Timbuktu's Lost Geography: The Mappa Mundi of al-Sa'di

Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History · Jun 4, 2026 · 7m · transcript

Abd al-Rahman al-Sa'di, the 17th-century Timbuktu scholar best known for his chronicle Tarikh al-Sudan, also wrote a lost geographical treatise that mapped the known world from a West African perspective. This episode pieces together what we know about al-Sa'di's mappa mundi from surviving fragments and cross-references. We explore how Saharan scholars conceptualized global geography—not as a European import, but as an indigenous tradition drawing on Islamic cartography and local Sahelian knowledge. The map included the Niger River, the Sahara salt mines, and trade routes…