The Glory of Timbuktu

Today the name of "Timbuktu" is a synonym for a faraway, almost mythical place, and in modern times the city of some 30,000 inhabitants—now known as Tom-bouctou (tohn-buk-TOO) in Mali—is certainly well off the beaten path. But under the Mali and Songhai empires, it was one of the most extraordinary cultural centers of premodern Africa, and indeed of the world.

Starting in the 1400s, Europeans became fascinated by tales of a great city on the edge of the desert, which housed both wealthy merchants and scholars wealthy in knowledge. In 1470, an Italian journeyer became one of the first Europeans to visit, and more information surfaced with the publication of a book called Description of Africa in 1550.

Written by Leo Africanus (c. 1485-c.1554), an Arab captured and brought to Rome, the book remained for many centuries Europeans' principal source of knowledge regarding the Sudan. Leo reported that, of the many products sold in the rich markets of Timbuktu, none was more prized and profitable than books—a fact that says a great deal about the rich intellectual life there.

Unfortunately, a series of wars and invasions by neighboring peoples during the early modern era robbed Timbuktu of its glory. In 1828, a French explorer went to find the legendary Timbuktu, and in its place he found a "mass of ill-looking houses built of earth."

Hai (SAWNG-hy), which Mansa Musa had conquered; in the mid-1400s, as his dynasty fell into decline, Songhai won its independence.