Latest / The Songhai Empire: Africa's Powerful Forgotten Kingdom — Fexingo History / How Songhai Built Timbuktu's Great Libraries: The Manuscript Era
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Songhai's military campaigns, its river patrols, its judicial system, even the astronomers at Sankore. But there's one dimension of the empire that we've only touched in passing — and for me, it's one of the most remarkable. Timbuktu wasn't just a trading hub for salt and gold. It was also, for a couple of centuries, one of the great book cities of the world. Luna: Book city — I love that. What made it a book city? Lucas: The numbers alone are staggering. By the late 1500s, Timbuktu had perhaps 150 private libraries, some holding hundreds or even thousands of volumes. The total number of manuscripts in the city has been estimated at anywhere from 700,000 to over a million — though those figures are debated. But even the lower estimates put it on a level with major European libraries of the time. And this wasn't just religious texts. There were works on medicine, astronomy, mathematics, law, philosophy, poetry, and Sufi mysticism. The scholar Ahmed Baba — whom we met in that episode on the chief judge — claimed to own over 1,600 books himself, and that was considered a modest collection for a man of his stature. Luna: Wait, a million manuscripts in one city? How did that happen in the middle of the Sahel? Lucas: It happened because Songhai's emperors — especially Askia Muhammad and his son Askia Dawud — actively sponsored learning. They gave stipends to scholars, they commissioned copies of important works, and they created a political environment where trade routes were secure. And those trade routes brought more than just goods. They brought books. Manuscripts from Cairo, Fez, Marrakech, even from as far as the Hijaz — the region around Mecca — were imported in quantity. The city's position at the juncture of trans-Saharan caravan routes made it a natural clearinghouse. But the real engine of the book culture was local: the scribes and copyists who worked in the city's many madrasas, especially Sankore. Luna: So who were the people building these libraries? Lucas: One of the most fascinating figures is a man named Mahmud Kati. He was born around 1468, so he lived through the reigns of Sonni Ali, Askia Muhammad, and Askia Dawud. Kati was a scholar, a jurist, and a diplomat — he served as an advisor to Askia Muhammad and even traveled with him on the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1496-97. But his enduring legacy is that he is believed to be the author of one of the great chronicles of the Songhai Empire, the Tarikh al-Fattash — the 'Book of the Seeker.' It's a history of the empire from its origins through the 16th century, packed with details about rulers, battles, and social customs. And Kati himself was also a passionate book collector. His personal library, which he housed in a two-story building in Timbuktu, contained hundreds of volumes. Luna: So he was writing history while also living it. That's a pretty rare combination. Lucas: Absolutely. And the Tarikh al-Fattash is full of passages that give us a direct window into the book trade. For instance, Kati records that when Askia Muhammad returned from his pilgrimage, he brought back with him a large number of books from Egypt and the Hijaz — many of them gifts from other scholars and rulers. He also notes that the Askia established a policy of waqf — religious endowments — to support the copying of manuscripts. Scribes were paid from these endowments to produce copies of the Qur'an, Hadith, and legal texts, which were then donated to mosques and madrasas. That institutional support was crucial. Luna: And how did ordinary people get access to these books? Were they locked away, or could you just walk in and read? Lucas: From what we can tell, many of these libraries were semi-public. A scholar like Kati or Ahmed Baba would allow students and other scholars to consult their collections. There are records of books being lent out — often with a deposit of equal value left as security. And there was a lively market in used books as well. Leo Africanus, who visited Timbuktu around 1510, wrote that 'many books are sold, and more profit is made from this trade than from any other good.' That's a striking statement from a man who saw the salt and gold trades firsthand. Books were literally one of the most valuable commodities in the city. Luna: So what kinds of books were they most eager to get? Lucas: The most prized were works of Maliki jurisprudence — the legal school followed in West Africa — and Qur'anic commentaries. But there was also huge demand for works on Sufism, particularly the teachings of the Qadiriyya order, which was influential in the region. And then there were the scientific texts: astronomy, mathematics, and medicine were all popular. The Sankore scholars we mentioned in earlier episodes, like Ahmad al-Tifashi, wrote original works in those fields. So the libraries weren't just importing — they were also producing. Scribes in Timbuktu copied existing works, but they also copied the works of local scholars, which then circulated across the Sahara. Luna: It sounds like a vibrant intellectual community. What happened to it? Lucas: The invasion of the Saadian army under Judar Pasha in 1591 was a catastrophe for the book culture. The city was sacked, many scholars were killed or exiled, and thousands of manuscripts were destroyed or scattered. The scholar Ahmed Baba was taken captive and marched to Marrakech, where he was imprisoned for two years. His library was looted. Some books were taken to Morocco; others were simply burned. But here's the thing: not everything was lost. Many families hid their collections, burying them in the desert or sealing them in trunks. And over the centuries, those manuscripts survived — often in terrible conditions, eaten by termites, damaged by humidity — but they survived. Luna: It must have felt like a kind of cultural genocide. Lucas: It was. The invasion effectively ended Timbuktu's role as a major intellectual center. But the manuscripts themselves never entirely disappeared. In the 20th century, scholars and librarians began to realize the extent of what was still there. In the 1970s, the Ahmed Baba Institute was founded in Timbuktu to collect and preserve these manuscripts. And then in the 1990s and 2000s, private libraries like the Mamma Haidara Library — named after a scholar who started collecting in the early 20th century — began to be catalogued. Today, there are tens of thousands of manuscripts still in Timbuktu, and many more in private hands across Mali. They represent one of the largest surviving collections of pre-colonial African writing. Luna: And some of them are still being discovered, right? I read about that. Lucas: Exactly. Even in the last decade, families have come forward with chests of manuscripts that had been passed down for generations. The work of preservation and digitization is ongoing. And it's not just a matter of saving old books — these texts are rewriting our understanding of West African history. The Tarikh al-Fattash, for example, was long known only in a 19th-century French translation. But in recent years, scholars have been able to study the original Arabic manuscripts, and they've found that some passages were altered by later copyists. So the recovery of the physical books is also a recovery of historical accuracy. Luna: It's incredible that these voices from the 16th century are still speaking to us. Lucas: And if you think about it, that's the whole point of a library — it's a conversation across time. The people who built Timbuktu's libraries understood that. They knew that a book wasn't just a commodity to be traded, but a way of connecting with scholars who lived centuries before them, and with readers who would come centuries after. And in a way, we're part of that conversation now. Luna: You know, conversations like this — I find them really valuable. And I think a lot of listeners do too. Lucas: I hope so. And if today's episode was useful to you, the way these shows stay ad-free is through listener support. If you'd like to help keep this going, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure at all — but every little bit helps us keep the history flowing. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to say this matters. Lucas: Exactly. So, back to the manuscripts. One of the most remarkable things about the Timbuktu collections is that they include not just works from the Islamic world, but also local African traditions. There are texts on the history of the Songhai and Mali empires, on local customs, on the oral traditions of the Soninke and Fulani peoples. So these libraries were not just windows onto the wider Islamic world — they were also repositories of West African memory. Luna: And the chronicles like Tarikh al-Fattash and Tarikh al-Sudan — they were written by local scholars, not outsiders. Lucas: Right. And that's what makes them so valuable. The Tarikh al-Sudan, written by a scholar named al-Sa'di around 1655, is another major source. It covers the Songhai Empire from its origins through the Moroccan invasion and its aftermath. Al-Sa'di was writing after the empire had fallen, so there's a sense of loss in his work. But he also makes it clear that the intellectual legacy of Songhai didn't end with the invasion. He himself was a scholar and a teacher, and he continued to work in Timbuktu even under Moroccan rule. So the story of Timbuktu's libraries is not just about a golden age that was destroyed — it's also about resilience. Luna: Are there any particular manuscripts that stand out as especially important? Lucas: One that I find fascinating is a manuscript known as the 'Ta'rikh al-Fattash' itself — but not just any copy. There's a specific manuscript from the 17th century that was discovered in the 20th century in the village of Niafunké, about 200 kilometers west of Timbuktu. It was in the possession of a family who had kept it for generations. When scholars examined it, they found that it contained passages that had been omitted from the better-known copies. For example, it includes a detailed account of the reign of Sonni Ali that is much more sympathetic than the version that circulated later. That tells us that even within the Songhai intellectual tradition, there were competing narratives — different families and different schools of thought had their own versions of history. Luna: So the manuscripts themselves have their own stories to tell. Lucas: Absolutely. Every manuscript has a colophon — a note at the end that says when and where it was copied, and often by whom. Those colophons are incredibly valuable for understanding the networks of transmission. For instance, we know that many manuscripts in Timbuktu were copied by scribes who had studied at Sankore, and that the same texts were sometimes copied multiple times because demand was so high. There's one famous example of a commentary on the Qur'an by the scholar al-Suyuti — a 15th-century Egyptian — that was copied in Timbuktu at least 30 times that we know of. That's a direct measure of intellectual hunger. Luna: It makes you wonder what else is still hidden in trunks and chests across the Sahel. Lucas: That's the exciting thing — and the urgent thing. Many of these manuscripts are in fragile condition. Climate change, desertification, and political instability all threaten them. In 2012, when Islamist militants occupied Timbuktu, they burned some manuscripts and destroyed the Ahmed Baba Institute. But thanks to the heroic efforts of librarians and local families, most of the collection was smuggled out to safety in Bamako. So the work of preservation continues. And it's not just about saving the physical objects — it's about digitizing them so that scholars around the world can study them. The Timbuktu Manuscripts Project, based at the University of Cape Town, has digitized thousands of pages. But there's still so much more to do. Luna: It's a race against time. Lucas: It is. And it's a race that matters not just for African history, but for world history. Because these manuscripts challenge the narrative that Africa had no written traditions before colonialism. They show that West Africa was part of a global intellectual community, connected by trade, pilgrimage, and the exchange of ideas. The scholars of Timbuktu were not isolated — they were in dialogue with scholars in Cairo, Fez, and even India. They were translating, commenting, and creating new knowledge. And that's a story that deserves to be told.