Put us on the ground during its golden age.”4 But it was once an important cultural and artistic center. “Timbuktu has become a byword for the farthest corner of the earth. In 2012, in response to armed conflict in the region, Timbuktu was added to the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger.” Encyclopædia Britannica. The city was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988. It is located on the southern edge of the Sahara, about 8 miles (13 km) north of the Niger River. “Timbuktu, French Tombouctou, city in the western African country of Mali, historically important as a trading post on the trans-Saharan caravan route and as a centre of Islamic culture (c. Lorraine Boissoneault, The Golden Age of Timbuktu Even now, in the age of Google Maps, its name is synonymous with the unknown edges of the world: welcome to Timbuktu.” Over the course of its history, the desert city was famed for being dense with gold, for being impenetrable, and for bearing witness to one of the great ecological calamities of the 20th century. It has passed from the hands of a famed sultan to invading northerners to European imperialists, growing from a tiny nomadic outpost to a major cultural hub. For centuries it’s been blessed – and cursed – by rumors of being a hidden paradise. Its reputation is heavy with the weight of nearly a millennium’s worth of history. “On the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, north of the River Niger, a city of beige towers and dusty roads appears out of the sand. Its Sankore University, together with a thriving book trade and the presence of numerous famous scholars established the city as a renowned scholarly centre in Africa. Once a thriving centre of learning and culture, Timbuktu is home to notable architecture and one of the world’s greatest collections of ancient manuscripts.Ī West African city with a name long synonymous with the unknown edges of the world, Timbuktu flourished from trade in salt, gold and ivory and was part of the Mali Empire of the 14 th century.
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