Latest / Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History
The Imam Who Defeated a Sultan: Timbuktu's Judicial Revolution
In 1498, the great Songhai emperor Askia Muhammad faced an unprecedented challenge — not from an army, but from a single judge. When the imam of Timbuktu, Mahmud ibn Umar, ruled that the sultan had violated Islamic law by enslaving free Muslims, he set off a legal crisis that reshaped the relationship between scholarship and power in the Sahel. This episode explores the Mi'raj al-Su'ud, the landmark legal treatise by Ahmad Baba that codified the rules of enslavement, the political maneuvering between Timbuktu's scholarly elite and the Songhai court, and how a small community of…
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