Why is Timbuktu Famous?

Summary

Why is Timbuktu Famous?

Dan Snow's History Hit
Release Date: May 15, 2025

Introduction: The Destruction and Discovery

Dan Snow opens the episode by recounting a dramatic landing at an airport devastated by a bomb ([01:22]). As he navigates through the wreckage, his attention is drawn to a shattered sign bearing the name "Timbuktu." This moment serves as a poignant entry point into the exploration of Timbuktu's historical significance.

Dan Snow ([01:45]): "When you see those kind of signs defiled and upside down and broken on the floor, it makes you question the whole basis of how we live and organize ourselves."

Geographical Significance

Snow describes Timbuktu’s unique location where the lush Niger River meets the advancing Sahara Desert. This strategic position made Timbuktu a crucial hub for trade and cultural exchange.

Kai Mora ([07:03]): "Timbuktu is right where it sort of like bends into the desert. And this is why it becomes so important... people start to coagulate around the river as a refuge from the sort of dry weather in the desert."

Timbuktu in the Mali Empire

The discussion transitions to the rise of Timbuktu during the Mali Empire, emphasizing its transformation into a center of wealth, trade, and scholarship under the rule of Mansa Musa.

Dan Snow ([12:01]): "Mansa Musa is known for being very wealthy, very rich. Under his reign, Timbuktu begins to have a large legacy of Islamic scholarship."

Kai Mora ([13:20]): "Under Mansa Musa, Timbuktu becomes what we know of today, what we dream of and envision today."

Center of Learning and the Manuscripts

Kai Mora delves into Timbuktu’s reputation as an intellectual hub, highlighting the vast collection of manuscripts that cover a wide array of subjects from religion to science. These manuscripts are a testament to the city's rich scholarly tradition.

Kai Mora ([17:36]): "The manuscripts are a wonderful thing because Africa is a continent that is embedded in oral history... These manuscripts are really rich in covering the history of this period."

Dan Snow ([19:49]): "Some of them have not been looked at by scholars, haven't been digitized, haven't been published. So we're still exploring astronomy, history, poetry, all these fields."

European Perceptions and Mythologizing Timbuktu

The conversation explores how Timbuktu was perceived by early European explorers. Initially recognized for its sophistication and wealth, Timbuktu eventually became mythologized as an exotic and mysterious locale in Western imagination.

Kai Mora ([21:50]): "Early accounts of travelers...proved that Timbuktu was a hub of trade, knowledge, and scholarship."

Dan Snow ([34:00]): "Why does it have such a prominent place in people's popular geography of the world in the 19th and 20th centuries?"

Kai Mora ([34:15]): "It's truly deserving of it, because it was a hub of trade, a hub of knowledge, a hub of scholarship... African and black historians actively worked to uncover this history."

Decline of Timbuktu’s Prominence

The decline of Timbuktu is attributed to several factors, including internal conflicts, shifts in trade routes, and external invasions. The Moroccan conquest in the late 16th century marked a significant blow to Timbuktu’s status as a center of learning and trade.

Kai Mora ([30:27]): "The Arma invaded Timbuktu in 1591... although they took over, the war costs more money to sustain than it does actually get them money into the dynasty."

Preservation and Modern Efforts

Despite historical upheavals, efforts to preserve Timbuktu’s manuscripts continue today. Digitization projects aim to safeguard these invaluable documents for future generations, ensuring that Timbuktu’s rich intellectual legacy endures.

Kai Mora ([20:09]): "Digitization is very important, especially for access for not just scholars, but people who just are interested and want to see it."

Conclusion: Timbuktu’s Enduring Legacy

Dan Snow wraps up the episode by reflecting on Timbuktu’s enduring legacy as a symbol of Africa’s rich historical and intellectual heritage. The city's story challenges misconceptions and highlights the importance of preserving cultural heritage.

Dan Snow ([35:29]): "Thank you so much for giving us such a tour through centuries of Timbuktu's history."

Kai Mora ([35:33]): "Thank you so much for having me."

Key Takeaways

• Strategic Location: Timbuktu’s position at the intersection of the Niger River and the Sahara Desert made it a vital hub for trade and cultural exchange.
• Mali Empire’s Influence: Under Mansa Musa, Timbuktu flourished as a center of wealth and Islamic scholarship, attracting scholars and fostering a rich manuscript tradition.
• Cultural Legacy: The vast collection of manuscripts in Timbuktu showcases its historical role in various fields, including religion, science, and literature.
• European Mythology: Early European explorers recognized Timbuktu’s sophistication, which later evolved into a mythical status in Western imagination.
• Decline and Preservation: Timbuktu’s prominence declined due to internal and external conflicts, but modern efforts focus on preserving its invaluable manuscripts.

Notable Quotes

• Dan Snow: "What I was seeing was part of a process, I suppose, that had begun centuries before." ([01:50])
• Kai Mora: "These manuscripts are really rich in covering the history of this period." ([17:36])
• Dan Snow: "We're still exploring astronomy, history, poetry, all these fields." ([19:49])
• Kai Mora: "Digitization is very important... the preservation of the manuscripts themselves is also very important." ([20:09])

Further Reading and Resources

• Digitization Projects: Universities such as UC Berkeley and UCLA are leading efforts to digitize Timbuktu’s manuscripts, enhancing access for scholars and the public.
• Historical Accounts: Early European travelers and Arab scholars provide essential insights into Timbuktu’s historical significance.
• Modern Scholarship: Kai Mora’s work at Harvard University offers a deep dive into the music and religion of the Western Sahel, shedding light on Timbuktu’s cultural context.

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Transcript

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[Dan Snow]

Hi everybody. Welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit when we landed, we saw instantly that the airport had been blown apart by a bomb. We crunched across broken glass to pass through the arrivals lounge. I always remember the ceiling panels hanging down the sort of walls and partitions usually so strict at an airport. They were all rent asunder. We just walked wherever we wanted. There's something very jarring about seeing the familiar signs that govern our modern world. Utterly disrupted, we live and die by the exit sign, the arrivals arrow. To do this, do that, stop the car here, public signage. It almost feels like the kind of hallmark of modern, complex industrial living. So when you see those kind of signs defiled and upside down and broken on the floor, it makes you question the whole basis of how we live and organize ourselves. Makes you realise how artificial everything is. And one of those smashed signs had, well, one of the world's most famous place names, Timbuktu. We hurtled into town down a back road. The main road was prone to ambushes, I was told. Our Land Cruiser crashed up and down the divots and the potholes. But as we neared the centre we found felt like we were thrust back centuries. Narrow streets, buildings rising up to the honey colored smooth walls of ancient buildings like The Jangarebeh Mosque, one of the great buildings of Timbuktu, one of the great buildings of the world. The sun's rays are so punishing, they baked the outside of that building. Inside, the corridors were dark and cool. The city had just been recaptured from militants. And I was there to look at the. A really astonishing process. It was underway. Timbuktu had been a center of learning and culture and art. More on that in a second. And as a result, thousands of manuscripts have been produced over the centuries. And they were there in libraries. Those libraries, those manuscripts had been threatened by the militants, and a huge number have been hidden by ordinary people, buried in yards, stuck in cupboards in their houses. But now they were back, and there were dark, quiet labs full of people hunched over, patiently digitizing every page. What I was seeing was part of a process, I suppose, that had begun centuries before. If we scoot all the way back to the early 14th century and place ourselves just on the edge of the Sahara Desert, north of the Niger river, we'd have been looking out over a vast ocean of sand. Big, wide, blue skies. But what's so strange, perhaps a bit like the Nile in Egypt. What's so strange is you see the lush banks or river in the distance. The Niger brought with it life and greenery along its banks, but it also brought trade and luxury goods. And where that river met that desert, well, you get one of the commercial intellectual centers of the Islamic world. It was called Timbuktu. And in the 14th century, it was the heart of a mighty Malian empire. You'll heard of the Malian empire because on this podcast, we talked about Mansa Musa. He was its wealthiest ruler. He was the man who caused a bout of hyperinflation in Egypt when he went to visit because he brought so much gold, so much coinage with him. He was the man that's often said to be the richest man in history. Whether or not Elon Musk competes, we do not know. Timbuktu in that period, became rich camel caravans, thirsting for rest, thirsty for water and food after their journey across the Sahara, made their way through the hustle and bustle of the markets and the town squares. The call to prayer echoed across the city. And in those squares, traders exchanged gold from further south for huge blocks of salt from North Africa. And as so often, if there's wealth and trade, well, there's learning, there's art, there's culture as well. Beautifully decorated scrolls began to be produced, manuscripts written on Italian paper and goat skins. Scholars in Academic institutions studied the writings of the Prophet Muhammad, the translated works of Greek philosophers. And for centuries, the city would play a crucial role in trade, but also the spread of Islam across West Africa. It also was the conduit for much of their West African gold to the rest of the world. That gold of West Africa fueled the wealth of Islamic empires like Al Andalus in what is now Iberia and Spain, largely. And the scholars of Timbuktu pushed ahead. They made discoveries in the fields of medicine, astronomy, and maths that the Islamic world would become so renowned for in the medieval period. Period that was the patrimony, that was the legacy that was saved by the brave people of Timbuktu when extremist Islamic militants seized the city in 2012 and may well have destroyed that priceless cultural collection. I wanted to find out more about Timbuktu. So joining me on this podcast talk about the magnificent West African city is Kai Mora. She's a writer, historian, a PhD student in African and African American studies at Harvard University, and she specializes in the music and religion of the Western Sahel. So here she is, Talk all about Timbuktu. Enjoy.

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[Kai Mora]

God save the king. No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

[Dan Snow]

Kai, can you try and explain for me and for the audience the kind of geographical position of Timbuktu? And let's start with that geography. What's so important about its placement?

[Kai Mora]

Yeah, so Timbuktu, of course, is in West Africa. It's in present day Mali, the nation of Mali, which gained independence in 1960. But geographically, it is on sort of the left side of what you would call the Niger river bend, which is where the Niger river, it goes all the way up, and then it meets where the sort of the desert begins. The Sahara Desert begins, and then it comes back down. So Timbuktu is right where it sort of like bends into the desert. And this is why it becomes so important, especially around 5,000, before our common era, where the desert starts advancing further south. And so the river, people around the river start to sort of coagulate around the river as a refuge from the sort of like dry weather in the desert. So this is where it becomes like this first sort of like urban area where people are gathered around and building sorts of communities.

[Dan Snow]

So you're saying it's where the vast of the Sahara meets the beginning of those kind of rich, lush West African river systems.

[Kai Mora]

Exactly, exactly.

[Dan Snow]

And does that mean it's always been on the edge of something, or is it the heart of things?

[Kai Mora]

Timbuktu is in what you would call the Sahel, which is Arabic. It means shore. And so you have where the desert and the sort of forest area meets, but in between, you have kind of like this coast of people who are constantly moving in or out. So every at one point, it is sort of a place where a lot of people are gathering and meeting in another sense, because the desert is nearby. This is sort of sporadic geography. So I think it depends on, again, things like rainfall is not always consistent in the area, and that's why the river systems become so important. But also, then you have to think about how the river systems sort of meet with, like, what they call the ship of the desert, which is the camel, and how the camels meet the river. So I think it's interesting. It's not necessarily a place where it's totally unoccupied, but it's a space where people are constantly moving in and out.

[Dan Snow]

That's what they told me when I landed. Where the camel meets the canoe.

[Kai Mora]

Yes, exactly.

[Dan Snow]

So it's founded, we think, what, 5,000 years before present?

[Kai Mora]

So I would say not necessarily that it was founded as what we would know as Timbuktu today, the sort of city that sort of begins in our common era around the 12th century, which is the 1100s, but I think around that 5000 mark, where the desert starts to advance further south and people start to coagulate around the river. That's when you start to see more of this sort of urban settler sort of migration pattern. But how we know Timbuktu today as, like, the place of scholarship and learning and trade, a lot of that really begins in the 1100s.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so what's going on in the 1100s? Why do they start building this extraordinary place?

[Kai Mora]

Yeah, so I think that it has to be put in context in what's going on in North Africa, which is the founding of the Almoravid dynasty in Morocco and what is today Morocco. And these were essentially Islamized Amazigh, which the former terminology uses Berber, but we like to use the word Amazigh today. The indigenous people of North Africa, they sort of adopted Islam and created this dynasty which sort of catalyzed the need for trade coming from south of the Sahara. That's where you have more of the sort of Tuareg nomads coming down into Timbuktu and into the Sahelian region, into West Africa to Then trade with the West African kingdoms that we see starting to arise in the 12th and 13th centuries.

[Dan Snow]

Is there a sort of urban, particularly urban or scholarly culture in that group?

[Kai Mora]

With the Almoravids? Again, it's sort of a dynasty that is a amalgamation of scholars, of warriors, of hunters, and they again adopt Islam and they become sort of this like dynasty. And then those get succeeded. But again, their sort of imperial space or geography then triggers more people to go down into the Sahelian region to trade again. The Tuareg are known as sort of the middlemen of the desert of the Sahelian region. So it's not Timbuktu at this moment, isn't necessarily, again, a bustling city where you would see scholarship and all the things that we could see in later centuries. But this is where the trade is starting to begin, if that makes sense.

[Dan Snow]

And is this also where we get the beginnings in western European culture of Timbuktu emerging as a sort of mythical place? Because a lot of the West African gold, a lot of these products would be coming up through. Would Europeans have vaguely heard of it at this point, or is that still too early?

[Kai Mora]

I think it might be a little bit too early. But I will say that what was emerging in Europe at the time, and it had a lot of different dimensions to it, was this legend of Prester John, maybe you've heard of. And it's basically, yeah, this Christianized king or this Christian king who was very wealthy and was sort of ruling in this faraway place. And there was mention of it being possibly an Ethiopian king in current day Ethiopia. And definitely Mansa Musa was one of the people who was thought of to fulfill this legend or this so called prophecy. But I definitely think that doesn't come until later on when there's more sort of like exploration. I think this is still early, the 11th, the 12th, 13th century. Still very, very early for Timbuktu. And you really don't start to see, like, true European engagement until the Shanghai empire rises in the 14th and 15th centuries.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, well, let's just talk about Mansa Musa and the Malian empire. We've covered him on this podcast before. But just to remind people, fabulously wealthy, possibly the most wealthy man who ever lived. That's what they say. Tell me about the Malian empire and it comes to absorb Timbuktu.

[Kai Mora]

Yeah. So actually, I know Mansa Musa is one of the most famous people, probably one of the most famous West African kings, But he actually doesn't start the Malian empire. The start the the founder of the Mali Empire is one known as Sandiata Keita. And he is part of this very vast oral tradition about how he defeats the nearby king and conquers and then starts the Mali Empire. And then Mansa Musa comes about 80 to 100 years later around, and he starts to rule around 1312. The founding of the Mali Empire is 1235. Mansa Musa, however, he is the one who, again, like you said, was known for being very wealthy, very rich. Interestingly, he doesn't actually absorb Timbuktu after his pilgrimage, his Hajj, which he takes to Mecca. So he arises to power in 1312, 1325, he takes his hajj, and when he comes back on the trip pack, he absorbs two key places, which is Gao, and then to the west of Gao is Timbuktu. And this is when he also brings a architect from Mecca, Al Sahely, who comes and builds the famous Gingerbread Mosque. And then also there is another mosque that might may not have been built under Mansa Musa, but shortly thereafter called the Senkori Mosque. And these are sort of built under the sort of imperial reign of Mali and Mansa Musa until Shanghai comes later. But definitely under Mansa Musa, Timbuktu it thrives. It begins to have this really large legacy of Islamic scholarship. People start to come visit. Trade is obviously increased. One thing I will mention, though, is that even though gold was a very big northward trading commodity, Mansa Musa did not have control over the gold fields which were to Timbuktu's west, to the Mali Empire's west, that was actually controlled by local people who were essentially the middlemen. And Mansa Musa actually makes a comment that whenever he tries to conquer the gold fields, the production stops and there's no more gold that gets produced. But when he lets the people do their thing, then the gold starts to come through. So he actually never conquers that place, even though he's known for this vast amounts of wealth of gold. Right? So, yes, definitely under Mansa Musa, Timbuktu becomes, you know, what we know of today, what we dream of and envision today.

[Dan Snow]

And what about the. The center of learning? Where does that spring from?

[Kai Mora]

So, yeah, when Mansa Musa builds these first mosques, or Mansa Musa and his successors build this first mosque, there is an increase in the amount of people that come to visit. You have one famous scholar by the name of Ibn Battuta, who we know a lot from. He was from Morocco, I believe, but he came and visited Mali, and he was the one who Tells us about how Timbuktu is one of the places of specifically of scholars who was reserved for scholars and they have there what they called a qadi, which is a judge. This is not just a judge of Islamic law, but also helps with like contracts and negotiations and all kinds of financial things. So this is where trade and scholarship really meets, meet each other under Mansa Musa, however, though, again, a lot of the scholarship really, really wouldn't take off as we know today. And then also this is some part of it is because this is so far back in time that maybe some things just didn't survive. But you really don't see the scholarship truly, truly take off until under Askia Muhammad in the Shanghai. But, but under Mansa Musa you do have an increase of people coming to visit scholars coming to visit scholars actually going, going out towards Arabia, going out towards present day Algeria to, to engage in scholarship. But so it's the start of it, but it's not sort of the apex, if that makes sense.

[Dan Snow]

Why do they choose Timbuktu? Is it because of its placement on, on this route up towards the centers of learning in the Middle east at the time, this kind of incredibly intellectually culturally vibrant civilization? Or is it just like Cambridge in little old England, the king and the church? That would be an interesting place to have a university town.

[Kai Mora]

Well, Timbuktu was actually in a vortex of a bunch of different cities that were super important to West Africa. So you have Gene again, I've mentioned Gao already. There was one called Walada. So it's kind of ebbed and flowed over time. And Timbuktu eventually became one of those things again under Mansa Musa. A big part of it was the sort of battle for it between the nomads of the desert, the Tuareg nomads of the desert, and sort of of the African south of the Sahara. So it becomes a point of trade. But where you have trade and you have multiple people meeting, you also have a lot of sort of contention and conflict. So I think one, it was its geographical position, which is to its west it has nearby the gold fields and then it also has up north the salt mines of Tagaza in the desert. And then again also it also shifted around this vortex of different major cities around the Niger river and it just shifted over time. Why Timbuktu was specifically designated for scholars. That's honestly an interesting question. I don't know if I have a perfect answer for it, but I think a lot of it has to do with the geography and so they've got.

[Dan Snow]

Access to these cities of West Africa, as you say, but also up in towards North Africa and what we now call the Middle East. Tell me about the manuscripts because this is just the most astonishing thing. I guess the manuscripts from that time are the physical legacy of that entrepot of learning and scholarship.

[Kai Mora]

Yeah, so the manuscripts are a wonderful thing because Africa is a continent that is embedded in oral history. And oral history is very important. And I don't want us to get confused about the value of oral versus written traditions because both of them in Africa are very, very rich. And especially in West Africa where I specialize, but with the Arab scholars, or the not just Arab scholars, but Islamic schol of all sorts of ethnicities, they brought writing, they brought the written form to it. And in West Africa it's actually called, and elsewhere it's called Ajami, where local languages are written in Arabic script. So a lot of it isn't actually even in Arabic the language, it's just an Arabic script. But in local languages like Wolof, like Mandinka, like Shanghai. So it's very interesting that even though it's in the Arabic script, they might also be. They very much are also in the local indigenous languages. All kinds of things were in these manuscripts, definitely things about, about religion and Islam and hadiths and sira in Quran and everything like that. But there's also things about geography, mathematics, science, literature, poetry. Again, I said that Africa is a very oral continent. Poetry was a huge thing in Africa and oral tradition is a huge thing in Africa. So you had a lot of poetry and religious poetry at that. So a lot of these things were full of information. And still today they're finding more and more manuscripts because the way that they were passed down was from teacher to student or from family member to family member. So a lot of people still have these very old manuscripts in their personal possession. But in the sort of archives and libraries that we enjoy today, there are thousands, like 20,000, 30,000 manuscripts all over. And this is just in certain strategic areas in and outside of Timbuktu. So these manuscripts are really rich in covering the history of this period. But again, I also want to emphasize that a lot of these manuscripts that have histories in it or oral traditions were recorded from oral traditions. So they are written down, oral traditions, which I think is important to, again to understand the balance between the importance of oral tradition and written tradition.

[Dan Snow]

I think people will just be astonished to learn about this seat of learning with these vast amounts of manuscripts and how we're still discovering them today. So some of them have not been looked at by scholars, haven't been digitized, haven't been published. So we're still exploring astronomy, history, poetry, all these fields.

[Kai Mora]

Yeah, very much so. A bunch of projects have come up. I know there's one in the University of California, Berkeley. They have a very strong digitizing program there. There's another one in California, UCLA maybe. But even in Mali itself, despite the sort of. Of political turmoil that erupts from time to time, there are also huge efforts by scholars in authorities and politicians in the country itself do digitizing and also just manuscript conservation. Because I do think that. I think digitization is very important, especially for access for not just scholars, but people who just are interested and want to see it. But I think there is also something about preserving these documents, these physical things, especially in West Africa. The idea of. Of objects. Objects are animate. These are real living things, the things that you see in museums, that these have really. These have special powers. They have real power to it. And books are included in that sort of. That worldview. So also, just having the preservation of the manuscripts themselves is also very important.

[Dan Snow]

I guess let's just say here, when Europeans arrived in west and then eventually southern and eastern Africa during the great spasm of imperialism that came after, you know, Portugal's maritime journeys in the 15th and the 16th centuries, they assumed that they were dealing with a continent with no tradition of tertiary education of archives and things like this, to discover that Africa boasted a university town pretty much as old as, say, Cambridge in northern Europe. When did that discovery occur?

[Kai Mora]

You know, I think these days, especially in recent scholarship, there's sort of been a pushback in the narrative of Europeans, even themselves, knowing that they were stumbling upon a sort of continent with no, no history behind it. I think that beginning in the 15th century and even beyond, there was many, you know, you see explorers, accounts of the kings that they were in the presence of. Of the people, that they were in the presence of the type of societies that they were in the presence of. That the whole reason why they even sailed around the African coast is because they knew that Islam was such a huge thing in the area and they were looking for elsewhere to get around. So I think that there's been this slow debunking of this myth that the early Europeans thought that they had stumbled across what they called the dark continent. Right. I think there are obviously, you know, caveats and qualifiers to that, case in point. And this is not West Africa, but this is Central Africa. And a little bit later with the Congo Empire. The man in Congo, he was sending envoys to Portugal and he was writing letters to Portugal and he was receiving letters and envoys from Portugal and there was, you know, a back and forth. So I don't think that Europeans arrived on the continent and thought that they were just going to stumble across like a no man's land. I think that actually doesn't come until much later when they're trying to sort of fill this propaganda of having stumbled across a dark continent.

[Dan Snow]

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[Dan Snow]

So the early explorers that arrived in West Africa say they found literate, sophisticated empires that clearly had enormous, you know, sophistication. In fact, that's one of the reasons they found them exciting as trading partners. And was only subsequently that the Europeans kind of unlearned those lessons that perhaps the early ones would have known and started to assume that Africa was just a place that lacked some of that intellectual history that it did in fact exist.

[Kai Mora]

Exactly. Yeah. I think that's a good summary of it. There are some qualifiers to it. I think that even some of the earlier Europeans, any sort of exploration where people are different from you, you always going to have certain biases and certain opinions of them. So I don't think that every European came in was like, wow, civil. And I think some of them definitely did have their, you know, what is this Moments. But I do think the early accounts, the written accounts of travelers from Portugal, from France, Germany, other places like that have definitely shown the extent of. And that's where we learn not only from Arab scholars, but also from these early European travelers. This is what we learn a lot of African history from from these accounts.

[Dan Snow]

Tell me just before we move on from these documents for the, for the time being, tell me what. There's some seriously eccentric stuff in there to share with some of the most surprising documents that are in there.

[Kai Mora]

Well, I think one of my favorite, and he's a very famous name and he has an institute actually named after him in Mali. Ahmed Baba. One of the interesting things is that he actually issued a declaration of tobacco being permissible in Islam, which is a very interesting thing because not everybody would agree with that. Not all sections of Islam would agree with that. But he was one who set that precedent out in. And obviously that's changed over time. But he was one of the early scholars who gave a ruling on tobacco being legal in. In Islam.

[Dan Snow]

They cover everything, they cover all of human life.

[Kai Mora]

That's basically.

[Dan Snow]

So we associate the Malian empire, interestingly with gold, although as you've pointed out, which is so fascinating, they never actually directly controlled these gold fields, which is so interesting. But then that gold, that's how the Europeans, Western Europeans would come to hear of the wealth of this part of the world, particularly as the force of Islam conquered Al Andalus, modern Iberia. And there's this transmission of learning and golden objects, I guess, up into northwest Europe. Is this where we. The period where Timbuktu starts to be whispered as a sort of exotic, extraordinary location that the legend really begins?

[Kai Mora]

Yeah, so I think the legend definitely begins with 1325 and the Hajj of Mansa Musa. I mean, because this sort of myth or this idea of like Timbuktu being this mysterious, vast, rich place, you know, that starts with him in Cairo and all the scholars, the Islamic scholars and Arab scholars who are documenting his story also under Mansa Musa that the. The Africans first sailed off the West African coast and into the Americas also comes from, you know, Mansa Musa said that his predecessor went and sailed to the Atlantic coast. So I think that around 1325. And Michael Gomez, historian Michael Gomez, who's at NYU right now, he has a really fascinating book about it and he talks about Mansa Musa representing this sort of imperialist vision that looked both towards the west, look towards the east, towards Mecca. And then also it was expanding, ever expanding. And this was reflected in what was recorded, recorded when he took his sojourn to Cairo. And obviously Europe and the so called Orient have a lot of relationships. So I think that's where it really started from.

[Dan Snow]

And so through the late 15th and early 16th centuries, you've got Timbuktu as a node of trade, but also astonishing intellectual heart of intellectual study and endeavor. What goes wrong for Timbuktu?

[Kai Mora]

So there's a couple of things. After the Mali Empire sort of wanes off and then Shanghai opens up, you have a ruler by the name of Sanni Ali and Sunni Ali gets a bad rap in two manuscripts that arise somewhere around the 17th century, but he gets a bad rap as this sort of, you know, for lack of a better term, pagan king who's un Islamic, who is sacking Timbuktu. He's sending all the scholars away, and he's antagonizing them. And then he finally gets deposed, and a ruler named Askia Muhammad comes and he re establishes Timbuktu. Give the scholars their place back in Timbuktu, and you have even more scholarship. And it becomes amazing After Askia Muhammad passes away, he's succeeded by Dawud, Askia, Dawud. And Dawud also sort of continues the tradition. But then after Dawoud dies, there's succession disputes who gets to rule Shanghai next. And with this sort of weakening of Shanghai, who now is ruling from Gao, but also from Timbuktu, which are very each other, you sort of have this vacuum of power that the nomadic Tuaregs from the Sahara sort of come to fill in. They come to fill in this sort of gap. And so now the Tuaregs and the North Africans are further more and more in increasing in power in the area until finally you have the Moroccan Saidi dynasty, and they take over control of the salt mines, which was kind of under Shanghai's control, into Gaza, which is just above Timbukt to. And so after they take to Gaza, they're like, well, why don't we just take everything? Why don't we just take all the gold? Why don't we just take over the whole, you know, trade route? So they come down and they invade in what's called the Arma. The Arma are a mix of indigenous Amazigh, Arab and other sort of North African ethnicities. And they come and they take over Timbuktu in 1591. It only lasts for 10 years, though. They have what you called a ferric defeat or a ferric win, which is, you know, they won, they took over, over, you know, Shanghai rose back into Gao, into other places along the Niger River. But the war costs more money to sustain than it does actually get them money into the dynasty. So the Armas, they end up sort of like America, right? They. They are sent by the colonial power, and then they get independence from the colonial power. And now, you know, Mali or Timbuktu is sort of its own little nation state. But unfortunately, as we were talking about before, the Europeans had already arrived. So a lot of the trade that was first going through the trans Saharan trade is now going to the Atlantic world. So Timbuktu starts to wane for its sort of hub as trade. It's obviously been through a lot of war, and there's still a lot of contention going on in the region during the time. So it's not necessarily as stable for scholarship anymore. Until finally the Europeans, they come and take over the city around 1880, 1890.

[Dan Snow]

Well, thank you so much for giving us such a tour through centuries of Timbuktu's history. I guess people have been asking me, as I've been looking forward to this podcast, why the name Timbuktu? Why does it have such a. Is it just Orientalism? Is it just Europeans sort of imagining a place so apparently different to where they come from? Why does it come to occupy such a prominent place in people's popular geography of the world in the 19th and 20th centuries?

[Kai Mora]

I think there's a couple of reasons for why Simbaktu becomes such a world site. I think one, because it's truly deserving of it, because it was a hub of trade, a hub of knowledge, a hub of scholarship. Same thing with the city of Alexandria for example. So I think it truly is deserving of it for its actual history. Think the gold and the sort of things that came out of it. Mansa Musa and his illustrious pilgrimage where he basically deflated all of Egypt's currency for 10 years is also gives to a lot of those imaginings. And then I also think during the 20th century, and this is a really important point, that when Africans and Africans in the, in the diaspora were sort of looking to repair the history that was distorted from them, you know, in a post colonial world, these sorts of moments in history were key into unfolding the true essence of being an African or being a black person. And it obviously wasn't only Timbuktu. There are places in Nigeria that were very important. Swahili coast was very important to black culture and black history during the 20th century. But I also think if it wasn't for all the sort of African and black historians who were trying to go actively trying to uncover this history in order to sort of again do some reparation to what had happened to them. We wouldn't actually know as much about Timbuktu and as vividly as we do without that.

[Dan Snow]

That makes so much sense. Thank you very much for coming on and telling us all about it.

[Kai Mora]

Thank you so much for having me.

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