Timbuktu is a city in Mali, West Africa. It was an imports trade center of the Mali Empire which flourished between the 13th and 15th century CE.
The city gained its wealth from its access to control of the trade routes which connected the central portion of the Niger River with the Sahara and North Africa, passing along gold, slaves, and ivory from Africa’s interior to the Mediterranean and sending salt and other goods southwards.
The difficulty European explorers had in finding the city and establishing the source of the Niger River resulted in Timbuktu becoming one of the most mysterious places in world geography.
Early History & Name
The Timbuktu was located near the Niger River in modern-day Mali in West Africa. They had fertile lands for agriculture, beginning from at least 350 years ago, particularly the red-skinned rice, other indigenous cereals and foodstuffs were grown, including local deposits of copper exploited.
Copper was traded via trans-Sahara routes during the first millennium CE while evidence of copper ingots cast for trade purposes dates back to the 11th century CE onwards. Similarly, gold was probably locally mined and then traded, but concrete evidence from this period is lacking.
It was around 1100 CE that Timbuktu was founded by Tuareg herdsmen, the nomads of the southern Sahara, as an advantageous spot where land and river routes coincided.
Legends say herdsmen dug a well at the site and asked a woman called Buktu to look after it whenever they were away. In the Tuareg language, ‘Tamashek’, the word for ‘place’ is ‘Tin’ and so Timbuktu, derived from the language, is ‘TinBuktu,’ meaning ‘Place of Buktu’.
The Mali Empire
From the mid-13th century CE, Timbuktu, then under the control of the Mali Empire (1240-1645 CE), would reach new heights of wealth and fame, becoming the most important trading city in the Sudan region.
The Mali Empire established its independence from the Ghana empire thanks to its founder Sundiata Keita (aka Sunjaata, r. 1230-1255 CE), a prince of the indigenous Malinke (Mandingo) ethnic group.
Mali became the largest and richest empire yet seen in West Africa. Indigenous rulers adopted Islam from their contact with Arab merchants. They played a significant role in the spread of Islam across West Africa. Locals or at least urban ones were converted which created communities that even performed pilgrimages to holy Islamic sites like Mecca.
Timbuktu was one of the most important cities in the Mali Empire because of its location near the Niger River bend, And so, it was fed by the trade along both the east and west branches of this great water highway.
Moroccan Conquest Of Timbuktu
Timbuktu was captured on May 30, 1591 by an expedition of mercenaries called ‘Arma’. Arma were sent by the ruler of Morocco, Ahmad I al-Mansur. The mercenaries brought an end of an era of relative autonomy. The following period led to an economic and intellectual decline.
Ahmad I al-Mansur cited ‘disloyalty’ for reasons of subsequent killing and exiling of many of Timbuktu’s scholars, including Ahmad Baba, the city’s greatest scholar. Ahmad Baba, however, returned to Timbuktu, where he died in 1608.
The city’s decline increased with the increasing trans-Atlantic trade routes – transporting African slaves, including leaders and scholars of Timbuktu – marginalizing Timbuktu’s role as a trade and scholarly center.
In 1826, the Massina Empire took over the control of the city until 1865, when they were driven away by the Toucouleur Empire. Sources conflict on who was in control when the French arrived.
European Explorers
The Europeans had been aware of the descriptions of the city since Leo Africanus’s account. European individual and organizations made great efforts to discover Timbuktu and its fabricated riches.
The earliest of their sponsored explorers was a young Scottish adventurer named Mungo Park, who made two trips in search of the Niger River and Timbuktu (departing first in 1795 and then in 1805). It is believed that Park was the first Westerner to have reached the city, but he died in modern-day Nigeria without having the chance to report his findings.
In 1824, the Paris-based Société de Géographie offered a 10,000 francs prize to the first non-Muslim to reach the town and return with information about it. The Scotsman Gordon Laing arrived in August 1826 but was killed the following month by local Muslims who were fearful of European intervention.
The first potential westerner for hundreds of years to have reached the city and lived to tell its tale was an American sailor named Robert Adams (though his narrations were deemed dubious and his story quickly became controversial). He claimed to have visited Timbuktu in 1812, while he was enslaved for several years in Northern Africa.
While historians certainly admit he was in Northern Africa, the discrepancies in his depiction of Timbuktu make it unlikely he ever visited.
French colonial rule
Timbuktu became part of French Sudan (Soudan Français), a colony of France. The colony was reorganized and the name changed several times during the French colonial period.
Independence and Today
The Republic of Mali was proclaimed on 22nd September 1960. After 19th November 1968, a new constitution was created in 1974, making Mali a single-party state.
By then, the canal linking the city with the Niger River had already been filled with sand from the encroaching desert. Severe droughts hit the Sahel region in 1973 and 1985, decimating the Tuareg population around Timbuktu who relied on goat herding.
The crisis drove many of the inhabitants of Tombouctou Region to Algeria and Libya. Those who stayed relied on humanitarian organizations such as UNICEF for food and water.
Despite its illustrious history, modern-day Timbuktu is an impoverished town, poor even by Third World standards.
As the capital of the seventh Malian region, the Tombouctou Region, Timbuktu is the seat of the current governor, Colonel Mamadou Mangara, who took over from Colonel Mamadou Togola in 2008. Current issues include dealing with both droughts and floods, the latter caused by an insufficient drainage system that fails to transport direct rainwater from the city center.
Timbuktu is teetering on the edge of existence also because of human neglect, war and greed. Under-development and corruption are the co-conspirators of desertification. The city is not only garrisoned physically, but it’s also mentally sanded in.
The history books say Timbuktu boasted 25,000 students in its heydays, having established one of the world’s earliest universities in the 12th century. People in Timbuktu either adapt or leave. As the canal dried up and the winds of rain increasingly brought dust.
In 1988, Timbuktu was designated a United Nations World Heritage Site, and efforts were underway to preserve and protect the city, especially its centuries-old mosques. In 2012, due to regional fighting, the city was placed on the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger, where it still remains in 2018.
