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00:07This is the story of the rise and fall of a legendary city and its long-hidden legacy
00:13of hundreds of thousands of ancient manuscripts.
00:19Set against a backdrop of great empires and visionary leaders, it tells how trade routes
00:26from the east became ink roads, bringing writing to the heart of West Africa, and how Timbuktu
00:32became its leading light, and how invasions and conquest caused that story to be buried
00:39literally.
00:44Africa's storytellers, guardians of its history, have had their oral traditions dismissed as
00:50mere song and dance, and the assumed lack of a literary heritage interpreted as means
00:56meaning Africa doesn't have its own intellectual traditions.
01:02But now a different truth is emerging that tells us the reading and writing of books has
01:08been as important a part of life in Africa as it has in Europe, and as Timbuktu's manuscripts
01:13are brought out of hiding, the conviction grows that what they have to tell us may forever
01:20rewrite Africa's history.
01:24This box looks like it's been buried, it's covered in dirt and things on the bottom.
01:28Why was it put under the ground?
01:32Over the years we have protected the manuscript from those who wanted to take them away.
01:37We have over 4,000 manuscripts in our collection.
01:42What's incredible is that I'm in a small village in Mali, in Africa, on the edge of the Sahara
01:49desert.
01:49It's about the last place on earth I'd expect to find manuscripts hundreds of years old.
01:54But this is where the search for the lost libraries of Timbuktu really begins.
02:07Europeans dreamed of reaching Timbuktu ever since stories began to circulate in medieval times
02:14of a desert El Dorado, whose streets were paved with gold.
02:20My journey was as mundane as any these days.
02:23Several flights and an overnight in Mali's capital Bamako, before the last leg to Timbuktu.
02:30It wasn't until the 19th century that European explorers set out to survey Africa and to search
02:38for the fabled city of Timbuktu.
02:42Their journeys across deserts and along rivers took years, led to violent encounters with desert
02:49tribesmen and cost lives.
02:52Timbuktu became forever synonymous with remoteness and mystery, the farthest place on earth.
03:00I grew up in Sierra Leone and I've long known that Timbuktu was in Mali, in the Sahara desert.
03:07But it was only passing through here a few years ago I realised there was much more to Timbuktu
03:13than meets the eye.
03:14That this seemingly unremarkable desert town was once a splendid city of scholars, and
03:21from the 13th century, West Africa's most important seat of learning.
03:27In Sierra Leone I've often heard stories of the Alphas, learned men from the north who travelled
03:33south to spread the word of Allah.
03:36What I'd never realised before is that many of them would have started out right here,
03:41in the deserts of Timbuktu.
03:44Even Africans are just discovering the story of Timbuktu and its lost libraries.
03:50Probably people educated in Arabic and Islam know something about manuscripts, but I don't
03:56think that the general public are aware about manuscripts.
03:59I became aware of the existence of the manuscript not longer than two years ago.
04:04It sounded like a joke because my director called me and said, Alexio, you've been requested
04:09to go to Timbuktu.
04:11Do you know a place called Timbuktu?
04:13And I said, no, other than the fact that it's a small, impossible place to get to in Mali,
04:20in West Africa.
04:23Until 1960, Mali was a French colony, and French has remained the official language.
04:28Only after independence did the custodians of Timbuktu's manuscripts feel it was safe to bring
04:36their cultural treasures out of hiding.
04:39This is one of around 30 libraries opened in Timbuktu in recent years.
04:44Between them, the libraries have over 70,000 manuscripts.
04:49Timbuktu's libraries are run by families whose ancestors began collecting books and documents
04:55eight centuries ago.
04:57The new libraries house whatever remnants of those collections have survived the ravages
05:02of time, and their contents offer an invaluable source for a new understanding of West African
05:09history.
05:13At the Mamma Haidera Library, Abdel Kader Haidera has agreed to show me some of his collection,
05:20manuscripts on astronomy, medicine and theology, including commentaries on the sayings of the
05:26prophet.
05:27These particular manuscripts date from around the 16th and 17th centuries.
05:33This one's been nibbled by termites.
05:37This is a really interesting manuscript about astronomy.
05:40These are the astronomic drawings showing the position of all stars.
05:45I'm not an expert, but that is what they tell us.
05:52They knew more about it then than I do now.
05:55It shows you how to calculate position of the stars using these letters and numbers.
06:02Next, he showed me a 16th century manuscript.
06:07So this is a text of the prophet's sayings.
06:12What's more, there are all these notes in the margin, they can be about anything.
06:18But this one talks about hygiene.
06:22If you eat something unclean, you will always have problems and complications with your health.
06:30OK, so you must always wash your food, which is pretty good advice.
06:34And all that was written in the margins by people who came after.
06:41In the past, there were very little papers and they were very expensive.
06:46So the margins of books were often used just like today when we use a diary.
06:52I saw one example where the writer said, today there was an earthquake in Timbuktu.
07:05And here's a 500-year-old recipe for toothpaste.
07:11You take some salt and some sugar and mix that together with some charcoal and brush it on your teeth
07:18every day.
07:19And your teeth will become white.
07:23And what's more, it will get rid of your bad breath.
07:29So how did the libraries first come into being? How were they lost? And how will their discovery alter perceptions
07:37of Africa?
07:41At the end of the 10th century, when Timbuktu was founded, a large part of West Africa was under the
07:47rule of the Ghana Empire.
07:49It was West Africa's first superpower, and its leaders were early converts to Islam.
07:57But the spread of Islam was the compelling factor that changed history here and gave Africa its literary tradition.
08:09Islam spread from the Arabian Peninsula, from Egypt and then along the coast of North Africa.
08:17But some other Muslims came from the north.
08:20The ones who founded Timbuktu and, being traders, spread Islam from the Sahara to the south coast.
08:33Just as in Europe, where most early manuscripts were religious works written in Latin, in Timbuktu the bulk of the
08:40texts are written in Arabic and concern Islamic theology.
08:43The Ahmed Baba Institute, the only public library, holds Mali's national collection. Set up in 1973, it now has over
08:5440,000 manuscripts.
08:58The head librarian told me just how many turn up on a weekly basis. It's an impressive number.
09:07Every week we get about 700.
09:09Every week we get about 700.
09:10600-700 a week?
09:11Yes, per week.
09:14So, when the manuscripts arrive here, the first thing we have to do is evaluate them to see what conditions
09:20they are in.
09:21We pick out all the best ones, but the ones that are too damaged, we put to one side.
09:28For me, my favourite ones are the ones in the African languages, but written with Arabic characters.
09:34They are called Ajami texts.
09:38Because I'm Sorai, when I see a manuscript in Sorai, it makes me happy.
09:43You have some manuscripts in Pearl, Sorai, Tamashek, all with Arabic characters that recount the history of Africa.
09:53The manuscripts are being digitised, so they can eventually be made available to a worldwide scholarship.
09:59But the first priority has to be the conservation and preservation of the manuscripts.
10:06In 2001, South Africa's then president, Thabo Mbeki, visited the Institute and hailed the manuscripts as among the continent's greatest
10:17cultural treasures.
10:18He immediately gave funding for their preservation.
10:24Alexio Motsi is a South African conservator, making regular visits to Timbuktu to work on delicate and often damaged manuscripts,
10:33and equally importantly, to train local people in conservation skills.
10:39To come here to Maddy, to see what was here, was actually a serious motivation for me, because it was
10:47a dream come true for a conservator.
10:48It must have been like finding the gold at the end of the rainbow.
10:50It was more than finding gold, because being aware of the historical background that Africa doesn't have documentary heritage,
11:00this for me was also another motivation which made me become very passionate.
11:07At least 300,000 manuscripts are known to exist in the region, but so far only a tiny percentage have
11:16been translated or studied in any detail.
11:20A lot of them have not been read, a thousand at most, so there are lots of manuscripts that we
11:26got, and that's really exciting, but it also gives us the idea of the challenge that lies ahead, you know,
11:32and how much work that must be done on the manuscripts.
11:36The conservation, cataloguing, translation and study of all the known manuscripts is a task which could take decades.
11:46But thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of manuscripts are still out there, some hidden behind walls, some in cellars,
11:55and some still buried in the sands of the desert.
12:01The last 300 years have dealt a succession of blows to Timbuktu, Morocco invaded at the end of the sixteenth
12:09century.
12:10Violent power struggles between rival fundamentalist Islamic sects created anarchy throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, followed swiftly by
12:21the final indignity of French colonisation.
12:25Like other victors, the French took away manuscripts as the spoils of victory.
12:30To protect their heritage, the owners of manuscripts hid their collections. Timbuktu's libraries went underground.
12:38Over the last 50 years, the manuscripts have gradually been brought out into the open again, but their owners are
12:45still suspicious.
12:49Searching for manuscripts, it's a bit like prospecting for gold.
12:54Before taking over his family library, Abdel Kader used to track down manuscripts for the Ahmed Baba Institute,
13:01seeking them out and persuading reluctant owners to hand over their treasures to the state for safekeeping.
13:10I went to do some prospecting in a village called Bamba. The family led me down a corridor that led
13:18to a bedroom, and in the middle of the bedroom was a well.
13:22They opened the cover of the well, and with the help of a torch, we could see a pile of
13:27manuscripts.
13:29When we took them out, we found that about 60% of them were damaged, but the rest was good,
13:36and they are now in Ahmed Baba Institute.
13:42But winning people's confidence could be difficult.
13:47The first director of the Ahmed Baba Institute went to see an imam once, who had a large collection of
13:54manuscripts stored in his bedroom.
13:57Every day, the director went to chat with him, and every day, the imam promised they would work together, and
14:05he would give some manuscripts.
14:08The director thought that everything was going great, until one day, when he went to see the imam,
14:15only to find that he would build a huge wall in front of his manuscript.
14:19And the director said, what's going on here? What this is all about?
14:24And the imam said, there is going to be no more library, and no more discussion.
14:29And to this day, those manuscripts are still behind that wall.
14:34At the height of its golden age in the mid-1500s, Timbuktu's population had grown to 100,000.
14:42That's massive by the standards of the day.
14:45And a good 25,000 of them comprised the city's community of scholars and their students.
14:52But if Timbuktu was once a town of 25,000 scholars, there's not much sign of it now.
14:59Frankly, Timbuktu today feels like a dusty, if elegant, backwater.
15:05A place that's been crumbling for centuries.
15:08Nevertheless, it's wonderful to think that behind any of these walls could be yet another cache of undiscovered manuscripts.
15:16Though there's already more than enough to ensure a rethink of the history of this part of Africa in a
15:24new and dramatic way.
15:29To me, it has actually changed my understanding. I'm much more proud to be an African, and I'm much more
15:36proud to be an African conservator.
15:38And more proud to be contributing towards the re-correction or re-writing of the African history.
15:45The Ahmed Baba Institute was born from the international conference organized by UNESCO in 1967.
15:51And the topic was the origins of African history. I repeat, the origins of African history.
15:58And what's the origins? It's the manuscripts.
16:01So with the Arabic manuscripts, the intention is to rewrite the history of Africa.
16:10Still, future historians should be wary of dismissing existing African sources, including oral ones.
16:17The challenge lies in weighing all the sources against each other.
16:22African history has been, for a long time, built on oral tradition.
16:29Of course, a lot of people think that oral tradition is not credible.
16:36But I think that it is an important source for African history.
16:41So the question is how you approach the source and how you criticize the source to write the history.
16:48A crucial source of evidence in any new appraisal of Africa's past are archaeological discoveries being made along the Niger
16:57near Timbuktu.
16:58The Niger has always been the lifeblood of this region, just as the Nile was to the Eastern Sahara.
17:05Its waters provided fish and allowed agriculture to develop.
17:11The river was a long-distance trade route, connecting the myriad communities along its banks.
17:18The Niger River rises in the hills of what was once the ancient kingdom of Futajalon, 150 miles from the
17:26West African coast.
17:27And but for a quirk of geology, which caused the river to flow inland, the Niger would have been a
17:33very short river instead of one of the world's longest.
17:39Nearly 3,000 miles long, the river first flows north towards Timbuktu.
17:45It then curves eastward before turning southeast through Nigeria to the Atlantic Ocean.
17:54Between Jene and Timbuktu, the Niger is yielding new revelations to equal the discovery of the manuscripts.
18:04From as early as 500 BC, this area was one of the most densely urbanized parts of the world, rivaling
18:12other early urban civilizations such as Mesopotamia.
18:17Doug Park is part of an American team that over recent years has extensively surveyed the region's wealth of archaeological
18:25sites.
18:26When we met, Doug was about to begin excavating a huge city site 10 miles south of Timbuktu.
18:35So how typical is a site like this in Mali? How many might there be?
18:40Well, there is a lot. And there are accounts that say that if someone from Jene wanted to send a
18:49message to a village or a city a few hundred kilometers away,
18:53he just had to shout and the message would be carried across the floodplains and along the Niger until it
18:59reached that village.
18:59Because so many people were living in such proximity.
19:03So the picture at that time was just of an urban landscape all along the borders of the Niger River.
19:12Exactly.
19:13So read this landscape for me.
19:16Here, what you look for are these grey areas.
19:20Yeah, where it looks kind of earthy.
19:22That is this massive pottery carpet.
19:24It spreads around an area somewhere between 70 and 100 hectares.
19:29Which is enormous.
19:31It's massive.
19:31This city rivals the size of the great cities of Mesopotamia, like Ur or Uruk.
19:36So how does that compare to modern Timbuktu?
19:39Well, to the old medina of Timbuktu.
19:43It's maybe, maybe twice the size.
19:48And if you put that in comparison to the size of Timbuktu in regards to the rest of the world's
19:52cities during the Middle Ages,
19:53Timbuktu was somewhere around twice the size of London.
19:56Timbuktu is twice the size of London.
19:58And this site is twice the size of Timbuktu.
20:00Wow.
20:03One fascinating fact to emerge is that these people lived together peacefully for centuries.
20:10Now that looks very much like a skull.
20:13That is a skull.
20:14What we can tell from him is that you know it's probably not going to be an Islamic burial because
20:22its head is facing south.
20:24So would he have definitely been in a grave?
20:27Yeah, he was definitely in a grave.
20:28You can tell he was buried as opposed to fell there.
20:31Well, it's a good question.
20:34Fell in battle perhaps.
20:35Well, we don't really find any evidence for warfare in West Africa during the pre-Islamic period.
20:43And we're not really quite sure why that is.
20:46Peaceful society, we don't know.
20:48The general practice would have been is to bury the dead underneath the floor of the house.
20:53Oh, I see.
20:54Granddad under the house.
20:55Yeah, good old granddad under the house.
20:57So, I mean, are you going to excavate him or are you going to leave him here?
21:00No, he's far too fragile to excavate.
21:03So you're going to leave him to rest in peace?
21:05For a while.
21:06Okay. Do you want to show me the rest of the site?
21:07Sure, I would.
21:09These densely packed, interdependent communities each had a specific skill base.
21:15Some were farmers, others fishermen.
21:17There were potters and metal workers.
21:19Their activities cleared forests that once covered this landscape.
21:24Some iron slack.
21:26And you see here, this is the byproduct of iron smelting.
21:31Now, if you can imagine, the amount of wood to make the charcoal amount of charcoal to fire the furnaces
21:35to melt the iron ore is an immense amount of wood.
21:38So there must have been trees?
21:40Trees.
21:40There must have been a lot of trees.
21:41Especially African hardwood trees.
21:42And you only have acacia now.
21:44And that's it.
21:45Could it be as a result of the smelting?
21:47Absolutely.
21:49Much of the pottery carpeting this site served the same purpose as our tin cans and plastic bags.
21:56Oh, look at this.
21:57This is a pestle.
21:58Oh, wow.
21:59I've got one at home.
22:02This one's pretty well made, too.
22:03Some things don't change.
22:04No, they stay the same for the most part.
22:06At least some of the real basic stuff.
22:09And so, I mean, we're getting...
22:12Oh, here.
22:12Look, here's a grindstone here.
22:15As you see.
22:17These two are probably there, actually.
22:20Doug has described a cityscape whose architecture would have looked much like the villages still dotted around Timbuktu.
22:27It's just the density that's changed.
22:31It's amazing to learn that right here, on this spot, there once existed a civilization.
22:39Two thousand years ago, as old as Christianity.
22:44The size of which rivalled modern Timbuktu over there.
22:49And in terms of its antiquity, Timbuktu and the manuscripts dating back to the 11th century are beginning to look
22:56relatively, well, modern.
22:59Archeology has yet to tell us what happened to that civilization or about Timbuktu's early origins and how the town
23:07fitted into the bigger picture of a river lined with city-sized settlements.
23:14But Timbuktu's lively oral traditions tell the tale.
23:20Local legend has it, Tuareg tribesmen set up base camp here, around this well, a few miles inland from the
23:28mosquito-infested banks of the Niger River.
23:31While the Tuareg went off to graze their livestock in the desert after the rains, they left their belongings to
23:37be supervised by a slave woman, Buktu, the lady with the large navel.
23:42Hence, Timbuktu's name simply means Buktu's well.
23:48The Tuareg have been the main ethnic group to inhabit the Sahara for centuries.
23:54Their knowledge of the desert gave them control of the trade routes that ran from the north and east and
24:00led to the Niger.
24:02By the late 10th century, the most important and safest routes had focused on the region where the Niger bends
24:09eastwards.
24:10Timbuktu's creation was no accident, but a commercial necessity.
24:17They say that Timbuktu is where camel meets canoe, lying as it does between the great Sahara desert and the
24:24camel trains bringing the riches of the Mediterranean,
24:27and the river carrying gold from the fields of the south.
24:30The town was uniquely placed to flourish on trade.
24:40Camo trains from the north brought dates, European fabrics, glass, jewelry, tobacco, and salt from the Sahara.
24:53The boats from the south bring cereals, honey, shibata, gold, and slaves.
25:06What made Timbuktu an important place in the Middle Ages was the gold and slaves.
25:17It's said two-thirds of the world's gold came from Mali in the 14th century, much of it passing through
25:24Timbuktu.
25:26Today's markets are mostly a local affair, but camel trains do still arrive with the other mainstay of the city's
25:33historic wealth.
25:36Salt was the white gold of Timbuktu.
25:39From the mines in the north it was brought down in great slabs by a camel train to the town
25:44for transshipment on the river.
25:49International trade in Timbuktu often needed written contracts that required the services of scribes and notaries, and they needed to
25:58work in a common language that bridged frontiers.
26:04Arabic spread across Africa in the wake of Islam, just as Christianity spread Latin across the European continent.
26:12So it's for good reason then that historians call Arabic the Latin of Africa.
26:19In the wake of Islam, another commodity began to arrive with the camel trains.
26:24Books were soon being traded in Timbuktu's marketplaces as wealthy merchants found a new indulgence for their deep pockets and
26:32leisure time.
26:33Books greatly enhanced the status of their owners and gave the pious a deeper understanding of Islam.
26:43The profits of the book trade soon rivalled the trade in gold, salt and slaves.
26:48By the end of the 13th century, the prominent families of Timbuktu began to boast their own libraries,
26:55and the sons of those families aspired not just to trade, but to scholarship.
27:02Paper was imported from Europe and China, and a new occupation swelled the ranks of the city's workforce.
27:10Calligraphers started copying Islamic texts from abroad, as well as the work of the town's own scholars.
27:18Their labours were impressively rewarded.
27:22If I was working back in the 15th century, I'd be earning millions.
27:28I'd have many houses, many camels, and lots and lots of gold.
27:33You'd get many people ordering manuscripts back then, and they'd pay in gold, they'd pay in camels.
27:40They'd even exchange their houses in order to acquire manuscripts.
27:45It's a very different story today, and nowadays, I'm amongst the poorest people in the town, and I'm still the
27:51only person in the town practicing this craft.
27:56Towards the end of the 13th century, Ghana was overtaken by the Malian Empire,
28:01and Timbuktu became the commercial hub of this new superpower.
28:07The fabulously wealthy Muslim ruler of the Malian Empire, Kanka Musa, made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324,
28:15stopping in Timbuktu in acknowledgement of the city's economic and cultural importance.
28:22Kanka Musa was the greatest emperor of West Africa.
28:30He was a very religious man, very pure.
28:34He went with a huge retinue of men and women on his Hajj to Mecca.
28:42He took 15 tons of gold with him and distributed it so generously in Egypt and Mecca that the price
28:51of gold collapsed.
28:55News of the splendor and spending power that marked Kanka Musa's progress through Egypt and Syria
29:01soon reached the ears of merchants around the Mediterranean.
29:05Within 50 years of Musa's pilgrimage, the Mallorcan cartographer, Abraham Kreskes,
29:12had drawn a map for the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, showing a black African monarch on a golden throne,
29:19and Timbuktu is the capital of Mali.
29:21The legend of a desert El Dorado had gripped European minds.
29:27Kanka Musa brought Arabic professors back from Mecca to boost Timbuktu's scholarship,
29:32though it's said they proved to be no match for the city's own black African scholars.
29:39He also commissioned new buildings to grace Timbuktu, including a palace.
29:47Any sign of Kanka Musa's palace, which it said once stood somewhere here, have long since disappeared.
29:55The palace was designed for the king by the Andalusian architect, Es Saheli, who Kanka Musa brought back from his
30:02pilgrimage to Mecca.
30:05When the palace fell into disuse, the site became an abattoir, but one magnificent remnant of Kanka Musa's legacy remains.
30:13The Gingareber mosque was also designed by Es Saheli. It's been added to and repaired over 600 years, but it
30:21still represents a startling, almost futuristic vision.
30:26Utterly different from my idea of a mosque.
30:30Impressive as it is now, back then, Kanka Musa's mosque would have awed the people of Timbuktu, just as Europe's
30:37mighty cathedrals left their congregations in no doubt as to where the power lay.
30:44The imam guided me around the mosque's deceptively spacious interior.
30:51We are in the second prayer aisle of the mosque, and there are nine of them in all, each about
30:57100 metres long.
30:59When you look from the outside, you get the impression that the mosque is not very large.
31:05But when you come inside, you see that it's actually huge.
31:10And when you come into the mosque too, you get the impression that it's air-conditioned.
31:17The architects made it in such a way to stop the heat from getting inside, because the mud brick is
31:23a bad conductor of heat.
31:26So the mosque always has the temperature of the early morning.
31:33Scholarship as much as trade was to drive Timbuktu's reputation.
31:37Timbuktu scholars were avid in their pursuit of knowledge in every field.
31:43Knowledge was highly respected in the Islamic world, and those possessing it won prestige and power.
31:49With its professors and their prolific writings, Timbuktu was set to become the region's most important centre of learning.
31:58Ibn Battuta, the great Moroccan world traveller who voyaged as far as China and ancient Mali, visited Timbuktu in the
32:0714th century.
32:09In his chronicles, he noted his impressions of the city, in particular the piety, tolerance, wisdom and justice of its
32:18inhabitants.
32:21You had so many books coming from Arabia, and because the people of Timbuktu had digested so much Islam,
32:30they were able to give it real meaning and accessibility for the people.
32:37Because of Timbuktu's mastery of Islam, it has always strived towards an Islam with great tolerance.
32:49I wonder to what extent this tolerant Islam and its scholars' writings came from being filtered through African eyes.
33:03In Africa, in Timbuktu, or anywhere else, there was already a culture there.
33:08So when Islam arrived, it mixed with the culture already in place, and that's what made Islam what it is
33:15in Timbuktu today.
33:18So you have the tendency of having one food in Islam, and the other food in an occult world of
33:27African roots.
33:32The manuscripts represent, as a whole, the tools for the transmission of Islam.
33:38In fact, they only show the domination of Islam.
33:46The daily activity of Timbuktu scholars revolved around its three mosques.
33:52The Sankori Mosque is said to have been built in the 14th century by a wealthy Tuareg woman.
33:58Together with two other mosques, the Sidi Yahia and the Njingareber, they comprised what became known as Sankori University.
34:06The Sankori's rise was marked by an expanding scholastic community whose intellectual musings rapidly filled the libraries.
34:16It also signalled Timbuktu's golden age, ushered in during the last decades of the 15th century by yet another turn
34:24in the cycle of West African empires.
34:27The Songhai Empire was the most powerful yet. Its creator, Sonny Ali Bear, reigned from his capital Gao over a
34:35land mass greater than Western Europe.
34:40Nominally a Muslim, Sonny was also a champion of African traditions. He refused to allow his culture to be subsumed
34:48by Islam.
34:49If Timbuktu's scholars weren't willing to play to his tune, he soon let them know who was boss.
34:57The scholars and those in charge of the religious principles had to obey Sonny. Otherwise, he would get rid of
35:05them.
35:08When he arrived in Timbuktu in January 1468, the scholars got scared and manipulated to other towns and cities.
35:19But Sonny Ali Bear was also a visionary and an idealist. A leader who today's historians might hail as the
35:27continent's first Pan-Africanist.
35:32Sonny was a great visionary too. He wanted a united Africa. And furthermore, everywhere he conquered, he imposed his own
35:43language.
35:44For him, unity is the means of communication and the common language.
35:56The emperors who succeeded Sonny were more devoutly Muslim, encouraging Timbuktu scholarship and subsidising its professors.
36:03By the mid-1500s, the city's size and population eclipsed that of many European capitals, and the Sankori University was
36:13recognised as West Africa's preeminent centre of Islamic knowledge.
36:18But in Timbuktu, the term university doesn't quite equate to the modern concept of a university.
36:25Certainly, Sankori was a major seat of learning, but it evolved its own particular scholarly structure.
36:36Timbuktu once had more than 180 Quranic schools, like this one, which taught the basics of Islam.
36:43Those who could afford to, moved on to the Sankori University, and undertook three further levels of study in Arabic
36:50grammar and literature, Islamic law and sciences, and commentaries on the Quran.
36:56Final exams were both oral and written, and degrees were presented to the successful candidates in the form of a
37:03special turban.
37:05So, here is the form of the turban, and this represents the diploma.
37:10What is the significance of this turban?
37:14This part is like this.
37:17Around the face, it's like this.
37:24Then there's the element that goes around the head, like this.
37:29And finally, you can see that all the parts of this turban make up the name of God.
37:35Once he has the turban, we take the student to the city Yahya Mosque, where all the scholars are sitting
37:42down.
37:42The student sits in the middle.
37:45Suddenly, they rip the turban off his head, and the scholars tell him he doesn't deserve the turban.
37:52And then they ask him seven questions about the Islamic law.
37:56If he answers the questions correctly, he can wear the turban once again.
38:01And everyone goes to the Sankori for a big party.
38:04Then the successful student enters the community of wise men and the imam.
38:12The Sankori's professors and graduates weren't just the religious, but also the ruling elite.
38:18They were the lawmakers and the judges who governed every aspect of life.
38:23And though they lived among the people, they jealously guarded their power and kept the benefits of literacy to themselves.
38:31In the case of Timbuktu, teaching was only in the Arabic school and the Quranic school.
38:41And it is also because this knowledge was not so linked to the general, the economic, the political and the
38:53technical.
38:54And for the scholarly elite, it was important to guide the believers.
38:57And there is this view that you have the common folk, and the only thing they need to know is
39:02how to pray well.
39:04But you still have a 51% literacy in many parts of the Muslim movement.
39:07The spread of literacy further into Africa also faced significant geographic barriers.
39:16Writing took the path of business and trade.
39:20And wherever business stopped, the culture of writing stopped too.
39:25In such a way that the Arabs never really moved away from the banks of the river.
39:32They simply followed the Niger river as if it was the spinal column of the world.
39:41History tells us that the growth of literacy is one of the first steps to the creation of modern nation
39:47states.
39:49But the benefits of wider literacy might have delivered for West Africa must remain pure speculation.
39:55Because in 1591, a cataclysmic event destroyed the stability of the Songhai Empire and shattered Timbuktu's scholastic idyll for good.
40:08So the Moroccans came here to fight the Songhai and took over Timbuktu.
40:15Then they destroyed the university and deported most of the scholars back to Morocco along with all the manuscripts they
40:24could find.
40:26And that is how the university disappeared.
40:36But the Moroccan invasion was just one factor in Timbuktu's decline.
40:41By then the shifting focus of European trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic was already depressing the fortunes of
40:49the whole region.
40:52West Africa was always going to lose the battle.
40:56Why? Because the demand for African gold fell at the beginning of the 15th century.
41:04Europe was then buying its gold and precious metals from America.
41:09The markets were getting poorer and all that played a big part in affecting West Africa.
41:21The Moroccan invasion never became a full-scale occupation.
41:26The long years of the late 18th and 19th centuries saw the whole Niger region embroiled in a period of
41:33anarchy.
41:33A series of violent struggles between Sufi brotherhoods, each pushing their own brand of fundamentalist Islam, destroyed all hopes of
41:42a return to the stable days of the Songhai Empire.
41:47Reaching into this heightened atmosphere were the first tentacles of European colonisation.
41:54One of the consequences of that colonisation was how Africa's cultures and traditions would be viewed and treated.
42:08Europeans knew the Niger flowed inland, but thought it might be a branch of the Nile or the Congo, or
42:14might empty into a yet undiscovered inland sea.
42:17In 1785, the Royal African Society sent Mungo Park on the first of two expeditions to chart the Niger's true
42:25course and find Timbuktu.
42:28Who better to tell Mungo Park's story than a latter-day explorer sturdily cast in the park mould?
42:34His great-great-grandnephew, Doug Park.
42:38My ancestor was Mungo Park, and he was the first European supposedly to lay eyes on the Niger River.
42:46And he wrote about it, and after his first journey, he became famous for that account.
42:52He took a sailboat down to the port in Dakar, and travelled as far by land as possible, got on
43:00a boat, and then became lost for three years.
43:03Oh, so he was lost in the sense that no one knew what had happened to him?
43:06Right, absolutely. His team had died and deserted him, and so it ended up just being him, and he was
43:13living off the kindness of strangers, living throughout the Niger Delta.
43:19He managed to make it back to, I think, the port in Dakar, and sailed back to England.
43:25The second time he went to the Niger River, he actually made it quite a bit further, and he brought
43:29a lot more people along with him.
43:31Mungo Park did make it as far as Timbuktu was never actually able to get to the city, so somewhere
43:37around where we are right now, perhaps.
43:39He had sailed past.
43:42Unfortunately, he was a few hundred miles up the river from Timbuktu.
43:45He was ambushed by a number of natives who had been following him for a while, and he jumped into
43:52the river and drowned.
43:53The local trading societies didn't want the Europeans to find out where the cities actually were, and so those people
44:01protecting these middle Niger cities were very aggressive.
44:05And so it wasn't easy for any early traveller in this area.
44:18The first British explorer to reach Timbuktu was Alexander Gordon Lang, another Scot.
44:25Being half Scottish myself as well as West African, I can't help but wonder sometimes whether the lure of Timbuktu
44:31isn't in my blood in more ways than one.
44:35Lang was a British army major who made the sartorial error of travelling in uniform and was taken as a
44:42spy.
44:44He was severely wounded by Tuareg tribesmen on his way into Timbuktu in 1826.
44:51He was allowed to recuperate for a month, only to be murdered by the Tuareg a week into his return
44:58journey.
45:00A few years later, Frenchman René Caillé reached Timbuktu and survived the journey home.
45:08Caillé disguised himself in local robes and spoke enough Arabic to pass as a Muslim.
45:14He was singularly unimpressed with Timbuktu.
45:21The anarchic 19th century closed abruptly as French colonisation quashed any future hope of self-rule.
45:30One of the briefest periods in Timbuktu's history, colonial rule had a profound effect.
45:38What Timbuktu scholars had failed or perhaps been disinclined to do, the French achieved in decades.
45:46Compulsory schooling in French spread literacy across the whole social spectrum.
45:52However, the imposition of the French educational system resulted in the loss of the classical Arabic required to read the
45:59manuscripts,
46:00leaving Timbuktu's written legacy accessible only to a minority to this day.
46:07The existence of the manuscripts on its own is an amazing discovery.
46:13But the devil, as they say, is in the detail.
46:16What do they tell us about the way people lived here in Timbuktu centuries ago?
46:23Already the everyday concerns of ordinary townsfolk are being revealed in a detailed study of records of some of Timbuktu's
46:32thousands of surviving fatwas issued over the centuries.
46:36I think all of you say fatwa, people say it's a death sentence. Fatwa literally means it's a religious verdict.
46:43One of the interesting ones on women who got married while married.
46:50You have one incident of a woman who's husband travelled. She said to him, well, you're leaving and I need
46:55you.
46:56And he said, well, if I'm not back within a certain amount of days, you can then divorce yourself.
47:01Now, there were no witnesses to this incident. So he comes back later, sometime later, and he finds her married.
47:08Somebody else? Yes.
47:08Many of these women clearly said that, look, I just don't, finances are not the only things that I need.
47:14I need your company. I need your emotional support. So if you are not around, I'm not going to, you
47:20know, just stay around without a husband.
47:22What was the advice of the Muftis in those cases where a woman felt herself to be free to remarry
47:27and had done so?
47:28No, they came back and they said that, well, the second marriage is invalid and she must be returned to
47:35the first husband.
47:36So all of them seem to agree to that.
47:39So overall, the impression you get of the position of women in that era was what?
47:43Is that they were present, they announced their presence, they had their say, they were not simply sitting at home.
47:51There's another manuscript that is not a fatwa, but from there you can see that husbands were always very worried
47:58whether they could really satisfy their wives.
48:01So there were some anxious men around in those days?
48:03There are probably many anxious men today around, but certainly of all errors, yeah.
48:09Erectile dysfunction was an issue, you could see, and the traditional healer was a very pious Muslim scholar, really saw
48:18it as part of his Islamic duty to help his brother who was in distress.
48:21What was the advice given to the husband then?
48:24Well, you would take the blood from the comb of a chicken, you know, or of a cock and use
48:30it, either rubbing it under the feet or even at times on the penis.
48:35Was it medicine or was it psychology, do you think? Do you think they just knew that if somebody relaxed
48:39things might just get better?
48:41And I'm venturing, I mean, I'm assuming, maybe they really believe that it's going to work, you know.
48:47I always feel like the healers would always say that.
48:52In the 17th century, following the Moroccan invasion, Timbuktu scholars began the first rewriting of this part of Africa's history.
49:01The Timbuktu Tareks became a whole new literary and historical genre.
49:05The great Tareks are a series of histories of the city and the wider region, written with the express purpose
49:12of supporting the existing elite right to rule within the new Moroccan regime.
49:17Their authors drew on written records as well as oral traditions, reinterpreting the past in the light of subsequent events,
49:25much as a modern historian might do today.
49:27And as such, they need to be weighed carefully.
49:34The disadvantage we have with the Tareks is a bias in the writing of history, because history is always written
49:41for the governing powers to the detriment of those that came before.
49:47Mahmoud Khati, who wrote the history of the Songhai's Aschia emperors, was one of their nephews, so don't expect him
49:55to be negative about the Aschias.
50:00When you read the Tarik al-Fattash, you see an argument supporting the Aschias and condemning the Songhai.
50:08Both are from the same family, but from opposing sides. Therefore, you find this political bias.
50:17In the Tarik al-Soudan, you find this same political bias, and on top of that, an argument for the
50:25religion.
50:26In the Tarik al-Nissian, which is the story of the Moroccan dominance in Timbuktu, you find an argument in
50:33support of the powers in place at the time.
50:36We must make the apology of the power in place.
50:40Ajami was another genre which flowered across the turbulent late 18th and 19th centuries, as some writers attempted to reach
50:49a wider audience among the ethnic groups along the Niger.
50:52The texts used an adapted Arabic script to write in local African languages.
50:59Ajami simply means any language which isn't Arabic.
51:03The warring Sufi Brotherhood especially used Ajami to popularize their brands of Islam.
51:09But Ajami is important in other respects, too.
51:12It tells the people's history, with which the Tariks weren't concerned.
51:19The Ajami texts put on paper an oral tradition that was in danger of extension.
51:26We found all sorts in there. Poetry, songs, as well as texts on history.
51:33And sometimes history sings.
51:36The official truth is the one you find in the king's court.
51:40But as soon as we go in the street, and we see a mother breastfeeding her child, she sings the
51:47songs of our people.
51:49And that's where the truth is.
51:52It's a whole culture of which we don't make the most of today.
51:56But we should, because you can't have a comprehensive understanding of African culture without the Ajami texts.
52:07Alongside glorious oral traditions, the manuscripts represent an exciting new resource, which the government is doing its best to protect.
52:16But Mali is one of Africa's poorest countries, with many pressing issues.
52:21Just 50 years old, the modern state of Mali is still concerned with its own internal security.
52:29This is a monument to a 1996 peace deal with the Tuareg.
52:33The tribesmen have been rebelling sporadically against the government, ever since the modern state of Mali was created in 1960.
52:41The last president, Alpha Qunari, worked hard to heal divisions.
52:47But many Tuareg want greater autonomy, even their own homeland.
52:51It's been a rocky road to a tentative peace.
52:55And then there are the scorching sands of the Sahara, whose creeping advance threatens to overwhelm the town and has
53:03already created a more arid landscape.
53:06And with parched ground comes the destructive danger of flash floods that wreck buildings and reduce manuscripts to pulp.
53:13On top of all Timbuktu's problems, the floodplains of its lifeblood, the river Niger, have gradually retreated over the centuries.
53:23Where once they reached the city outskirts, now they don't even come within five kilometres of the town.
53:29The quarter where I live is called Bajinde. And Bajinde means the channel of the hippopotamus. That was when the
53:39river used to come there. But now it's gone.
53:43During a state visit to Timbuktu, Libya's Colonel Gaddafi made an offer of help.
53:49Gaddafi asked the townspeople what they'd like most. A school, a hospital, anything.
53:55They said water. And so this is Gaddafi's gift. A canal bringing the waters of the Niger River back to
54:04Timbuktu once more.
54:08Apart from offering the possibility of irrigating the desert scrub and bringing agriculture back to Timbuktu, the canal has also
54:16given the townsfolk a welcome new diversion.
54:22Late afternoon along the banks of the city reservoir and people have come to enjoy the water and each other's
54:28company.
54:29The reservoir is only a few months old. One of the changes that have come to Timbuktu.
54:35There are other changes. Western ideas and influences are easy to spot, especially amongst Timbuktu's youth.
54:43More visitors will bring much needed prosperity, but all the hazards of a tourist industry too.
54:49Still, the people of Timbuktu clearly don't want to remain a desert outpost and are taking positive steps towards change.
54:57These days, Timbuktu is busy renewing its links with the outside world.
55:02Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh borders is the latest town to be twinned.
55:07Apparently, it was a toss-up between Hay and Glastonbury.
55:11No surprise then that a town of books with its own international literary festival won out.
55:20The process of reinvention is making its mark on the townscape.
55:25A state-of-the-art new home for the Ahmed Baba Institute is nearing completion next to the Sankori mosque.
55:32It's a radical juxtaposition of new and old.
55:35Many here hope that by exploiting the legacy of the manuscripts, they can not only regain their status as an
55:43international centre of culture, but secure an economically viable future.
55:49The manuscript which you have seen can become a real industry.
55:54They can be like a mine, like a gold mine.
56:01This cultural renaissance will rediscover our manuscripts.
56:07They will be broadcast and the whole world will be more knowledgeable.
56:12And Timbuktu will be like a lighthouse lighting up all of Africa.
56:20If you come back in ten years' time, you might find that people wanting to visit the moon will decide
56:27to come to Timbuktu instead.
56:29Anything's possible.
56:33The last time I was in Timbuktu, my visit was just a fleeting one.
56:37But having spent two weeks in the town, I think what surprised me most is the sheer scale, the sophistication
56:45and the antiquity of the civilisation that existed here.
56:50What I've discovered is that in Timbuktu, history isn't measured in centuries.
56:55It's measured in millennia.
56:59Timbuktu teaches us that history is a game of chance.
57:02That the ambitions of powerful men affect ordinary folk and events thousands of miles away can change fortunes.
57:09That wealth and cultural aspirations are intricately linked.
57:13But most of all, why reading matters, then and now.
57:18Reading represents a meeting with myself and then with others.
57:22It's a form of dialogue through time and space.
57:28For me, reading is an inexhaustible source of knowledge.
57:34Reading is the only way to get access to the universal knowledge.
57:41And we cannot be outside of this universal knowledge.
57:53The first leg of my journey home is a relatively short one to Mali's capital, at least in terms of
57:59miles and minutes.
58:01Here in Bamako, almost a thousand kilometres upstream from Timbuktu, it already feels like a different world.
58:09Timbuktu, as it once was, is gone.
58:12But the manuscripts survive, and with them a sense of what was once a magnificent achievement.
58:18Africa's recent and troubled history can't be rewritten.
58:21But her history is beginning to be.
58:24And with it, perhaps, a vision of her future.
59:00That she was written by Nancy Baks.