Timbuktu's Golden Age: Scholars, Salt, and the Niger

Trade Routes That Changed Human History Forever — Fexingo History · Aug 13, 2026 · 7m · transcript

For episode 200, we trace the rise of Timbuktu from a seasonal Tuareg camp around 1100 to a dazzling crossroads of salt, gold, and books. Discover how its location at the bend of the Niger River made it the hinge of trans-Saharan trade, why Mansa Musa's hajj put it on the map, and how the city's universities drew scholars from Cairo and Fez. We meet the librarians of the great collections, the scribes who copied manuscripts by lamplight, and the boatmen who moved goods along the river. We also look at the darker side—the Songhai conquest, the Moroccan invasion of 1591, and the slow…