Timbuktu

:This article is about Timbuktu, the Mali city. For the artist, see Timbuktu. For the region, see Tombouctou Region

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Timbuktu or Timbuctu (Koyra Chiini: Tumbutu, French: Tombouctou) is a city populated by the Songhay, Tuareg, Fulani, and Moorish people in the West African country of Mali. It is often said to lie on the River Niger, but is actually 20 kilometres north of the river.

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Its geographical setting made it a natural meeting point for nearby African populations and nomadic Berber and Arab peoples from the north. Its long history as a trading outpost that linked west Africa with Berber and Islamic traders throughout north Africa, and thereby indirectly with traders from Europe, has given it a fabled status, and in the West it was for long a metaphor for exotic, distant lands: "from here to Timbuktoo". Timbuktu's most long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization is scholarship. By at least the fourteenth century, important books were written and copied in Timbuktu, establishing the city as the center of a significant written tradition in Africa.

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Timbuktu: :This article is about Timbuktu, the Mali city. For the artist, see Timbuktu. For the region, see Tombouctou Region...

Tombouctou Region: Tombouctou is the large northern-most region of Mali, comprised mostly of the Southwestern section of the Sahara desert....

Koyra Chiini: Koyra Chiini (koyra ?iini, literally "town language"), or Western Songhay, is a variety of Songhai in Mali, spoken by about 200,000 people (as of 1999) along the Niger River in Timbuktu and upriver from it in the towns of Diré, Tonka, Goundam, and Niafunké, as well as in the Saharan town of Araouane...

Timbuktu related Images and Photos (experimental)

The Raising of the French Flag at Timbuktu (Mali) from "Le Petit Journal " February 1894

View of Part of the Town of Timbuktu from a Hill

Entrance of Heinrich Barth's (1821-65) Caravan into Timbuktu in 1853

Tuareg Men Preparing for Tea Ceremony Outside a Traditional Homestead Timbuktu Mali