Timbuktu

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: African Geography

   Location of Timbuktu in Mali

   The city of Timbuktu ( English: Timbuctoo, Koyra Chiini: Tumbutu,
   French: Tombouctou) is a city in Mali, West Africa. It is home to the
   prestigious Qur'anic Sankore University and other madrasas, and was an
   intellectual and spiritual capital and centre for the propagation of
   Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its three great
   mosques, Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia, recall Timbuktu's golden
   age. Although continuously restored, these monuments are today under
   threat from desertification.

   Timbuktu is populated by Songhay, Tuareg, Fulani, and Moorish people,
   and is about 15km north of the River Niger. It is also at the
   intersction of an east-west and a north-south Trans-Saharan trade
   across the Sahara to Araouane. It was important historically (and still
   is today) as an entrepot for rock-salt from Taoudenni.

   Its geographical setting made it a natural meeting point for nearby
   African populations and nomadic Berber and Arab peoples from the north.
   Its long history as a trading outpost that linked west Africa with
   Berber, Arab, and Jewish traders throughout north Africa, and thereby
   indirectly with traders from Europe, has given it a fabled status, and
   in the West it was for long a metaphor for exotic, distant lands: "from
   here to Timbuktu."

   Timbuktu's long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization
   is scholarship . By the fourteenth century, important books were
   written and copied in Timbuktu, establishing the city as the centre of
   a significant written tradition in Africa.

Origins

   Timbuktu was established by the nomadic Tuareg perhaps as early as the
   10th century. Like its predecessor, Tiraqqa, a neighboring trading city
   of the Wangara, Timbuktu grew to great wealth because of its key role
   in trans-Saharan trade in gold, ivory, slaves, salt and other goods by
   the Tuareg, Mandé and Fulani merchants, transferring goods from
   caravans coming from the Islamic north to boats on the Niger. Thus if
   the Sahara functioned as a sea, Timbuktu was a major port. It became a
   key city in several successive empires: the Ghana Empire, the Mali
   Empire from 1324, and the Songhai Empire from 1468, the second
   occupations beginning when the empires overthrew Tuareg leaders who had
   regained control. It reached its peak in the early 16th century, but
   its capture in 1591 by a band of Moroccan adventurers was not the start
   so much as a symptom of the crumbling of the ancient economy with
   Portuguese goods that came instead from the river's mouth (Braudel pp
   434–35).

   The leaders of the Songhai kingdom (also spelled Songhay) began
   expanding their domain along the Niger River. Like the kingdoms of
   Ghana and Mali that flourished in the region in earlier centuries,
   Songhai grew powerful because of its control of local trade routes.
   Timbuktu would soon become the heart of the mighty Songhai Empire. It
   became wealthy because many merchants traveled trade routes that went
   through it.

Legendary tales

   A sign in the Sahara about the distance to Timbuktu in caravan
   Enlarge
   A sign in the Sahara about the distance to Timbuktu in caravan

   Tales of Timbuktu's fabulous wealth helped prompt European exploration
   of the west coast of Africa. Among the earliest descriptions of
   Timbuktu are those of Leo Africanus, Ibn Battuta and Shabeni.

   The place name is said to come from a Tuareg woman named Buktu who dug
   a well in the area where the city stands today; hence "Timbuktu", which
   means "Buktu's well".

Ibn Battuta

   Ibn Battuta (1304-1368) was a Moroccan Berber traveller born in
   Tangier. He spent 30 years travelling the Muslim world from Timbuktu to
   Turkey, Central Asia, China and India. He was probably the first
   outsider to document his visit to Timbuktu:

     Timbuktu...is four miles from the Nile. Most of its inhabitants are
     Massufa, people of the veil. Its governor...called Farba
     Musa...appointed one of the Massufa as amir over a company...placed
     on him a garment, a turban and trousers, all of them of dyed
     material. He then seated him on a shield and he was lifted up by the
     elders of his tribe on their heads...At Timbuktu I embarked on the
     Nile (Niger) in a small vessel carved from one piece of wood. We
     used to come ashore every night in a village to buy what we needed
     of food and ghee in exchange for salt and perfumes and glass
     ornaments.

Leo Africanus

   Perhaps most famous among the tales written about Timbuktu is that by
   Leo Africanus aka "Leo the African". As a captured renegade who later
   converted back to Islam from Christianity, following a trip in 1512,
   when the Songhai empire was at its height he wrote the following:

     The rich king of Tombuto hath many plates and sceptres of gold, some
     whereof weigh 1300 pounds. ... He hath always 3000 horsemen ...
     (and) a great store of doctors, judges, priests, and other learned
     men, that are bountifully maintained at the king's expense. ^

   At the time of Leo Africanus' visit, grass was abundant, providing
   plentiful milk and butter in the local cuisine, though there were
   neither gardens nor orchards surrounding the city.

Shabeni

   Shabeni was a merchant from Tetuan who was captured and ended up in
   England where he told his story of how as a child of 14, around 1787,
   he had gone with his father to Timbuktu. A version of his story is
   related by James Grey Jackson in his book An Account of Timbuctoo and
   Hausa, 1820:

     On the east side of the city of Timbuctoo, there is a large forest,
     in which are a great many elephants. The timber here is very large.
     The trees on the outside of the forest are remarkable...they are of
     such a size that the largest cannot be girded by two men. They bear
     a kind of berry about the size of a walnut, in clusters consisting
     of from ten to twenty berries. Shabeeny cannot say what is the
     extent of this forest, but it is very large.

Centre of learning

   During the early 15th century, a number of Islamic institutions were
   erected. The most famous of these is the Sankore mosque, also known as
   the University of Sankore.

   While Islam was practiced in the cities, the local rural majority were
   non-Muslim traditionalists. Often the leaders were nominal Muslims in
   the interest of economic advancement while the masses were
   traditionalists.

University of Sankore

   Map from 1855
   Enlarge
   Map from 1855

   Sankore was built in 989 AD and became the centre of the Islamic
   scholarly community in Timbuktu. The "University of Sankore" was a
   madrassah, very different in organization from the universities of
   medieval Europe. It was composed of several entirely independent
   schools or colleges, each run by a single master or imam. Students
   associated themselves with a single teacher, and courses took place in
   the open courtyards of mosque complexes or private residences. The
   primary focus of these schools was the teaching of the Qur'an, although
   broader instruction in fields such as logic, astronomy, and history
   also took place. Scholars wrote their own books as part of a
   socioeconomic model based on scholarship. The profit made by buying and
   selling of books was only second to the gold-salt trade. Among the most
   formidable scholars, professors and lecturers was Ahmed Baba--a highly
   distinguished historian frequently quoted in the Tarikh-es-Sudan and
   other works.

The Library of Timbuktu

   The collection of ancient manuscripts at the University of Sankore and
   other sites around Timbuktu document the magnificence of the
   institution, as well as the city itself, while enabling scholars to
   reconstruct the past in fairly intimate detail. Dating from the 16th to
   the 18th centuries, these manuscripts cover every aspect of human
   endeavor and are indicative of the high level of civilization attained
   by West Africans at the time. In testament to the glory of Timbuktu,
   for example, a West African Islamic proverb states that "Salt comes
   from the north, gold from the south, but the word of God and the
   treasures of wisdom come from Timbuktu."

   Among the libraries which have been preserving these manuscripts are:
   Institut des Hautes Etudes et de Recherche Islamique - Ahmed Baba,
   Timbuktu; Mamma Haidara Library; Fondo Kati Library; Al-Wangari
   Library; and Mohamed Tahar Library. These libraries are considered part
   of the " African Ink Road" that stretched from West Africa connecting
   North Africa and East Africa. At one time there were 120 libraries with
   manuscripts in Timbuktu and surrounding areas. There are more than one
   million objects preserved in Mali with an additional 20 million in
   other parts of Africa, the largest concentration of which is in Sokoto,
   Nigeria, although the full extent of the manuscripts is unknown. During
   the colonial era efforts were made to conceal the documents after a
   number of entire libraries were taken to Paris, London and other parts
   of Europe. Some manuscripts were buried underground, while others were
   hidden in the desert or in caves. Many are still hidden today. The
   United States Library of Congress microfilmed a sampling of the
   manuscripts during an exhibit there in June of 2003.

Ravage and decline

   The city began to decline after explorers and slavers from Portugal and
   then other European countries landed in West Africa, providing an
   alternative to the slave market of Timbuktu and the trade route through
   the world's largest desert. The decline was hastened when it was
   invaded by Morisco mercenaries armed with European-style guns in the
   service of the Moroccan sultan in 1591.

   In 1824, the Paris-based Société de Géographie offered a 10,000 franc
   prize to the first non- Muslim to reach the town and return with
   information about it. Scot Gordon Laing made it in September 1826, but
   was killed shortly after by local Muslims who were fearful of European
   discovery and intervention. Frenchman René Caillé arrived in 1828
   traveling alone and disguised as Muslim; he was able to safely return
   and claim the prize.

   Robert Adams, an African-American sailor, claimed to have visited the
   city in 1811 as a slave after his ship wrecked off the African coast..
   He later gave an account to the British counsel in Tangier, Morocco in
   1813. He published his account in an 1816 book, The Narrative of Robert
   Adams, a Barbary Captive (still in print as of 2006), but doubts remain
   about his account. Only two other Europeans reached the city before
   1890: Heinrich Barth in 1853 and Oskar Lenz in 1880.

   In the 1990s, Timbuktu came under attack from Tuareg people hoping to
   build their own state. The Tuareg Rebellion was symbolically ended with
   a weapons burning in the town in 1996.

Timbuktu today

   A typical street scene of Timbuktu, Mali, with omnipresent bread-baking
   furnaces
   Enlarge
   A typical street scene of Timbuktu, Mali, with omnipresent bread-baking
   furnaces

   Today, Timbuktu is an impoverished town, although its reputation makes
   it a tourist attraction to the point where it even has an international
   airport, in spite of the fact that a recent poll showed that 34% of
   young British did not believe the town existed, while the other 66%
   considered it "a mythical place". It is one of the eight regions of
   Mali, and is home to the region's local governor. It is the sister city
   to Djenné, also in Mali. The 1998 census listed its population at
   31,973, up from 31,962 in the census of 1987.

   Timbuktu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed since 1988. In 1990,
   it was added to the list of world heritage sites in danger due to the
   threat of desert sands. A program was set up to preserve the site and,
   in 2005, it was taken off the list of endangered sites.

   It was one of the major stops during Henry Louis Gates' PBS special
   "Wonders of the African World". Gates visited with Abdel Kadir Haidara,
   curator of the Mamma Haidara Library together with Ali Ould Sidi from
   the Cultural Mission of Mali. It is thanks to Gates that an Andrew
   Mellon Foundation Grant was obtained to finance the construction of the
   library's facilities, later inspiring the work of the Timbuktu
   Manuscripts Project. Unfortunately, no practising book artists exist in
   Timbuktu although cultural memory of book artisans is still alive,
   catering to the tourist trade. The town is home to an institute
   dedicated to preserving historic documents from the region, in addition
   to two small museums (one of them a former explorer's house), and the
   symbolic Flame of Peace monument.

Attractions

   Timbuktu's vernacular architecture is marked by mud mosques, which are
   said to have inspired Antoni Gaudí. These include
     * Djinguereber Mosque, built in 1327 by El Saheli
     * Sankore Mosque, also known as Sankore University, built in the
       early fifteenth century
     * Sidi Yahya mosque, built in the 1441 by Mohamed Naddah.

   Other attractions include a museum, terraced gardens and a water tower.

Language

   The main language of Timbuktu is a Songhay variety termed Koyra Chiini,
   spoken by over 80% of residents. Smaller groups, numbering 10% each
   before many were expelled during the Tuareg/Arab rebellion of
   1990-1994, speak Hassaniya Arabic and Tamashek.

Famous people connected with Timbuktu

     * Ali Farka Toure (1939–2006) Born in Timbuktu. ^

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