TIMBUKTU - A CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE 

TIMBUKTU, also spelt TOMBOUCTOU, is a city in the West African nation of Mali. It is historically important as a post on the trans-Saharan caravan route. It is located on the southern edge of the Sahara, about 8 mi (13 kin) north of the Niger River. The legendary city of Timbuktu is situated on the crest of the mighty Niger River and anchors a string of towns and villages along its bank to improve the farms, fields and lives of thousands of people. Take a trip on the vast, clear waters of this "River of Rivers" and explore the lives of ordinary Malians, their fabulous culture and the extraordinary challenges they face. Timbuktu is a four-hour boat trip from Diré. As one draws closer, the excitement grows. On the banks of the river, huge tents of swooping white canvas herald the approach to nomad country. An hour's drive through sand brings you to a water hole where the Tuareg, those famous nomads who wander the Sahara from Libya down to Burkina Faso, will welcome you. HISTORY  OF  TIMBUKTU TIMBUKTU or TINBUKTU, in earlier writings Timbuctoo (Fr. Tombuoctou) was founded by the Maghsharan Tuaregl towards the end of the fifth century of the Hijra. It was once a city of commerce and learning in West Africa, situated at Lat. 16 46N, long 3 01W, and is now the administrative headquarters of the sixth region of the Republic of Mali. It is a city unsullied by the worship of idols, where none has prostrated save to God the compassionate, a refuge of scholarly and righteous fold, a haunt of saints and ascetics, and a meeting place of caravans and boats. The Tuareg made it a depot for their belongings and provision, and it grew into a crossroads for travelers coming and going. Looking after their belongings was a slave woman of theirs called Tinbuktu, which in their language means [the one having a] 'lump'. The blessed spot where she encamped was named after here. The city lies several miles from the main bed of the river Niger, but only four miles from the town of Kabara, which used to be reached by the rising waters of the Niger between September and April, and linked to a creek of the Niger by a canal. During years of high flood, water from the Niger reached to the heart of Timbuktu through a meandering channel that begins a little east of Kabara. At the time of its occupation by the French in 1894, the area of permanent settlement was approximately half-a-mile from north to south and 700 yards from east to west at its widest point; the permanent population was estimated at 7-8000 with a floating seasonal population. Historically, Timbuktu has been a point of exchange for the caravan traffic of the Sahara and waterborne traffic that reached downstream into present-day Nigeria, and upstream through the inland delta of the Niger into the heart of Mali. Its population has always been mixed. Founded by Sanhadja Berbers, it was settled by Arabs from various Saharan oases (Walata, Tuwat, Ghadamis), by Soninke and Dyula merchants and scholars, by Songhay initially as conquerors, and by Fulbe and Tuareg as temporary occupiers. Songhay is the dominant tongue of the people of Timbuktu, though Arabic and Tamadjak are widely spoken. People came there from all directions, and over time it became a commercial emporium. The most frequent traders there were the people of Wagadu, followed by others from that general area. The previous centre of commerce had been the town of Biru, to which caravans came from all directions. The cream of scholars and holymen, and the wealthy from every tribe and land settled there --- men from Egypt, Awjila, Fezzan, Ghadames, Tuwat, Darca, Tafilalt, Fez, Sus, Bitu, etc. Little by little, together with [representatives of] all the branches of the Sanhaja, they moved to Timbuktu until they filled it to overflowing. Timbuktu's growth brought about the ruin of Walata, for its development, as regards both religion and commerce, came entirely from the west. Al-Sa'di places the origins of the city at the end of the 5th century of the Hidjra,or ca. 1100, but it was clearly of little importance during its first two and a half centuries of existence, as it earned no mention in the external Arabic sources until Ibn Battuta visited it. At first, people's dwellings were merely huts of straw within thorn enclosures, but later they changed from thorn enclosures to sanasin. From there they progressed to building walls so low that, standing outside them, one could see the interior. Then they built the great mosque to the best of their ability, and similarly the Sankore Mosque. At that time, there were so few walls and buildings that if one stood at the door of the Sankore mosque, one could see who entered the Great Mosque. It was only towards the end of the ninth century of the Hijra that the city's prosperity became firmly established, and in the middle of the tenth century, during the reign of Askiya Dawud, loc. Cit. Son of the Amir Askiya al-Hajj Muhammad, that the entire space was filled up with well-ordered buildings. As we have mentioned, Timbuktu's first rulers were the Malians, and their rule began in 737/1336-7, and lasted for a hundred years. Then came the Maghsharan Tuareg, who ruled for forty years, beginning in 837/1433-4. After them came Sunni cAli, whose rule began in 873/1468-9 and lasted for twenty four years. He was followed by Amir Al-Muominin Askiya Al-Hajj Muhammad, whose rule, with that of his descendents, lasted one hundred and one years, from 14 Jumada II 898/2 April 1493 to 17 Jumada II 999/ 12 April 1591. In 1000/1591 Timbuktu again changed masters when Songhay suffered defeat at the hands of a force sent by the Sa'dian ruler of Morocco, Mawlay Ahmad al-Mansur. In the preceding century it had enjoyed some measure of autonomy, since the capital of the Askiyas was at Gao. Under the Bashas (the military title retained by the new rulers), the capital was Timbuktu. Intellectually, and to a large extent economically, Timbuktu now entered into a long period of decline. Over a period of some forty years the military oligarchy gradually shook off its ties to the Sa'dians, who were themselves in political disarray after the death of Ahmad al-Mansur in 1603. Thereafter and until the early 19th century, the Bashas maintained a weak state around the Niger river from Djenne to around Bamba (in the early days, to a little beyond Gao), with their headquarters at Timbuktu. The state they ruled over was weak and a prey to attacks by Tuareg of the Sahara, and later, in the 18th century, by Bambara from the south-west and by Fulbe. Members of the Moroccan and Andalusian divisions that made up the Rumat quarrelled among themselves and there were frequent changes of Basha and subordinate officers; between 1591 and 1832 there were no less than 242 holders of the office, some individuals having multiple tenures. The 18th century was marked by ecological stress producing famines and epidemics which spawned a scramble for scarce resources. Late in that century, the Bambara kingdom of Segu harrassed the western reaches of the Bashalik, but could not hold any part of its territory. Similarly, the Kel Tadmekkat Tuareg harrassed Timbuktu on several occasions, most notably in 1770-1 when a siege of the town was only lifted after the intervention of the Kadiriyya Shaykh and scholar al-Mukhtar al-Kunti. In 1826 the rising Fulbe state of Masina under Shaykh Ahmad Lobbo took control of the city, but in 1844 the Tuareg forced them out temporarily. Two years later, having used their power to deny grain imports to Timbuktu from the inland delta region, the Fulbe regained control, but the agreement brokered by Shaykh Ahmad Al-Bakka'J, grandson of al-Mukhtar al-Kuntl, while involving tribute, stopped short of military occupation. When the Tukulor Tidjanl conqueror at-Hadjdj 'Umar defeated the Fulbe of Masina in 1862, al-Bakka'I defended the independent Timbuktu, and in 1864 he besieged Hamdullahi together with Fulbe forces. His clan continued to dominated the affairs of Timbuktu for a while, but by the time of the French occupation in 1893-94 they had withdrawn to the Azawad, leaving various Tuareg groups in control of the city's hinterland, and the city itself an easy prey. French rule lasted until Malian independence in 1960, and Timbuktu was the headquarters of a cercle. Though trans-Saharan trade atrophied, salt caravans (azalai) continued to come in from Taioudeni. Since 1960 the city has survived mainly as a tourist attraction, though drought and a long Tuareg rebellion, ended only in 1996, have taken their toll. An archive and research centre, the Centre de Documentation et de Recherche Ahmad Baba, was established there in the early 1970s and has collected over 6,000Arabic manuscripts. In European writing, Timbuktu became a fabled city based on its role in the gold trade. While gold was an important item in trans-Saharan trade, especially in the 15th and 16th centuries, the more prosaic staples of Timbuktu's prosperity were salt, cloth, grain and slaves, and in the 19th century, ostrich feathers. The principal desert routes led to Ghadamis, Ghat, Warghla, Tuwat and the Dar'a valley. These in turn led on to North African cities such as Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, Tlemcen, Fas and Marrakush, the first three of which were ports of entry for European manufactured goods such as paper, cloth, metalware and glassware. To the south, Timbuktu's principal trading partner was Djenne, whence routes led into central Mali and down to the savannah and forest lands of what are now Ivory Coast and Ghana. It was from these distant lands that gold dust (tibr) was obtained. Gold dust was the principal medium of exchange for external trade, while smaller local transactions were conducted in cowries (uada'). Timbuktu's reputation made it the European explorer's prize in the early 19th century. The British officer Major Alexander Gordon Laing was the first to reach the city in 1826, but he was murdered in the Sahara while on his way back. The first traveler to survive the trip and bring back an account of the city was the Frenchman René  Cailli in 1828. An earlier account of Timbuktu by the shipwrecked American sailor Robert Adams (published in London, 1816), though full of difficulties, is probably genuine. Timbuktu was, in the 10th-12th /15th-17th centuries, one of the major centres of Islamic learning in West Africa. The Sankoré mosque and the quarter of that name in the north-east of the city were the focus of the teaching tradition, the older Djinger-Ber and the 9th/15th-century Sidi Yahya mosque being better known for devotional recitations. Two Sanhadja families who intermarried provided most of the imams of Sankoré and the kadis of the city in the period 1450-1650: the descendants of Anda-Ag-Muhammad (fl. 1450) and his contemporary 'Umar b. Muhammad Akit. From the latter family came the celebrated Ahmad Baba (d. 1036/1627), who gained wider fame during his exile in Marrakush 1002/1594-1016/1608, when he taught at the Djami al-Shurafa'. Other notable scholarly families of the period were the Dyula Baghayogho (Muhammad Baghayogho (d. 1002/1594) was the principal teacher of Ahmad Baba), the descendants of the Fulbe scholars Muhammad Gidado (d. ca. 1577) and of Muhammad Gurdo (d. 1065/1666), and the descendants of Ahmad Mughya (d. 1002/1593). In the l3th/l9th century, Arab scholars of the kunta revived the city's scholarly tradition for a while, and in the 14th/20th century the families of Haydara and Bu 'I-A' raf have upheld it. The French also established a madrasa in Timbuktu in 1911 where Islamic Sciences were taught in Arabic and selected secular subjects were taught in French. FASCINATIONS FOR TOURISTS IN TIMBUKTU The city of Timbuktu had always held a certain fascination for the tourists, for as far as one can remember. People had always perceived Timbuktu as being a non-existent legendary place, somewhere, in the great expanse of the Sahara desert, mentioned only in travel chronicles. Consequently, the opportunity to actually visit a city that existed only within the deep confines of one's imagination is totally overwhelming for the tourists. The exquistic and breathtaking landscape of the Sahara with the quaint stone and mud buildings and the decorated doorways of Timbuktu are extremely fascinating. For centuries, Timbuktu has been a by-word for an inaccessible place and even today, it's still hard to reach - although this seems to make people want to come here more than ever. However, when they do arrive, some visitors find Timbuktu disappointing although, unlike early European explorers, they dont expect the streets to be paved with gold. Most are glad they came; even if Timbuktu didn't have a magical name, it would still be a fascinating place to visit, with a 'feel' and atmosphere quite unlike any of the other towns along the Niger. Even today it is a fascinating place for tourists with mosques made of mud and clay which have survived the extremes of the desert climate for three to four hundred years and a culture which has remained unchanged through the ages. Caravans still ply through the desert and there is always a ripple of excitement and colourful activity when these arrive. Tourists can take a short camel ride out to one of the Tuareg camps that surround the city. The charges are CFA 6000, which is rather expensive. Bargaining may bring the price down a little, but not much. The best time to undertake this is in the early morning or late afternoon. You may be entertained by a sword fight or offered sweet, strong Arabic tea inside a Tuareg tent. Knives and leatherwork are offered for sale in another tent. A night in the desert is an unforgettable experience and arrangements for this are available. At the same time the local food may be savoured and their songs and culture enjoyed. Besides seeing Timbuktu, visitors can also travel down the river Niger by boat or trek along the spectacular Dogon escarpment. Taking a camel ride out to the Tuareg camps in Timbuktu might be a bit of a cliché and cause involuntary humming of the theme song from Lawrence of Arabia", but it will give you a taste of desert life. You might add a bit of spice to the excursion by staying overnight in a Tuareg camp and experiencing the desert by moonlight. Staying overnight is officially illegal for security reasons but can be achieved with a bit of discretion.

Peul girls, Northern Bandiagara Escarpmenti Granarie