The hook
The name that stands, in many languages, for the most remote place on earth, once a fabled Saharan city of gold, salt, and scholarship, home to great mud mosques and libraries of hundreds of thousands of ancient manuscripts.
01Why it's worth it
Timbuktu became a byword for the ends of the earth for good reason: it sits on the southern edge of the Sahara, where the desert caravan routes met the Niger River, and in its medieval golden age it grew fabulously rich trading salt, gold, and other goods, and became one of the Islamic world's great centres of learning, with a renowned university and scholars drawing students from across Africa and beyond. Its heritage survives in its striking earthen mosques, including the ancient Djinguereber, and above all in its manuscripts: hundreds of thousands of hand-written works on religion, science, astronomy, and law, some centuries old, preserved in family and institutional libraries, an extraordinary written record of African intellectual history. When jihadist forces occupied the north in 2012, they destroyed shrines and threatened the manuscripts, many of which were smuggled out and saved in a dramatic rescue. Northern Mali remains dangerous and effectively closed to travellers today. This entry records a legendary city and its threatened heritage, not a suggestion to visit while it is unsafe.
02How to experience it
Not now: northern Mali is currently dangerous and travel there is strongly advised against. This stands as a record of Timbuktu's history as a Saharan city of trade and scholarship, its mud mosques, and its precious manuscripts, and of the effort to save that heritage, in hope of a safer future. Supporting the preservation of the manuscripts is a meaningful way to engage at present.