 |
|
 |
The Songhay Empire: The Golden Age of
Timbuktu
As Timbuktu enjoyed unprecedented success under Moussa, another
developing West African kingdom, the Songhay Empire, was increasing
its influence over the western Sudan. In about 1464, King Sonni
Ali Ber came to the Songhay throne. An able and ambitious
ruler, he sent his army to capture the valuable city of Timbuktu
in 1468.
In spite of his political achievements, Sonni Ali Ber was not
a popular ruler. Although he was a Muslim, he distrusted and mistreated
Islamic scholars and did not support the intellectual life of
Timbuktu. A few months after the king's death, one of his generals
seized the throne, with the support of the people. The general
was a devout Muslim called Mohamed Toure, and he took the title
of Askia, becoming known as Askia
Mohamed. |
 |
Askia
Mohamed's first ambition was to establish a state and a stable
government for the empire. Unlike his predecessor, Askia Mohamed
took full advantage of the scholars centered in Timbuktu and used
them as advisors on legal and ethical matters. Under his reign,
religion and learning once again assumed a primary place in the
Songhay Empire.
Leo Africanus, a famous traveler and writer who visited Timbuktu
during the reign of Askia Mohamed, wrote the following of the
city's intellectual life: "In Timbuktu there are numerous judges,
doctors and clerics, all receiving good salaries from the king.
He pays great respect to men of learning. There is a big demand
for books in manuscript, imported from Barbary. More profit is
made from the book trade than from any line of business."1
Under Askia Mohamed's rule, scholarship and Islam were once again
revered and supported, ushering in a new era of stability that
led to Timbuktu's sixteenth-century golden age.
Askia Mohamed had created the largest and the wealthiest of all
the kingdoms of the Sudan. He had a well-administered state, probably
the most highly organized of all the African states. With a stable
and efficient government and with the support of the Muslim scholars,
religious leaders, and traders, Askia Mohamed had made Songhay
a great trading empire and a center of Muslim scholarship and
learning.
|
Photo
Credits:
(top to bottom)
1. Nik Wheeler/CORBIS
2. M. Kone/UNESCO
3. C. & J. Lenars/CORBIS |
|
Scholars
from all over the Islamic world came to the University of Sankore
(as well as the city's over 180 madersas) where courses
as varied as theology, Islamic law, rhetoric, and literature were
taught. The university was housed in the Sankore Mosque built
with a remarkably large pyramidal mihrab
in the declining years of the Mali Empire. The university, one
of the first in Africa, became so famous that scholars came to
it from all over the Muslim world. At this period in African history,
the University of Sankore was the educational capital of the western
Sudan, where 25,000 students studied a rigorous academic program.
In the book, Timbuctoo the Mysterious, French author Felix
Dubois describes the intellectual accomplishments of the ancient
African university: "The scholars of Timbuctoo yielded in nothing,
to the saints in the sojourns in the foreign universities of Fez,
Tunis, and Cairo. They astounded the most learned men of Islam
by their erudition. That these Negroes were on a level with the
Arabian savants is proved by the fact that they were installed
as professors in Morocco and Egypt. In contrast to this, we find
that Arabs were not always equal to the requirements of Sankore."
2 As a center of intellectual achievement,
Timbuktu earned a place next to Cairo and other leading North
African cities.
1Davidson, Basil. The
Lost Cities of Africa. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 93.
2Dubois, Felix. Timbuctoo the Mysterious.
(London: W. Heinemann, 1897), p. 285. |
|
