Timbuktu: A World Heritage Site in Danger

When Tuareg rebels succeeded in overtaking Timbuktu earlier this year, we read and watched and were concerned and perhaps mystified by the violence, and still are. Many people also were captivated by the city itself.

For Westerners, Timbuktu has long been a place of fictional convenience. Characters in works by authors like D.H. Lawrence and Agatha Christie (both of whom celebrate birthday anniversaries this week) talked of going there, wishing to escape their drab (or criminal) lives. Few characters, however, actually were ever taken there by their creators, probably because their creators themselves had not been to Timbuktu. Maybe some of those authors struggled to imagine what it looked like, or did not believe in its existence.

The Great Mosque (Djinguereber), Timbuktu, Mali. Credit: © 1997; AISA, Archivo Iconográfico, Barcelona, España

But the city—on the southern edge of the Sahara in Africa—is a real place. It was founded by Tuareg nomads sometime around the 12th century and came to serve as a key trading post on the trans-Saharan caravan route, which connected the Mediterranean, Europe, and North Africa with sub-Saharan Africa. For centuries, camel caravans plied the unforgiving sands of the Sahara, moving from oasis to oasis, driven onward by the lucrative trade of spices, salt, gold, animals, and other goods. The monetary rewards outweighed the risks of travel, which ranged from thirst and hunger to sandstorms, raids, and losing one’s way.

Timbuktu’s importance as a center of commerce peaked in the 15th and 16th centuries, by which time it had also become established as a center of Islamic culture. Western Africa’s three oldest mosques, dating to the 14th and 15th centuries, were built there, and thousands of scholars, many of whom came from Egypt or Mecca in western Saudi Arabia, called the city home. The Tuareg, however, remained on the city’s outskirts, having been forced to relinquish control because of their nomadic way of life. In 1433 the Tuareg regained control but ruled from a distance and periodically raided the city.

French explorer René-Auguste Caillié’s drawing of Timbuktu, Mali, 1830. Credit: The Granger Collection, New York

Prior to 2012, the last major attacks on Timbuktu occurred in 1591, when the city was captured by Moroccans, and in 1894, when it was taken by the French. In the 1960s it was handed over to the government of the then newly independent Republic of Mali. The government retained control in the ensuing decades, despite repeated Tuareg rebellions. Although the Tuareg succeeded this year in taking the city, their victory was short-lived, as they were soon challenged and overtaken by Islamic militants.

Timbuktu was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988. However, the Islamic militants have destroyed or vandalized many of Timbuktu’s religious relics, including tombs of Islamic saints at two of the city’s ancient mosques, Sidi Yahia and Djinguereber. The conflict led to the city’s addition to the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger.

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