Timbuktu

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For a historian, the fact that the mosques and other holy places of Timbuktu have been recorded from the late sixteenth century in the Arabic chronicles, or "tarikhs" of Timbuktu, make the buildings as visualizing component and thus as speaking relics of this past even more valuable. The Arabic chronicles record Timbuktu as a centre of West African Sudan market and scribal culture. Because Timbuktu was at the crossroads of trade routes, the mosques and holy places of Timbuktu were imperative for the development and spread of Islam in Africa in late medieval and early modern times. Figure 4: Sankore Mosque, Timbuktu. Photo Francesco Bandarin, date 01/02/2005; https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/119/gallery/&index=1&maxrows=12 (accessed April 5, 2019) The buildings are architectural highlights from an era of great prosperity and intellectual importance. The three mosques present a specific style of architecture, working with earthen materials. Buildings as old as the mosques from these materials are very rare, but in this case they also represent a high point of Islamic learning and cultural and trade exchange of this region. How they were restored in the 16th century, which materials were used, how the spaces within and outside the mosques were configured, can tell us about West African Sudan architectural development, of which Timbuktu was the capital of culture in the 15th and 16th century, the time when the mosques were restored. As Elias Saad (Saad, p. 108) points out, the topography and thus, the urban space of Timbuktu has always been dominated by its mosques: "Their architecture rose above everything else in the city and they became the main points of referral and congregation in their respective quarters." They served not only as centres for prayers, but also as charities and hospitals for the poor. Saad assumes that the mosques determined the directions in
delineation of quarters. For Timbuktu, the mosques had therefore also value as referrals for urban planning. With their central situation and integrating tasks, the mosques were the main forums of interaction between the various ethnical and social groups of the city, and their mixing with marketeers, travellers, migrating scholars. Figure 5: United Nations Photo: MINUSMA Support in the Preservation of Ancient Manuscripts in Mali, photo taken January 5, 2016: https://www.flickr.com/photos/un_photo/30874616233/in/photolist-‐qKptM-‐DCbuxe-‐ 6okCEy-‐83QteH-‐6okCp7-‐6okCA1-‐6okCgq-‐6ogrit-‐6okC2s-‐6ogrvH-‐6okCdb-‐rYees9-‐P3htKx The city of Timbuktu has developed since the 16th century, and is now situated in one of the poorest regions of the world, as I have explained above. To keep a tradition alive that speaks about its prosperous past, is necessary to retain the value of the place and the unique features of its history and greatness. But the tradition has been kept alive, outside the valuable efforts of UNESCO. The old families of Timbuktu keep as one of the most treasured possessions folders with manuscripts that their ancestors copied from lectures and textbooks given at the Sankore University (madrasa) and in the culture of learning that surrounded it. Some of these manuscripts are very old and stem from the 14th century. An initiative of Timbuktu citizens together with money from South Africa, the Mellon foundation and other foundations worked to make these treasure visible to the public and at the same time to put them into storage places more adapted to their state of fragility. UNESCO officially complained about the site of the Ahmad-‐Baba-‐Museum next to the Sankore mosque over many years. And the complaints only ceased with the Islamist burning of the Museum in 2012. Although the manuscripts could be rescued through night-‐drives of single people to Bamako, the capital of Mali, the collections did not yet get the recognition as tangible and intangible heritage from UNESCO that they should have had. Today, the manuscripts are curated by a team from Hamburg University in Germany with the help of the German Federal Foreign Office Ministry, the German Jutta Vogel Foundation and the German Gerda Henckel Foundation.
Page 1 and 2: Timbuktu and Premodern Tradition
Page 3: Figure 3: Location of the thre
Page 7 and 8: management of the building site
Page 9 and 10: the secondary literature consult

Timbuktu

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