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Great early west african civilizations.
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Supercar: [QB] Don't need to go too far to get a basic snapshot of Timbuktu's development... [i]Towards the end of the first millennium C.E., the West African kingdom of Ghana, the region's first great empire, had organized and taken control of the long-distance trade of gold and salt, along with slaves and valuable goods such as kola nuts. From the north, thousands of camels in caravans carried salt from deposits to the city where merchants would transport it down the Niger to other parts of Africa…. Although the Tuaregs founded Timbuktu in the early twelfth century, they were nomads who kept only loose control over the city. [b]As the town became increasingly important to the gold and salt trades, it was captured from the Tuaregs and brought under the reign of the Mali Empire, the second great West African kingdom[/b], and the first great Muslim kingdom, in the Sudan. Timbuktu, which began as a modest Tuareg trading post, eventually developed into a major trading center that connected North Africa with West Africa. In 1312 Mansa Moussa, the most legendary of the Malian kings, came to the throne. Mansa Moussa was a devout Muslim who built magnificent mosques throughout his empire in order to spread the influences of Islam. [b]During his reign, Timbuktu became one of the major cultural centers of not only Africa but of the entire Islamic world.[/b] [b]When Mansa Moussa came to power, the Mali Empire already had firm control of the trade routes to the southern lands of gold and the northern lands of salt.[/b][b][i] Under Moussa's reign[/i][/b], the gold-salt trade across the Sahara [b]came to focus ever more closely on Timbuktu[/b]. The city's wealth, like that of many towns involved in the trans-Saharan trade route, was based largely on the trade of gold, salt, ivory, kola nuts, and slaves… Under Moussa's patronage, the city of Timbuktu grew in wealth and prestige, and became a meeting place of the finest poets, scholars, and artists of Africa and the Middle East… [b]Mansa Moussa brought the Mali Empire to the [i]attention[/i] of the rest of the Muslim world with his famous pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324.[/b] He arrived in Cairo at the head of a huge caravan, which included 60,000 people and 80 camels carrying more than two tons of gold to be distributed among the poor. Of the 12,000 servants who accompanied the caravan, 500 carried staffs of pure gold. Moussa spent lavishly in Egypt, giving away so many gold gifts—and making gold so plentiful—that its value fell in Cairo and did not recover for a number of years!… In Cairo, the Sultan of Egypt received Moussa with great respect, as a fellow Muslim. The splendor of his caravan caused a sensation and brought Mansa Moussa and the Mali Empire fame throughout the Arab world. [b]Mali had become so famous by the fourteenth century that it began to draw the attention of European mapmakers.[/b] In one map, produced in 1375, Moussa is shown seated on a throne in the center of West Africa, holding a nugget of gold in his right hand. After visiting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina on his pilgrimage,[b] Moussa set out to build great mosques, vast libraries, and madrasas (Islamic universities) throughout his kingdom. Many Arab scholars, including the poet and architect, Abu-Ishaq Ibrahim-es-Saheli, who helped turn Timbuktu into a famous city of Islamic scholarship, returned with him.[/b] Moussa had always encouraged the development of learning and the expansion of Islam. In the early years of his reign, Moussa had sent Sudanese scholars to study at Moroccan universities. By the end of his reign, Sudanese scholars were setting up their own centers of learning in Timbuktu. Moussa had always encouraged the development of learning and the expansion of Islam. In the early years of his reign, Moussa had sent Sudanese scholars to study at Moroccan universities. By the end of his reign, Sudanese scholars were setting up their own centers of learning in Timbuktu. During Moussa's reign Timbuktu thrived as a commercial center and flourished into a hub of Islamic learning. Even after the Mali Empire lost control over the region in the fifteenth century, Timbuktu remained the major Islamic center of sub-Saharan Africa… The Songhay Empire: The Golden Age of Timbuktu As Timbuktu enjoyed unprecedented success under Moussa, another developing West African kingdom, the Songhay Empire, was increasing its influence over the western Sudan. In about 1464, King Sonni Ali Ber came to the Songhay throne. An able and ambitious ruler, he sent his army to capture the valuable city of Timbuktu in 1468... Leo Africanus, a famous traveler and writer who visited Timbuktu during the reign of Askia Mohamed, wrote the following of the city's intellectual life: "In Timbuktu there are numerous judges, doctors and clerics, all receiving good salaries from the king. He pays great respect to men of learning. There is a big demand for books in manuscript, imported from Barbary. More profit is made from the book trade than from any line of business."1 Under Askia Mohamed's rule, scholarship and Islam were once again revered and supported, ushering in a new era of stability that led to Timbuktu's sixteenth-century golden age. Askia Mohamed had created the largest and the wealthiest of all the kingdoms of the Sudan. [b]He had a well-administered state, probably the most highly organized of all the African states[/b]. With a stable and efficient government and with the support of the Muslim scholars, religious leaders, and traders, Askia Mohamed had made Songhay a great trading empire and a center of Muslim scholarship and learning. [b]Scholars from all over the Islamic world came to the University of Sankore (as well as the city's over 180 madersas) where courses as varied as theology, Islamic law, rhetoric, and literature were taught. The university was housed in the Sankore Mosque built with a remarkably large pyramidal mihrab in the declining years of the Mali Empire. The university, one of the first in Africa, became so famous that scholars came to it from all over the Muslim world. At this period in African history, the University of Sankore was the educational capital of the western Sudan, where 25,000 students studied a rigorous academic program.[/b] In the book, Timbuctoo the Mysterious, French author Felix Dubois describes the intellectual accomplishments of the ancient African university: [b]"The scholars of Timbuctoo yielded in nothing, to the saints in the sojourns in the foreign universities of Fez, Tunis, and Cairo. They astounded the most learned men of Islam by their erudition. That these Negroes were on a level with the Arabian savants is proved by the fact that they were installed as professors in Morocco and Egypt. In contrast to this, we find that Arabs were not always equal to the requirements of Sankore." 2 As a center of intellectual achievement, Timbuktu earned a place next to Cairo and other leading North African cities.[/b] 1Davidson, Basil. The Lost Cities of Africa. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 93. 2Dubois, Felix. Timbuctoo the Mysterious. (London: W. Heinemann, 1897), p. 285. [/i] Source: http://www.history.com/classroom/unesco/timbuktu/history.html The implications here are clear: Sure Timbuktu existed before being incorporated into the Malian empire, sure there was a lot of activity there before its seizure by the Malian empire, including becoming an important trading post within the trans-Saharan trade network, and hence the state in which it [Timbuktu] was incorporated into the Malian empire should be seen as an evolution of activities from earlier periods, but it was Mansa Musa who initially put Timbuktu on the [i]world[/i] map. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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