Social History of Timbuktu: The Role of Muslim Scholars and Notables 1400-1900

"It’s a very important book. He really got into the specifics and the minutiae of the scholarly community in Timbuktu . He was able to talk about these scholars in terms of their familial connections, how certain families’ roles and prominence in Timbuktu was translated into their projection as scholars and as holy men. Timbuktu enjoys this reputation as having been a center of learning, particularly a center of Islamic learning in this early period. Saad goes behind that veneer and he looks at the constituent elements that contributed to Timbuktu’s formation. He talks about specific families, particularly the Muhammad Aqit family, and how you see these lines of transmission of authority, erudition and status through these families. He unfolds before us a more intimate story of the lives of the scholars and clerics in Timbuktu. By way of context, the beauty of Timbuktu and, secondarily, of Jenne to the south, was that they represented opportunities for people to pursue erudition in one locale. Prior to the rise of Jenne and Timbuktu as sites of learning, the more familiar pattern was for someone who was seeking knowledge to travel from site to site to study with a particular teacher. You would go and study at the feet of a Sheikh and these teachers would be expert in particular branches of learning. You might study poetry or the Hadith, the Sunna, the traditions of the Prophet, or Koranic exegesis—some branch of knowledge. You would go to a specific expert who was located in a particular town, or particular village to study with that person for X number of years. When that particular Sheikh was satisfied that you had acquired the necessary threshold of knowledge he would write a ‘jizya’—a license—verifying that you had studied these particular books and these particular principles with him, certifying that you have done that and that you yourself are now in a position to teach. “Timbuktu enjoys this reputation as having been a center of learning, particularly a center of Islamic learning in this early period” The problem is that you would have to travel over distances to study this or that form of knowledge. Timbuktu and Jenne represented universities in a loose sense, in that they housed multiple scholars who were expert in various branches of erudition. So you could go to Jenne, or more importantly to Timbuktu, and you could study the various branches of learning. As well as the Islamic sciences, which I’ve already mentioned, you would study grammar, poetry and mathematics. Medicine and astronomy were also studied. Astronomy was important because these were lunar societies, so everything was predicated on the position and phases of the moon. One had to have a knowledge of stellar activity to organise society, knowing when holidays took place and so forth. Through Saad’s work we understand the branches of knowledge and the specific books that were studied, as well as who taught them. We also get a sense of pedagogy, how things were taught. We get a sense of Islamic education at the madrasas, the ways in which young boys in particular, but also young girls up to a point, were educated. It’s a very important book. It was definitely an important entrepot. It is the ‘port’ that interfaces most directly with trans-Saharan trade. Jenne is a major market as well. But the tendency was for commodities to exit Jenne and go to Timbuktu and then, from Timbuktu elsewhere through the Sahara. So you have that kind of economic foundation. That economic foundation provides opportunities for individuals to pursue erudition as a way of life. Then, as the city develops a reputation as a site of erudition, of course you have pupils coming into the city for the purpose of studying and then that also becomes a source of revenue. In African Dominion I argue that it’s actually Mansa Musa who really creates the basis for the efflorescence of Timbuktu as an educational center. That’s an early 14th century development. When he comes back from Hajj he’s able to invest in Timbuktu in a way that really allows the city to flourish. There was certainly scholarly activity in the city prior to Musa, but he advances the interest of the city as a cultural site. So, certainly from the middle of the 14th century through to the end of the 16th century, Timbuktu is flourishing as a very important site of learning, not just for West Africa, but for the larger Muslim world. You have not only West Africans, but people from North Africa, and from the central Islamic lands coming to Timbuktu, both to study and to teach. I have a long chapter on the relationship of Timbuktu to notions of governance and, in particular, the relationship of Timbuktu to the imperial center of the Songhai, which was Gao, to the east of Timbuktu. A lot of scholarship has argued that Timbuktu was autonomous and that the town’s elites, in particular the principal judges, the qadis of the town, were in control. I beg to differ. I have argued that Timbuktu was, in fact, firmly within the control of the political apparatus of the state. It may be that Timbuktu influenced certain aspects of governance in Songhai because we do have the establishment of the office of the qadi, which by implication means that there was an attempt to adjudicate matters according to Sharia or Islamic law, at least within the cities and towns—I doubt very seriously if that effort was extended into more rural areas. So, there was an attempt to make governance more ‘Islamic’ during the period of the Songhai, but that effort would have actually begun under Mansa Musa in Mali. Without question. Because when Mansa Musa returns from the pilgrimage he embarks upon a policy whereby he sends Mande-speaking individuals to Fez to study and, upon completion of their studies, they are incorporated into Jenne and Timbuktu and become the intellectual leaders of the cities over a period of time. And they are the basis for a subsequent flourishing of scholarship in those cities. Mansa Musa was definitely trying to build up this religious and scholarly dimension and that resulted in the formation of a clerical caste that was loyal to Mali. The competition is with the Tuareg. And so there is a constant back and forth over who’s going to control Timbuktu, the Tuareg to the north or states to the south or east. Mansa Musa very deliberately wanted to create a scholarly clerical formation in Timbuktu that would be loyal to the state."