The Timbuktu Scholar Who Forged a Peace: Ahmad Baba's Ransom

Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History · Jun 11, 2026 · 6m · transcript

After the Saadian invasion of Songhai, hundreds of Timbuktu's scholars were captured and sold into slavery in Marrakech. Among them was the great jurist Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti, who spent years in captivity before being ransomed. This episode follows his negotiation for freedom, the legal arguments he wrote while enslaved, and how his experience shaped his later work against unjust enslavement. We explore the ransom system in the Sahel, the role of the Qadiriyya Sufi order in negotiating his release, and the astonishing fact that Ahmad Baba built a new library of 700 volumes from memory…