Timbuktu’s beginnings go back to the 1100s when a group of Tuareg wanderers from northwest Africa made a temporary camp near the Niger River. According to mythical tales, they moved north and left the camp under the care of a woman named Bouctou. After returning to the camp, the Tuareg christened it Tinbouctou, meaning “the well of Bouctou.” The small settlement grew into a major trading center over many years.
Who Founded Timbuktu?
In the early 1200s, the Malinke people who later on became part of the Kingdom of Mali lived in the small state of Kangaba near the current border between Mali and Guinea. Around 1235, they supported a banished leader called Sundiata Keita in a fight against Sumanguru, a tyrannical Sosso king who had invaded their territory and started to impose strict trade rules.
Sundiata is believed to have practiced both Islam as well as his traditional religion hence his resonance with both the natives and the Muslim Arab traders in the region. With the additional help of regional rulers including the king of Mema, Sundiata reclaimed Kangaba from Sumanguru. He also expanded his control over other territories such as Timbuktu. The region was rich in resources such as salt and gold. Under Sundiata, Timbuktu became a prosperous trade center within the Mali Empire which was founded by Sundiata.
Timbuktu became a major city in the Mali Empire after Sundiata’s nephew, Mansa Musa, ascended to power around 1312, several generations later. Mansa Musa expanded the territories of the Mali Empire, taking over the towns of Gao, Walata, and Jenne.
How Did Mansa Musa Contribute to Timbuktu’s Rise?
Timbuktu reached its apex in the 1300s when Mansa Musa brought back thousands of books from his journeys. This was after he went on Hajj to Mecca in 1324. He travelled with a massive entourage and large quantities of gold and was said to have been the richest person in the world at that point in time. The quantities of gold carried by his procession are said to have been so enormous that they affected the value of gold in places like Egypt. Along the way, he collected books with rare knowledge which he brought back to Mali. The books were collected from places like Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Egypt. He also came back with scholars.
He also built mosques on his return, and started the learning institutions that made the city famous as an Islamic learning center. Large collections of books were gathered in school libraries. The books covered topics ranging from the teachings of Islam to mathematics. Numbering in the hundreds of thousands, a significant number of them still exist today, albeit in a fragile state, largely under private ownership. Collectively, they are referred to as the Lost Libraries of Timbuktu.
What Caused the Decline of Timbuktu?
Timbuktu was largely unexplored by the Europeans for many years until 1828 due to its remote geographical location. Today, it is still quite isolated with few good roads linking to it. European explorers became interested in the city after coming across the writings of Leo Africanus, an Andalusi diplomat, in the 1500s. This was after he visited Timbuktu and chronicled his findings in a book called Geographical History of Africa. The city’s reputation for being hard to reach and the perils of the journey added to its mystique.
And so in 1828, René-Auguste Caillié, a French explorer, became the first European to visit the city and return his findings. He had been preceded by Major Gordon Laing, a British officer. However, Gordon was murdered in September 1826, a few weeks after he left the city. His accounts of the journey and the city were compiled and published posthumously in a book called Travels Through Central Africa to Timbuctoo and Across the Great Desert to Morocco. Subsequently, France colonized Timbuktu in the 1890s.
What About Timbuktu’s Lost Libraries Today?
It was only after Mali gained its independence in 1960 that the country started to look for and preserve the old writings of Timbuktu. The Ahmed Baba Institute was founded in 1973 in order to help save the old writings. The research center was named after Timbuktu’s famous scholar, Ahmed Baba al Massufi, who was exiled to Marrakesh, Morocco, after the Sultan of Morocco attacked and took over Timbuktu in 1591.
Timbuktu’s famous writings are thought to be in the hundreds of thousands. Many of them date from the 1300s to 1500s when the city was a major Islamic learning and trading center. Often written in the Arabic language and some local languages, many of the texts were kept for many years in family book collections, passed down through generations. The books included copies of texts written by well-known writers such as Avicenna, Aristotle, Claudius Ptolemy, and Plato. There are ongoing efforts to make them accessible to the public.
