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Starting out as a seasonal settlement, Timbuktu was in the kingdom of Mali when it became a permanent settlement early in the 12th century. After a shift in trading routes, the town flourished from the trade in salt, gold, ivory and slaves from several towns and states such as Begho of Bonoman, Sijilmassa, and other Saharan cities. [1]
Timbuktu has acquired a reputation in the Western world as an exotic, mysterious place, but the city was once a well known trade center and an academic hotspot of the medieval world. Timbuktu reached its golden period under the Mali Empire in the 13th and 14th centuries.
A Tuareg man near Timbuktu in Modern Mali. Though the Mali Empire was now in the hands of weak kings, it continued to exist well into the 15th century. Timbuktu was an important point of both trade and learning in Imperial Mali, so its loss to Tuareg Berbers in 1433 was a significant blow to the
Abdul Rahman Ibrahima was a Torodbe Fulani Muslim prince born in 1762, [3] in Timbuktu, [4] the son of Ibrahima Sori and a Moorish wife. [5] When he was aged five, his father removed the family from Timbuktu to Timbo, [4] now located in Guinea, and there in 1776 Ibrahima consolidated the Islamic confederation of Fouta Djallon, with Timbo as its capital, eventually succeeding as its Almami.
After Europeans had settled in the Gulf of Guinea, the trans-Saharan slave trade became less important. [citation needed] Arabs were sometimes made into slaves in the trans-Saharan slave trade. [44] [45] In Mecca, Arab women were sold as slaves according to Ibn Butlan, and certain rulers in West Africa had slave girls of Arab origin.
Other, less important trade goods were slaves, kola nuts from the south and slave beads and cowry shells from the north (for use as currency). It was under Mali that the great cities of the Niger bend—including Gao and Djenné —prospered, with Timbuktu in particular becoming known across Europe for its great wealth.
The Malian city Timbuktu is exemplary of this: situated on the southern fringe of the Sahara and close to the Niger River, it has played an important role in the trans-Saharan trade from the 13th century on, with the establishment of the Mali Empire. Had no power in the West Africa After this the Songhai empire started growing.