About How Far Would a Trader Have to Travel From Tunis to Timbuktu

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It is possibly surprising that a place equally comparatively shut to Europe every bit West Africa should remain more or less unknown long later the colonization of the Americas. Indeed, it was not until 1828 that the kickoff European saw Timbuktu and lived to tell the tale. This long isolation was due to many factors: the trackless wastes of the Sahara, the long distances from the coast to the Niger River fraught with danger and disease, and the desert and coastal peoples who preferred to maintain their exclusive position as trade middlemen between the Niger and the outer globe. But this is no excuse for continuing near-ignorance in America and Europe of the fabulous history of the Heart Niger Valley in the modern Republic of Mali.

As early on every bit 872 A.D. the Arab geographer al-Ya'kubi would write of the ancient state of Ghana (situated in part in the Middle Niger Valley) stating that it possessed a powerful king, with many lesser kings and kingdoms owing their allegiance to him, and that this king of kings controlled his country's mines of gold. Arab and Berber traders were already taking advantage of a assisting trade with the Empire of Ghana by the ninth century A.D., and were to continue to do so for centuries to come (come across the Tuareg). All the same, to the western world, this country remained a mystery. The Niger River itself was misunderstood: Roman and Medieval European Geographers believed this great river to be office of the Nile and to flow westwards! Tantalizing rumors beckoned. In 1620, a British explorer of the West African coast, Richard Jobson, was told by an African trader (Buckor Sano) that far in the interior, ii months travel abroad, was Timbuktu, "a great town, the houses whereof are covered in gilt." Jobson returned to England and tried to fan interest in the exploration of the Due west African interior. But this was the dawning era of the Atlantic slave trade, and in comparison sources of gilt seemed of niggling involvement. Attention focused instead, for the side by side ii centuries, on trade with African coastal powers who could supply slaves to the burgeoning plantations of the Americas.

It was non until the refuse of the slave trade in the 19th century that foreign attention began over again to focus on the W African interior. Explorers such as the Scotsman Mungo Park and the Frenchman R�n� Caill� sought to open new markets for European commerce and to broaden geographic cognition. They were disappointed. The corking kingdoms and commerce of legend had dissolved into the feuding of small armed factions and near anarchy -- only a momentary blip in the rise and fall of West African Empires to be certain -- but sufficient to give explorers a biased impression of local politics and facilitate a colonial have-over.

Colonial impressions of a 'barbarous' and 'indolent' Africa gave rise to a mass of unfortunate scholarly theories which were to persist until the 1970s. The great English archaeologist Grahame Clark wrote as recently as 1961 that Africa had "already during Belatedly Pleistocene times slipped far behind in the race of man progress." As well, historians depicted the ancient Due west African states of Ghana and Mali as founded by 'Semitic races,' and in any result existing only every bit satellites -- reliant upon Trans-Saharan commerce for their existence.

Happily, the by few decades of scholarly enquiry have begun to dramatically change these views. On a world scale, prehistoric Africa has been shown to be a major innovator in the evolution of ceramics (past 9,000 years before present), in the domestication of cattle (by 8,000 years earlier present), and in fe applied science (by 2,800 years earlier present). Regarding Mali, the chronology and development of its aboriginal states has been re-bandage. Instead of power centers being created by Arab run Trans-Saharan trade, beginning around 800 A.D., we now know that there were cities along the Middle Niger equally early on as 300 A.D. (Jenne-jeno, Dia, and others). These emergent urban centers featured mudbrick architecture, city walls, and thriving markets. Indeed, nosotros may trace the origins of the circuitous societies which inhabited these towns to earlier Mande 'chiefdoms' which existed forth the Dhar Tichitt-Oualata escarpment range in Mauritania (by 1250 B.C.). The roots of cultural complication along the Niger announced to have been founded more than on inter-regional trade in commodities (cattle, table salt, grain, minerals, etc.) than upon the lure of exotic goods from the Mediterranean world. The archaeological landscape between Djenne and Timbuktu is dotted with the mounded remnants of hundreds of aboriginal towns and villages. And then far only a handful of these have been fifty-fifty examination-excavated and much remains to exist learned from their investigation. Additionally, historians have begun to increasingly respect the oral historical legacy of Malian griots, whose generations of memorized knowledge now supplement and challenge Arabic textual sources.

Through the media and tourism Americans and Europeans are beginning to acquire of such surprising things as the i thousand yr sometime urban center of Djenn� and its Sudanic architectural manner (see Great Mosque of Djenne), the aboriginal "Academy of Timbuktu," (run across Sankore Mosque) and the even more ancient accomplishments of the peoples of Mali. The substance backside the ancient myths of Mali, which enthralled 19th century explorers, is beginning to become clear, and the hereafter promises to bring e'er more of West Africa's cultural heritage to low-cal.

Past Dr. Kevin C. MacDonald

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