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Timbuktu, Mali: Intellectual and Spiritual
Capital
Few places in the world have an air of mystery as alluring as
Timbuktu. The name of this city in the West African country of
Mali is so wrapped in legend that many people think of Timbuktu
as a mythical, timeless land rather than a city with a real history.
In many cultures, Timbuktu is used in phrases to express great
distance and to suggest something beyond a person's experience.
Popular sayings such as "I'll knock you clear to Timbuktu" suggest
that, for many people, Timbuktu has existed more as an idea of
the remote and mysterious than as an actual place.
For West Africans, however, Timbuktu was an economic and cultural
capital equal in historical importance to acclaimed cities like
Rome, Athens, Jerusalem, and Mecca. Beginning in the thirteenth
century, Timbuktu became the center of a thriving trade in Africa.
Prosperity made by the
trans-Saharan trade routes brought great wealth to
the city. This wealth attracted not only merchants and traders
but also men of academic and religious learning.
Timbuktu was founded around 1100 C.E. as a camp for its proximity
to the Niger
River. Caravans quickly began to haul salt from mines
in the Sahara Desert to trade for gold and slaves brought along
the river from the south. By 1330, Timbuktu was part of the powerful
Mali Empire, which controlled the lucrative gold-salt trade routes
in the region. Two centuries later, Timbuktu reached its grandeur
under the Songhay Empire, becoming a haven for scholars. |
Photo Credits:
top: C. & J. Lenars/CORBIS
bottom: UNESCO |
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From
the early part of the fourteenth century to the time of the Moroccan
invasion in the late sixteenth century, the city of Timbuktu became
an important intellectual and spiritual center of the Islamic
world, attracting people from as far away as Saudi Arabia
to study there. Great mosques, universities, schools, and libraries
were built under the Mali and Songhay Empires, some of which still
stand today.
Timbuktu's golden age ended in the late sixteenth century, when
a Moroccan army destroyed the Songhay Empire. Portuguese navigators
ensured Timbuktu's decline by establishing reliable trade with
the West African coast and undercutting the city's commercial
power. Around 400 years ago, European merchant ships began trading
along the West African coast, and the cross-Saharan trade routes
lost their importance. Having lost the source of its wealth, Timbuktu
declined and became known as a lost city.
Today, the very fabric of Timbuktu today is threatened by what
once contributed to the city's success—the Sahara
Desert. The desert, which for centuries brought wealth
to the city, now brings only drifting sands, driven by the dry
wind of the harmattan,
that threaten to smother the city and its monuments. This desertification
has destroyed the vegetation, water supply, and many historical
structures in the city. In response to the threat of encroachment
by desert sands, Timbuktu was inscribed on the World Heritage
List in Danger in 1990 and UNESCO established a conservation program
to safeguard the city.
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