The air inside is stale, redolent of mildew and earth ... an Islamic scholar from the town of Djenné, migrated north to Timbuktu, then a city of perhaps 100,000 and a religious, educational ...

This event spurred the great dispersal of the Timbuktu libraries. The re­maining collections were scattered among the families who owned them. Some were sealed inside the mud-brick walls of homes ...

Alice Morrison, Arabist and explorer, journeys beneath the veil along Africa's infamous salt roads from Morocco via the Sahara Desert to the legendary city of Gold, Timbuktu.

Home of the prestigious Koranic Sankore University and other madrasas, Timbuktu was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a centre for the propagation of Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and ...