Timbuktu: a case study of the role of legend in history http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.CH.DOCUMENT.sip100073 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org Timbuktu: a case study of the role of legend in history Author/Creator Herbert, Eugenia Date 1980 Resource type Articles Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) Middle Niger;Volta-Tano Watershed;Lower Niger, Mali, Timbucktu;Djenné, Middle Niger Delta Source Smithsonian Institution Libraries, GN652.5. W51 Relation Swartz, B.K. & Raymond E. Dumett, eds., West African Culture Dynamics: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives. Paris: The Hague, 1980. 431-454. Rights By kind permission of Eugenia W. Herbert and Walter De Gruyter (Mouton). The Hague, New York: Mouton, (c) 1980. Format extent 24 pages (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.CH.DOCUMENT.sip100073 http://www.aluka.org Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in History EUGENIA HERBERT Wide Afric, doth thy sun Lighten, thy hills enfold a city as fair As those which starr'd the night o' the elder world? Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo A dream as frail as those of ancient time? TENNYSON, "Timbuctoo" (1829) Certain cities have long captured the popular, poetic, and even scholarly imagination. Ophir, Golconda, El Dorado, Samarkand, and the Seven Cities of Cibola conjure visions of untold if elusive wealth. Timbuktu was once part of this legendary company: for centuries it was the symbol of Africa's splendor and "golden joys," but it is now merely a byword for remoteness. Timbuktu was important not only as an entrep6t and terminus for the caravan trade of the Sahara. It was a focal point for many of the major cross-currents of Sudanese history: the march of Islam, ethnic migrations, the rise and fall of the great Sudanic political systems, early European explorations, the gold trade, and imperialism. This paper surveys what is known of the historical Timbuktu, emphasizing its mediating position between the economic and cultural systems of North and West Africa. It then explores the phenomenon of its continuing fame, a fame that refused to die even in the centuries of relative eclipse following the Moroccan invasion in 1591. The final sections of the paper reveal how the myth of Timbuktu served as a major catalyst for the European exploration and conquest of the Sudan in the nineteenth century. THE HISTORICAL TIMBUKTU, 1100-1590 Timbuktu was founded about A.D. 1100 by Tuareg nomads from Arawan, 432 EUGENIA HERBERT who brought their flocks south to graze along the Niger in the sum] According to one tradition, "Timbuktu" was the name of an old fer slave to whom they confided their belongings when they returned hc A few huts were added for slaves, and the camp was shifted several ti until it came to rest on the present site, behind a protective wall of di which hold back the flooding Niger on all but rare occasions. Soon settlement became a crossroads for travelers, "coming by land water:" first Soninke merchants from Wagadu, later Arabs and Berl from the Sahara and the Maghreb (al-Sa'di 1964:35-36). Along this part of its course the Niger is fringed on both bank! desert. The summer rains bring a season of lush pasturage, but no farn is possible in the region of Timbuktu itself. This is not a true oasis or center of a fertile floodplain; rather, it is a city surrounded perpetuall sand, located far enough from the river to be accessible at all season camel caravans but close enough to be the port of the desert on the g waterway of the Sudan at its most northerly thrust. The harbor is at Kabara, about five miles away, with secondary porl accommodate to the rising and falling of the Niger. Like other g trading cities, Timbuktu was an entrep6t, not a center of primary proc tion; it was a junction where different ethnic groups, different religi( different modes of transportation, and the produce of different ecolog systems converged. From the north by camel caravan came salt from the salines of desert, dates from the oases of its northern belt, textiles from Nc Africa and Europe, metal ware, arms, beads, horses, and books. I portion of the trade was largely an Arab-Berber monopoly with sc Jewish participation, although the Saharan salt deposits belonged Sudanese rather than Maghrebian states until the later sixteenth centi North African merchants themselves went as far as the Sahel or n, tained representatives in Sahelian cities which traditionally had quarl reserved for foreign traders. Few ventured farther south, and remained remarkably ignorant about the West African interior and sources of their own wealth (Mauny 1961). Antonio Malfante's irii mant in Tuat in 1447 claimed to have spent thirty years in Timbuktu , half that number in lands farther south, but when he was asked about origins of Sudanese gold, he insisted that in all that time "I have ne heard nor seen anyone who could reply from definite knowledge. What appears plain is that it comes from a distant land, and, as I belie from a definite place" (Crone 1937:90). Perhaps the informant was feigning ignorance to the Italian interlop what is more likely is that he himself was the victim of a policy of secre not an uncommon practice in medieval or modern commerce. Afri4 traders were determined to keep foreigners out of the interior any ,v they could - hence the fanciful stories of cannibals and monsters wo Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in History ing the goldfields, well calculated to play on the credulity of the North Africans and on their attitudes of cultural superiority. The climate, too, insalubrious as it was for whites and their horses and camels, conspired to keep outsiders from a knowledge of the interior and its wealth. From about the fourteenth century onward, the trade of the interior was dominated by Manding (Mandingo) julas, professional and semiprofessional itinerant traders who developed the far-reaching network of routes and markets that gradually opened up the West African hinterland and channeled its goods into the world market. Their adherence to Islam gave them an internal cohesion and provided a bridge with the North African commercial community but reinforced their alien, supranational status among the animist and agricultural peoples with whom they traded and among whom they settled (see Perinbam, this volume). Responding to the steadily increasing demand for gold from the Christian and Muslim lands during the later Middle Ages, juulas pushed their search for new sources of supply south from the Niger basin to the goldfields of Lobi (Upper Black Volta) and ultimately to the Akan forest. The route from Jenne to Bighu on the northern fringe of the forest was opened up by juulas in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and must have been a crucial factor in the subsequent rise of Jenne and Timbuktu, particularly since this rise was achieved at the expense of cities oriented toward older sources of supply (Wilks 1962:337-341; Perinbam 1974:676-689). Jenne was probably founded between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries by Nono (Soninke) settlers and traders. Writing in the nineteenth century, both Ren6 Cailli6 and Felix Dubois saw Jenne as the prosperous city Timbuktu once had been. Where Timbuktu drew heavily on the desert for its population and culture, Jenne was essentially Sudanese, despite a veneer of Islam. Situated on a branch of the Bani River not far from its confluence with the Niger, Jenne had the priceless security of an island location - a security lacking in Timbuktu, which was without natural defenses of any kind. It also enjoyed a rich agricultural hinterland. The result was an intimate symbiosis between Jenne and Timbuktu, cities of opposites: Jenne provisioned its northern neighbor with food and cotton and with the gold, ivory, slaves, kola nuts, dried skins, and spices that were its chief exports, while Timbuktu channeled to Jenne the products of the northern caravan trade, above all the salt whose value increased geometrically as it moved south from the desert. "It is because of this blessed city," al-Sa'di (1964:23) readily conceded, "that caravans flock to Timbuktu from all points of the horizon." The interdependence of these two cities reflects not only a high degree of commercial specialization, but also a significant volume of river transport, since they lie some 300 miles apart. There is curiously little concrete information in the sources, however, about the commercial exploitation 434 EUGENIA HERBERT of the Niger. Potentially it offered over a thousand miles of navigabi waterway in the heart of the Sudan, yet much of the river seems to hay remained little utilized for other than fishing and local communicatior Curtin (1975:280-281) has shown, for example, that during th nineteenth century traders between Timbuktu and the Senegal Valle found it cheaper to follow a northerly route into the desert than t combine water and land transport.