Latest / Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History / The Timbuktu Scholar Who Wrote the Tarikh al-Sudan
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Timbuktu's scholars — Ahmad Baba, the astronomers, the legal minds. But one figure we haven't spent time with is the man who actually wrote the history that lets us know about all of them. Luna: You mean the chronicler? Lucas: Exactly. Abd al-Rahman al-Sa'di. He was born in 1594 in Timbuktu, right in the aftermath of the Moroccan invasion. So he grew up in a city that was still reeling from the fall of the Songhai Empire. And he spent his life as a qadi — a judge — in Timbuktu and later in Djenné. But his lasting legacy is the Tarikh al-Sudan, the 'History of the Sudan.' Luna: That's one of the key sources we keep referencing. Lucas: Right. Along with the Tarikh al-Fattash by Mahmud Kati, it's one of the two great chronicles of the Sahel. But al-Sa'di's work is especially important because he was an eyewitness to the decline. He saw the Moroccan occupation, the resistance of the local populations, and the resilience of the scholarly tradition. He finished writing it around 1655, after decades of work. Luna: What made him decide to write it? Lucas: That's a great question. In his introduction, al-Sa'di says he wanted to record the deeds of the righteous and the wise, and to preserve the memory of the Songhai Empire before it faded entirely. He was acutely aware that oral traditions were being lost. So he gathered information from elders, from earlier written texts, and from his own experience. He wrote in Arabic, but the perspective is deeply West African. Lucas: The Tarikh al-Sudan covers the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire, and then the Moroccan period. It's organized as a series of biographies of rulers and scholars. So you get the Askia emperors, but also the great qadis and imams of Timbuktu. It's like a who's who of the Sahel. Luna: It must have been dangerous to write critically under Moroccan rule. Lucas: Al-Sa'di was careful. He praises the Moroccan sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, but he also records the brutality of the invasion. He describes how Judar Pasha's men destroyed the city and looted the libraries. He doesn't shy away from the suffering. But he also notes that some Moroccans settled and intermarried, and that Timbuktu slowly rebuilt. Lucas: One of the most fascinating parts is his account of the Battle of Tondibi in 1591. He wasn't alive for it, but he interviewed people who were. He describes how the Songhai army used cavalry and how the Moroccans' arquebuses terrified the Songhai. He also mentions that the Songhai had firearms too, but they were slow to deploy. Luna: So it's both a military history and a social history. Lucas: Yes, exactly. And he also includes economic details — like the salt trade from Taghaza, the gold trade, the role of the Niger River. He describes the city of Gao, the capital, and how it was a hub of commerce. He even notes the different ethnic groups: the Songhai, the Tuareg, the Fulani, the Bambara. Lucas: But what I love most is his portrait of Timbuktu's intellectual life. He lists the great scholars of Sankore, the libraries, the manuscripts. He describes how students would travel from all over West Africa to study. He makes it clear that Timbuktu was a center of learning on par with Cairo or Fez. Luna: How did the manuscript survive to the present day? Lucas: That's a story in itself. After al-Sa'di died around 1656, his work was copied and recopied by scribes. It stayed in Timbuktu for centuries. In the 19th century, European explorers like Heinrich Barth came across it and recognized its value. Barth actually took a copy back to Europe. Then in the 20th century, French scholars published a translation. But the original manuscripts are still in Timbuktu, in the Mamma Haidara Library and the Ahmed Baba Institute. Luna: Amazing that they survived the Moroccan invasion, the colonial period, and even the recent conflicts. Lucas: Yes, and during the 2012 occupation by Islamist militants, many of these manuscripts were secretly evacuated to Bamako. The Tarikh al-Sudan was among them. So it's still being preserved. And it's still being studied. In fact, scholars today use it to reconstruct the history of the Songhai Empire and to understand how West Africans saw themselves before colonialism. Lucas: There's also a fascinating debate about how reliable al-Sa'di is. Some historians note that he was writing after the fall, so he may have idealized the Songhai period. And he was a qadi, so his perspective is that of the urban elite. But most agree that his work is remarkably accurate, especially compared to the oral traditions that often mix myth and history. Luna: So he's like the West African Ibn Khaldun? Lucas: That's a fair comparison, though Ibn Khaldun wrote more philosophy. Al-Sa'di is more of a straightforward chronicler. But both were trying to make sense of the rise and fall of empires. And both wrote with a sense of loss. Al-Sa'di ends his history with a lament: 'After this, the country was ruined, and learning disappeared.' Luna: That's poignant. Lucas: It is. But he also shows that learning didn't completely disappear. He himself was a product of the Sankore tradition. And his book ensured that later generations would remember. So in a way, his work was an act of resistance against forgetting.