For centuries, the city of Timbuktu, located in the center of present-day Mali in West Africa, thrived as one of the bustling centers of culture and learning during the Golden Age of Islam.
The region’s legacy as an intellectual destination begins with the Epic of Sundiata. According to the 13th century epic poem, the Mandinka prince of the state of Kangaba organized a successful resistance against the harsh king of Sosso, Sumaoro Kanté, and a new empire was born.
The Mali Empire on the upper Niger River grew in power and prestige. When the powerful King of Mali, Mansa Musa I, peacefully annexed the city of Timbuktu in 1324 after returning from his pilgrimage to Mecca, the empire became a center of exceptional learning, culture, and architecture.
Timbuktu’s origins as an ancient trading post
Mansa Musa I was the ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa from 1312 to 1337.
Google Arts and Culture
Timbuktu had been a seasonal trading post established in 1100 BC, where the Sahara desert and the Niger Delta meet, creating a lush and lucrative agricultural area. The powerful kingdoms of West Africa and the herding Tuaregs of Southern Sahara traded here. And when Islam reached Tuareg societies as early as the eighth century, the Tuareg transmitted the religion through trading posts like Timbuktu, facilitating connections between Arab-Islamic and West African peoples.
Under Mansa Musa I and his successors, Timbuktu grew from a small but successful trading post to a commercial and academic center, making the Mali empire one of the most influential of the Golden Age of Islam. Powerful West African kings and Islamic leaders traveled from far and wide to Timbuktu to trade, learn, and foster strong political allies.
In the 16th century, Timbuktu was home to 150 to 180 Koranic schools, or Maktabs. Malian rulers also built large mosques, not only for spiritual practice, but also as centers of learning for mathematics, law, grammar, history, geography, astronomy, and astrology.
Madrasas built for worship and scholarship
Sane Chirfi, representing the family that cares for the Alpha Moya mausoleum in Timbuktu, in front of the mausoleum. The mausoleum was one of several restored following damage by al Qaeda-linked insurgents in 2012.
Google Arts and Culture
While the Tuaregs built the first mosque, the Sankoré Mosque, in Timbuktu in 1100 BC, Mansa Musa I made significant improvements to it, inviting important Islamic scholars, or ulama, to enhance its prestige. Mansa Musa I then built the Djinguereber Mosque, paying renowned Islamic scholar Abu Ishaq Al Saheli 200 kilograms of gold to oversee its construction. Later, in the 15th century, when Tuareg ruler Akil Akamalwa came to power in the Mali empire, he built the great Sidi Yahya Mosque. Together, these three centers of learning, or madrasahit still functions today as the Sankore Quranic University, making it the oldest higher education facility in sub-Saharan Africa.
Mosques and schools proliferated in Timbuktu, mirroring what was found in the other flourishing Islamic cities of Cairo and Mecca. in your article African Bibliophiles: Books and Libraries in Medieval TimbuktuSan Bernardino, California State University Librarian Brent D. Singleton writes that “in Timbuktu, literacy and books transcended academic value and symbolized wealth, power, and baraka (blessings),” and that book acquisition specifically “was mentioned more often than any other demonstration of wealth.”
The knowledge contained in the books reflects the fabric of Malian society. Dr. Abdel Kader Haidara, a Malian scholar who oversees the preservation of more than 350,000 manuscripts from this time, says that “in addition to scholarly and scholarly literature, there are many parts that contain poetry and dedications to women.” Haidara adds that women play a prominent role in maintaining Malian heritage and contribute to the painstaking work of preserving ancient manuscripts.
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Timbuktu was also unique from other major Islamic cities during the Golden Age of Islam. For example, while Cairo and Mecca maintained an open access policy for their mosque libraries, all of Timbuktu’s libraries appear to have been private collections of individual scholars or families, according to Singleton.
Knowledge transmitted through books and oral histories
A view of an ancient Timbuktu manuscript.
Google Arts and Culture
Not surprisingly, books in Timbuktu were prized possessions passed down from generation to generation. The practice reflects the West African tradition of oral histories passed down by griots, esteemed West African musicians and storytellers who were the keepers of the history of empires and royal families.
The griots originated from the same Mandingo ethnic group that Sundiata hailed from and were responsible for composing his epic. Like Islamic scholarship and bookmaking in Timbuktu, the role of a griot was only passed down through lineage and acquired through extensive apprenticeship. Griots continue to practice today and include Malian musicians such as the kora Toumani Diabaté, who can trace his griot lineage back to the Golden Age of Islam.
The Mali Empire declined in the 15th century and was replaced by the Songhai Empire. Askia Muhammad, a military leader from the Malian town of Gao, reigned from 1492 to 1528 and strengthened the tradition of Islamic learning in Timbuktu that his predecessors had established. But soon, Timbuktu was threatened when the Moroccan Saadian dynasty invaded the Songhai Empire in the late 16th century. Much of Timbuktu’s centers of learning were destroyed and many people’s possessions, including important manuscripts, were lost.
Nonetheless, the cities of Timbuktu and Gao were able to maintain a high degree of autonomy from the Saadians and, in 1632, declared their independence from the Saadian dynasty. However, the Golden Age of Islamic scholarship, architecture, and culture in the Songhai empire and throughout West Africa had seriously diminished.
Attacks on the Timbuktu manuscripts
Destruction of manuscripts by jihadists at the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu in 2012.
Google Arts and Culture
The city’s manuscripts were still widely used for education in Koranic schools and great mosques during the Saadian occupation of the Songhai empire. But when the French arrived in West Africa in the 17th century, many of Timbuktu’s cultural products were looted and taken to Europe, ending the widespread practice of learning from manuscripts.
These were not the only attacks on the Timbuktu legacy. In 2012, militants linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) took over northern Mali and began destroying anything they perceived as haram or forbidden to their religious practice, including the manuscripts of older generations that characterized the ancient city of Timbuktu.
With a small team, Haidara salvaged more than 350,000 manuscripts from 45 different libraries in and around Timbuktu and hid them in Bamako, Mali’s capital. On many occasions, Haidara and his allies were threatened by al Qaeda militants and accused of stealing, an offense punishable by death or maiming. But Haidara eventually built the Mamma Haidara Library in Bamako, naming it after his father, who was also a scholar and keeper of manuscripts. In 2022, Google Arts & Culture launched an online archive of manuscripts held by Haidara and his team.
“While the griots recall the history of memory and ingenuity, the manuscripts are the perceivable history of Mali,” says Haidara. The manuscripts serve as tangible evidence that the Mali Empire and its great city of Timbuktu were central to the legacy of West African and Islamic scholarship. Through Haidara’s work, which reflects the oral tradition of groups like the griots, the preservation of Mali’s history remains an ongoing mission.
“Even I don’t know everything that is in the manuscripts,” says Haidara. “Every day I learn something new from them and about them.”
