Rise and Fall of Timbuktu

     Before American parents threatened to send disobedient children to Siberia, the farthest reaches of the European man's geographical mind rested at the southern end of the largest desert of the world. Timbuktu, a land of trade, education, and wealth captured the fascination of the West centuries before the colonization of Africa. Situated at the northernmost curve of the Niger River, Timbuktu provided a trade point for trans-Saharan caravans with access into central Africa and the western African coast.
     Established as a city by Muslim traders in the 1200s, Timbuktu grew notoriously prosperous with trade in ivory, slaves, salt, and, famously, gold. This city's importance made it prominent in several consecutive empires until gradual diminishment of the political power and wealth of North Africa and large-scale trade disruption after the Battle of Tondibi in 1591 ended the supreme importance of Timbuktu as a central trade hub south of the Sahara.

     Location allowed the city to become a prominent trader during the Muslim dominance of Africa with most Saharan trade routes connecting Timbuktu to the other major cities of North Africa. Salt miners in the desert brought their wares to the city to ship south along the river while gold from the hills to the east gave Timbuktu an unrepeatable monopoly on gold production. Other typical trade items of Africa like ivory and slaves flushed out the economy of a city whose population is estimated at 100,000 while Europeans were dying of plague.
     At the peak of its wealth, Emperor Mansa Musa I went on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324. While his travels and lavish, gold-fueled gifts caught the attention of the rest of the world, that same pilgrimage crippled the wealth of the empire that it never fully recovered. Such vast quantities of gold were gifted and spent to feed the 60,000 man caravan that Egyptian and Arabian gold prices were inflated for a decade. At the time of the pilgrimage two-thirds of global gold production was controlled by the Malian Empire, but those techniques for gold extraction in thick clay and mud have not changed in a thousand years. Malian villages mine gold in the same method as their ancestors which does not allow for Mali to be a significant producer on the global market.
     Mansa Musa's leadership stabilized the empire both economically and militarily during his life. So successful was the empire at securing the safety of trade routes that even twelve years after Musa's death, crime remained minimal. This wealth and security allowed travelers, merchants, ambassadors, and scholars to reach Timbuktu safely and spread stories of it abroad.
     Often overlooked in the legacy of the city was the knowledge center that it maintained. Trade record keeping created a learned atmosphere that led to the establishment of a university and made Timbuktu a leader in the African and Muslim worlds for education. Traders brought books to the city and sold knowledge for prices higher than any other marketplace goods because of the demand for books and competition between scholars.
     The city could not retain its reputation as the global monopolizer in gold and as trans-Saharan trade weakened from Portugese and Spanish trans-African shipping, Timbuktu's dynasty began to fade. African trade continued to flow from the desert to the Niger River and from the gold mines to the North, but with civil wars and conquest, the disruption of the local trade created market hubs in distant cities. The dominance of Timbuktu was over, but its legend had only begun.
     In more recent times after the French colonization of Africa and the post-colonization establishment of the nation of Mali, Timbuktu became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988. When Islamic extremist militants invaded the city in 2012 and 2013, the cultural and historical wealth of the city was threatened and much of it was destroyed. In a remarkable, heroic effort to preserve the ancient Islamic writings, librarians and ledgers smuggled over 28,000 records and hundreds of thousands of pages out of library stores while the city was under Islamic-rebel control. The triumph of these efforts were more fully realized when the retreating rebels burned the library before fleeing the city as French-Mali joint forces retook the city.
     Timbuktu has been many things to many men. The capitol of one of the richest men to ever live, the trade hub for millions of Africans for centuries, a city of mystery, a culture of music, and the core of a legacy that spans the continents and centuries to capture the awe and imagination of every culture it contacts.

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Agatha Tyche