Julie VauxTIMBUKTU
March 23rd 2008 01:18
TIMBUKTU
The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold
Marq de Villiers & Sheila Hirtle 2007
The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold
Marq de Villiers & Sheila Hirtle 2007
I'm so glad my librarians buy history and geography books.
Villiers and Hirtle also wrote SAHARA: The Extraordinary History of the World's Largest Desert.
This book is about Timbuktu a city whose treasures are not just metal but also books.
It traces its history from legends about a nomad woman finding a lake and setting up a permanent settlement for trading to its decline and yet hopeful revival as a centre for learning where manuscripts from all over Mali are being copied and restored and digitalized for this century.
Using a variety of sources including French translations and Arabic originals of chronicles not widely available in English the authors reveal Timbuktu's history and that of surrounding areas. Learn about the Sankore and the empires of Ghana and Gao.
Highly recommended *****
The book however ends on the disturbing observation that yet another Saudi funded Wahhabi dominated mosque has been built in Timbuktu.
Hopefully the residents will do what their ancestors did the last time a Wahhabi cleric made a nuisance of himself (several centuries earlier ) and was made so "welcome" he migrated to Egypt and beyond .
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