Timbuktu's Lost Translation Movement: Greek Science in West Africa

Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History · Jul 1, 2026 · 8m · transcript

When we think of the translation movement that preserved Greek philosophy and science for the world, we usually think of Baghdad's House of Wisdom. But what if Timbuktu had its own translation movement — one that brought Greek astronomical and philosophical texts into Arabic and then into local languages like Songhai and Tamasheq? In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the surprising evidence that Sankore scholars were not just consumers of translated knowledge but active translators themselves. We look at the 15th-century scholar Muhammad al-Wangari, who may have translated…