Timbuktu is not a city of the imagination it very much exists! Not much has changed in this ancient trading center, apart from the means to get to it. Before the late 20th century, the only way to reach the legendarily remote city was to take a lumbering five-day boat ride up the Niger, or to travel hundreds of miles across the Sahara.
Bamako, Image credit
The best point to get to it is from Bamako, Mali’s cheerful, sprawling capital on the Niger. The great city flourished on a bend in the Niger River for more than four hundred years.
Port of Timbuktu, Image credit
Timbuktu was at the end of the camel caravan route that linked sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Arabia. Gold, ivory, and kola nuts passed through Timbuktu, but the most important commodity was salt. Timbuktu was located near several salt mines. Caravans hauled salt.
Timbuktu dudes, Image credit
Tales of Timbuktu’s fabulous wealth helped prompt European exploration of the west coast of Africa. Among the earliest descriptions of Timbuktu are those of Leo Africanus, Ibn Battuta and Shabeni. The place name is said to come from a Tuareg woman named Buktu who dug a well in the area where the city stands today; hence “Timbuktu”, which means “Buktu’s well”.
Timbuktu began as a trading city, but in time the developed into the intellectual and spiritual center of West Africa. Manuscripts found in Mali dispel myths of literacy in ancient Africa. The city of Timbuktu was a center of learning and culture many years prior to the intervention of European colonialism.
Sankore mosque, Image credit
Sankore, as it stands now, was built in 1581 AD (= 989 A. H.) on a much older site (probably from the 13th or 14th century)and became the center of the Islamic scholarly community in Timbuktu. They claim it to be the the world’s largest mud structure.
Non-believers are formally banned from the mosque after an unauthorised French fashion shoot with skimpily-clad models, but for a fee you are allowed briefly to wander the cool, dark, vaulted interior, with its 94 pillars and delicately-moulded mihrab facing towards Mecca.
Local transportation, Image credit: abdiallo78
Caravans of swaying camels still trudge into Timbuktu carrying great slabs of salt hewn from mines deep in the Sahara.
Waiting for customers in Timbuktu, Image credit: Wedan
Tuaregs and members of the Bella people, their former slaves, make regular journeys there, travelling in the cool of the night and navigating by the stars.
A peek out a restaurant’s window in Timbuktu, Image credit: Barry Williams
Timbuktu is a land far off where the desert, not the town, dictates the rhythms of life in gentle sway.
Source: Telegraph
