The Timbuktu Scholar Who Predicted a Solar Eclipse

Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History · May 16, 2026 · 8m · transcript

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the life and work of Muhammad al-Kaburi, a 16th-century astronomer from Timbuktu who calculated and predicted a solar eclipse visible from the Niger River bend. Using the zīj tradition of Islamic astronomical tables and instruments like the astrolabe and quadrant, al-Kaburi's work challenges the notion that pre-colonial Africa had no systematic science. Lucas explains how scholars at Sankore University integrated Ptolemaic astronomy with local observation, and how al-Kaburi's eclipse prediction was recorded in the Tarikh al-Sudan. The…