The Salt Trade That Built Timbuktu

Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History · Jul 14, 2026 · 5m · transcript

Long before Timbuktu became a center of scholarship, it was a boomtown built on salt. The city's wealth came not from gold but from slabs of white salt mined at Taghaza and shipped across the Sahara. This episode follows the trade route from the salt mines to the Niger River, where salt was traded pound for pound for gold. We explore how the Mali and Songhai empires controlled the salt trade, how Tuareg caravans moved the slabs, and how salt shaped Timbuktu's rise. We also look at the decline of the salt routes with the Moroccan invasion and the discovery of Atlantic sea salt…