Timbuktu's Hidden Astronomers and the Night Sky

Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History · Oct 8, 2026 · 5m · transcript

While we have explored Timbuktu’s legal scholars, scribes, and merchant princes in previous episodes, this conversation turns to a quieter, more celestial pursuit: the city’s astronomers. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, scholars like Ahmad al-Maghirani were not just calculating prayer times; they were mapping the heavens with precision that rivaled contemporary European observatories. We examine how these men used astrolabes and star charts to determine the qibla and the hilal, blending Islamic tradition with empirical observation. This episode uncovers the specific instruments…