Timbuktu: a case study of the role of legend inhistory

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Timbuktu: a case study of the role of legend in history

Author/Creator Herbert, Eugenia

Date 1980

Resource type Articles

Language English

Subject

Coverage (spatial) Middle Niger;Volta-Tano Watershed;Lower Niger, Mali,Timbucktu;Djenné, Middle Niger Delta

Source Smithsonian Institution Libraries, GN652.5. W51

Relation Swartz, B.K. & Raymond E. Dumett, eds., West AfricanCulture Dynamics: Archaeological and HistoricalPerspectives. Paris: The Hague, 1980. 431-454.

Rights By kind permission of Eugenia W. Herbert and Walter DeGruyter (Mouton). The Hague, New York: Mouton, (c) 1980.

Format extent(length/size)

24 pages

http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.CH.DOCUMENT.sip100073

http://www.aluka.org

Timbuktu: A Case Study of the

Timbuktu: A Case Study of theRole of Legend in HistoryEUGENIA HERBERTWide Afric, doth thy sunLighten, thy hills enfold a city as fairAs those which starr'd the night o' the elder world?Or is the rumour of thy TimbuctooA dream as frail as those of ancient time?TENNYSON, "Timbuctoo" (1829)Certain cities have long captured the popular, poetic, and even scholarlyimagination. Ophir, Golconda, El Dorado, Samarkand, and the Seven Cities ofCibola conjure visions of untold if elusive wealth. Timbuktu was oncepart of thislegendary company: for centuries it was the symbol of Africa's splendor and"golden joys," but it is now merely a byword for remoteness.Timbuktu was important not only as an entrep6t and terminus for the caravantrade of the Sahara. It was a focal point for many of the major cross-currents ofSudanese history: the march of Islam, ethnic migrations, the rise and fall of thegreat Sudanic political systems, early European explorations, the gold trade, andimperialism. This paper surveys what is known of the historical Timbuktu,emphasizing its mediating position between the economic and cultural systems ofNorth and West Africa. It then explores the phenomenon of its continuing fame, afame that refused to die even in the centuries of relative eclipse following theMoroccan invasion in 1591. The final sections of the paper revealhow the mythof Timbuktu served as a major catalyst for the European exploration and conquestof the Sudan in the nineteenth century.THE HISTORICAL TIMBUKTU, 1100-1590Timbuktu was founded about A.D. 1100 by Tuareg nomads from Arawan,

432 EUGENIA HERBERTwho brought their flocks south to graze along the Niger in the sum] According toone tradition, "Timbuktu" was the name of an old fer slave to whom theyconfided their belongings when they returned hc A few huts were added forslaves, and the camp was shifted several ti until it came to rest on thepresent site,behind a protective wall of di which hold back the flooding Niger on all but rareoccasions. Soon settlement became a crossroads for travelers, "coming by landwater:" first Soninke merchants from Wagadu, later Arabs and Berl from theSahara and the Maghreb (al-Sa'di 1964:35-36).Along this part of its course the Niger is fringed on both bank! desert. Thesummer rains bring a season of lush pasturage, but no farn is possible in theregion of Timbuktu itself. This is not a true oasis or center of a fertilefloodplain;rather, it is a city surrounded perpetuall sand, located far enoughfrom the river to

be accessible at all season camel caravans but close enough to be the port of thedesert on the g waterway of the Sudan at its most northerly thrust.The harbor is at Kabara, about five miles away, with secondary porl accommodateto the rising and falling of the Niger. Like other g trading cities, Timbuktu was anentrep6t, not a center of primary proc tion; it was a junction where different ethnicgroups, different religi( different modes of transportation, andthe produce ofdifferent ecolog systems converged.From the north by camel caravan came salt from the salines of desert, dates fromthe oases of its northern belt, textiles from Nc Africa and Europe, metal ware,arms, beads, horses, and books. I portion of the trade was largelyan Arab-Berbermonopoly with sc Jewish participation, although the Saharan salt depositsbelonged Sudanese rather than Maghrebian states until the later sixteenthcentiNorth African merchants themselves went as far as the Sahel or n, tainedrepresentatives in Sahelian cities which traditionally had quarl reserved forforeign traders. Few ventured farther south, and remained remarkably ignorantabout the West African interior and sources of their own wealth (Mauny 1961).Antonio Malfante's irii mant in Tuat in 1447 claimed to have spent thirty years inTimbuktu , half that number in lands farther south, but when he was asked aboutorigins of Sudanese gold, he insisted that in all that time "I have ne heard nor seenanyone who could reply from definite knowledge. What appears plain is that itcomes from a distant land, and, as I belie from a definite place" (Crone 1937:90).Perhaps the informant was feigning ignorance to the Italian interlopwhat is morelikely is that he himself was the victim of a policy of secre not an uncommonpractice in medieval or modern commerce. Afri4 traders were determined to keepforeigners out of the interior any ,v they could - hence the fanciful stories ofcannibals and monsters wo

Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in Historying the goldfields, well calculated to play on the credulity of the NorthAfricansand on their attitudes of cultural superiority. The climate, too, insalubrious as itwas for whites and their horses and camels, conspired to keep outsiders from aknowledge of the interior and its wealth.From about the fourteenth century onward, the trade of the interior was dominatedby Manding (Mandingo) julas, professional and semiprofessional itinerant traderswho developed the far-reaching network of routes and markets that graduallyopened up the West African hinterland and channeled its goods into the worldmarket. Their adherence to Islam gave them an internal cohesionand provided abridge with the North African commercial community but reinforced their alien,supranational status among the animist and agricultural peoples withwhom theytraded and among whom they settled (see Perinbam, this volume). Responding tothe steadily increasing demand for gold from the Christian and Muslimlandsduring the later Middle Ages, juulas pushed their search for new sources of supplysouth from the Niger basin to the goldfields of Lobi (Upper Black Volta) andultimately to the Akan forest. The route from Jenne to Bighu on the northernfringe of the forest was opened up by juulas in the late fourteenth and earlyfifteenth centuries and must have been a crucial factor in the subsequent rise of

Jenne and Timbuktu, particularly since this rise was achieved at the expense ofcities oriented toward older sources of supply (Wilks 1962:337-341; Perinbam1974:676-689).Jenne was probably founded between the eleventh and thirteenthcenturies byNono (Soninke) settlers and traders. Writing in the nineteenth century, both Ren6Cailli6 and Felix Dubois saw Jenne as the prosperous city Timbuktu once hadbeen. Where Timbuktu drew heavily on the desert for its populationand culture,Jenne was essentially Sudanese, despite a veneer of Islam. Situated on a branch ofthe Bani River not far from its confluence with the Niger, Jenne had the pricelesssecurity of an island location - a security lacking in Timbuktu, which was withoutnatural defenses of any kind. It also enjoyed a rich agricultural hinterland. Theresult was an intimate symbiosis between Jenne and Timbuktu, cities of opposites:Jenne provisioned its northern neighbor with food and cotton andwith the gold,ivory, slaves, kola nuts, dried skins, and spices that were its chiefexports, whileTimbuktu channeled to Jenne the products of the northern caravan trade, above allthe salt whose value increased geometrically as it moved south from the desert. "Itis because of this blessed city," al-Sa'di (1964:23) readily conceded, "thatcaravans flock to Timbuktu from all points of the horizon."The interdependence of these two cities reflects not only a high degree ofcommercial specialization, but also a significant volume of river transport, sincethey lie some 300 miles apart. There is curiously little concrete information in thesources, however, about the commercial exploitation

434 EUGENIA HERBERTof the Niger. Potentially it offered over a thousand miles of navigabi waterway inthe heart of the Sudan, yet much of the river seems to hay remained little utilizedfor other than fishing and local communicatior Curtin (1975:280-281) has shown,for example, that during th nineteenth century traders between Timbuktu and theSenegal Valle found it cheaper to follow a northerly route into the desert than tcombine water and land transport. During much of the region's history: wouldappear that only the central axis of the river system - Jenn( Timbuktu-Gao - wasextensively employed for trade.To what extent even this exploitation was limited by the shortage c ship timber isdifficult to say, nor do we know for certain the capacity ( boats in service atearlier periods (cf. Bovill 1925; Tymowski 1967). Bot Ibn Battuta, who sailedfrom Timbuktu to Gao in 1353 (after travelin from the capital of Malioverland),and Leo Africanus, who claims t have gone from Timbuktu to Jenne about 1510(since he misrepresen the direction of the Niger's flow, there is some doubt abouthis journey describe their vessels as small pirogues, hollowed out ofa single tretrunk. The ta'rikhs of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,on th otherhand, speak of multitudes of royal barks transporting the enti, retinue of the askia[emperor] and of various flotillas assembled for oth( purposes (e.g., Kati1964:270). The references to hundreds of boa gathered at one time may of coursebe poetic license and in any case ai confined to the later Songhai Empire. In 1828,Cailli6 found transpo canoes of sixty to eighty tons, made of planks held togetherwith cords ( hemp, plying the Bani and Niger between Jenne and Timbuktu (1831

vol. 2, p. 9). These may well have had a long history, but we cannott certainwithout contemporary evidence.1The fortunes of Timbuktu were linked not only to Jenne but also to ttSonghayEmpire (see Figure 1). Though the city had begun its rise undi Tuareg and Maliansuzerainty, it did not rival Walata to the northwest the chief southern terminus ofthe trans-Saharan trade until the power Mali was on the wane in the fifteenthcentury. With the expansioni Songhay and the consequent shift ofpolitical andeconomic centers 4 gravity eastward to the Niger bend, the preeminence ofTimbuktu w assured (al-Sa'di 1964:36-38; Levtzion 1973: 157-158).ISLAM AND TIMBUKTUIndeed, Timbuktu inherited the intellectual as well as the commerci mantle ofWalata. As the caravans deserted to Timbuktu, "the pickI In a footnote Cailli6 comments that the planks used have been cut by saw, a toolbelieves was introduced by the Moors.

Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in HistoryApprox limits of the Empire of MALI - Approx. limitsof the Empire ofSONGHAY .Major land and water trade routes ---Figure 1. Timbuktu in relation tothe empiresof Mali and Songhay (14th to 16th centuries)scholars, pious and rich men from every tribe and country," also migrated hither(al-Sa'di 1964:37). They settled in the quarter of the Sankore mosque and becamethe nucleus of what in later times was referred to as the "university" of Timbuktu,in reality an assemblage of scholars teaching the Qur'an and major works of theIslamic canon without an institution-al framework. Among the earliest to makethe move from Walata was Muhammad Aqit, the scion of the Massfifa Tuaregclan that furnished most of the city's qadis for more than a century. His great-great-grandson was Ahmad Baba (1556-1627), the most renowned of manydistinguished scholars of Timbuktu. Forty-seven of his works have beenidentified, including a treatise categorizing the various peoples of the Sudan asMuslim or pagan which later became the authority for Usuman dan Fodio. Severalof his works are still studied in the Sudan (Hunwick 1962:311-313; 1964:568-570; 1966a:20).Al-Sa'di, the seventeenth-century chronicler of Timbuktu, boastedthat itscivilization "came uniquely from the Maghreb, as much in affairs ofreligion as inthose of commerce" (1964:36, translation mine), but Hunwick (1966a) has shownthat this was no longer true by the sixteenth century, though it may have beenearlier (Levtzion 1973:201-204); analyzing the "chains of authority" that licenseda scholar to teach each work, he has found that Ahmad Baba and hiscontemporaries drew their learning from Egypt and Mecca, then the brightestspots in the Muslim intellectual firmament, not from the Maghreb, which hadfallen into decadence. Since pilgrims from the Sudan commonly followed theroute from Murzuq to Cairo, contacts with Egypt and the east were constantlybeing renewed.Unlike the Hausa states to the east, Timbuktu was never politically

436 EUGENIA HERBERTindependent and had to submit to periodic Tuareg exactions and to less frequentbut more destructive sacking by the Mossi and by the Songhay ruler Sunni Ali.Nevertheless, even under Songhay hegemony the city enjoyed a high degree ofautonomy and became virtually a second capital of the empire after Gao.2According to the Ta'rikh al-Fattash, it had no governor other thanits own qadi(Kati 1964:314; but see below). The qadis themselves felt authorizedto remindthe rulers of their duty and to point out their failings. The great-uncle of AhmadBaba, for example, who was qadi for most of the half-century 1498-1548, wasinfluential enough to persuade askia Muhammad I to call off the persecution ofthe Jews of Gao even though it had been urged by the North African scholar al-Maghili (Hunwick 1966b:311-313). Songhay rulers, seeking a necessarily delicatebalance between animism and Islam to maintain their authority over aheterogeneous population, found it expedient to honor Muslim scholars andpilgrims and thereby partake of their baraka [spiritual power] (Hunwick1966b:307-309). Sunni Ali himself, after looting the city and terrorizing itsclerics, later showered them with slave girls and other presents.Even in Timbuktu, however, Islam was never applied as rigidly as in the lands tothe north, and there was always an undercurrent of paganism, much as this mightbe denied by Muslim apologists (cf. al-Sa'di 1964:36). Ibn Battuta was shockedby the easy relations between the sexes and the nudity of young womenin theSahel and the Sudan. Leo Africanus seems to have been relieved to find thewomen of Timbuktu veiling their faces but remarked on the dancing and music towhich the people of the city gave themselves over late every night. After rigors ofthe desert crossing, the less censorious traveler found in Timbuktu a mixture ofthe reassuringly familiar and the pleasingly exotic, a point that Dubois and otherswere quick to appreciate in later times.I have already mentioned Leo Africanus (al-Hasan ibn Muhammadal-Wazzan al-Zayyati), who accompanied two diplomatic missions from the court of Fez toaskia Muhammad I of Songhai early in the sixteenth century. As a firsthandpicture of Timbuktu in its golden age, his Description of Africa (1525-1526)complements the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chronicles,the Ta'rikh al-Fattash and the Ta'rikh al-Sudan.Except for its mosque and royal residence, Leo found nothing very remarkableabout the physical appearance of this city of thatched-roofedmud-brick houses,but its economic life made a deep impression on him. Salt from Taghaza sold foreighty ducats a load, Barbary horses and European textiles enjoyed a briskdemand; the many weavers and other artisans offered goods in abundance. "Theinhabitants of the city are very 2 The relative autonomy continued in the periodfollowing the Moroccan invasion with the pashalik of Timbuktu and even underthe Masina Caliphate (Qioruntimehin 1972:22-23).

Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in Historyrich," he declared (Jean-L6on l'Africain 1956:467-468, translation mine),"especially foreigners who have settled in the country, so much so that the presentking has given two of his daughters to two merchant brothers becauseof their

fortunes." Such an inducement would seem to have been superfluous: the kinghimself possessed "a great treasure in minted coin and in ingots of gold. One ofthese ingots weighs 1,300 pounds." This piece of gold was, in fact, part ofSudanese folklore, retailed over the centuries by al-Bakri, al-Idrisi, and IbnKhaldun before reaching Leo. It became heavier with each telling but no lesscredible to North Africans.Leo found the court and royal entourage magnificent and noted thatthe king(whose identity is not clear, since Timbuktu was an appanage of Songhay at thistime)3 could field a well-organized army of cavalry and infantry to exact tributeand capture slaves. The king was also liberal in his gifts to the many jurists,scholars, and clerics of the city. "Many books in manuscripts from Barbary aresold here," Leo observed. "There is more profit from their sale thanfrom all therest of the goods." Beyond these few islands of literati in the cities of the Sudan,however, he saw only abysmal ignorance and degradation, the confirmation of allhis prejudices about the Land of the Blacks (1956:467-469, 472).Until the nineteenth century, the Description of Leo Africanus, written for aChristian pope, remained Europe's primary source for Timbuktu and the Sudan;with his account, the legend of Timbuktu crystallized and time seemed to standstill.THE LURE OF GOLD AND EARLY PORTUGUESE INTEREST INTIMBUKTU"Timbuktu was the magnet which drew Europe into the heart of West Africa"(Kanya-Forstner 1969:23), but Europe's knowledge of Timbuktu was largelymediated by North Africa. Ever since the Middle Ages, traders fromthe maritimecities of France and Italy had carried on commercial relations with the states ofthe North African littoral, gradually winning rights and privilegesfrom Safi toTunis. A few made their way inland to Sijilmasa and Tlemcen (Bovill 1958:111-112; Mauny 1961:463; Crone 1937:xi; Jean-L6on 'Africain 1956:170-171).Curiously enough, Marrakech became for several centuries an episcopal see, sogreat were the numbers of European mercenaries employed in the service of thesultan. From their contacts with North Africa, the medieval Iberians had longheard of the "golden trade" of the Moors with the Sudan. In the period ofgoldshortage in western Europe and silver famine ' Leo's misleading reference to the"Kingdom of Timbuktu" recurs persistently on subsequent maps of Africa.

438 EUGENIA HERBERTin the East, both Christians and Muslims became vitally concerned aboutenlarging the flow of precious metal from West Africa, their primary supplier(Lombard 1947; Braudel 1946).The first European source to make explicit the close association of Timbuktu withthe "lands of gold" was the Catalan Map of Abraham Cresques, presented toPhilip III of Aragon in 1375 and given to the king of France a few years later. AJewish cartographer from the island of Mallorca, Cresques had intimate ties withJewish trading communities in North Africa. He depicts "Musa Mali ... the richestand most noble king" of the blacks, as flanked by the cities of "tenbuch,""geugeu" (Gao), and "melli" (Bovill 1958: frontispiece and 91, 112-114). Thus, in

the course of the fourteenth century, Europeans became aware ofthe WesternSudan as the land of gold and of Timbuktu as one of its major emporia. Theywere soon to act on this knowledge.The opening wedge, in 1415, was the Portuguese conquest of Ceuta,where theyouthful Prince Henry, later surnamed "the Navigator," won his spurs. Henryremained in Africa for some months, and if he and his compatriots hadnotalready known about the flow of gold and other valuables from across the desert,they must surely have learned of it during their sojourn in Ceuta. At thistime,however, the export trade from North African ports was largely a monopoly of themaritime cities of northern Italy. Portugal had only just achieved the consolidationof power at home after a long struggle against the Moors and neighboringCastilians; a poor and underpopulated country, it was a latecomer to the scene. Ifit wanted a share in the golden trade, it would have to win it by force (Blake1937:5ff).There is good evidence that Portugal first considered conquering Morocco itselfin order to break the Muslim and Italian monopoly of the gold trade andto obtainMoroccan grain, sorely needed at home (Godinho 1962:211-212).ThePortuguese, in fact, returned periodically to this scheme. It was initially rejectedin favor of outflanking Islam by diverting the gold of sub-Saharan West Africa tothe coast, bypassing the Maghreb and the Mediterranean altogether. This, not thediscovery of a sea route to India (which was dubious, given the geographicalconceptions of the times), was the object of Portuguese exploration at its outsetand possibly even until Prince Henry's death in 1460. Gold and the desire tocontinue the crusade against the Moors were the driving forces of Portuguesepolicy (Pacheco Pereira 1937:62; Fernandes 1938:44; Blake 1937:4-5).In 1434 Portuguese seamen doubled Cape Bojador in southern Morocco, sinceclassical times the nec plus ultra because of its fogs and contrary winds. A decadelater the first permanent European factory and fort in West Africa were built onArguin Island, off the Mauritanian coast. Here the Portuguese hopedto cut intothe caravan trade of the

Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in HistoryMauritanian route controlled by Arab and Berber merchants. Soon, however, thedisadvantage of so peripheral a location made itself felt, and the Iberians sentagents inland to Waddan, an entrep6t of the westernmost route acrossthe Sahara.Because of Moorish hostility, the rigors of the desert climate, andthe poorcompetitive position of the Portuguese, the venture was a commercial failure, butit did add information about the Sudano-Saharan system (Herbert1974:412-413).In Waddan a Venetian captain in the service of Prince Henry, Cadamosto, learnedof the three main routes by which gold reached Morocco, Tunis, and Egypt andparticularly of the crucial role played by the salt of Taghaza (Crone 1937:21):Every year large caravans of camels.., carry it to Tanbutu [Timbuktu]; thence theygo to Melli, the empire of the Blacks, where, so rapidly is it sold, within eightdays of its arrival all is disposed of at a price of 2 to 3 hundred mitigalli,according to the quantity.... Then with the gold they return to their homes.

The salt was then carried by human porters a great distance "until they reachcertain waters," and there it was traded for gold. Unlike many who followed,Cadamosto realized that Timbuktu was a central entrep6t in the north-south trade,not the source of gold.About the same time as the Portuguese experiment at Waddan, Italian mercantileinterests, not to be outflanked themselves, were exploring the possibilities of adirect connection with Timbuktu. Thus the Genoese Antonio Malfante reachedthe oasis of Tuat in the northwestern Sahara in 1447, presumably to trade Italiantextiles for gold. The appearance of a Christian so far inland created a sensation,but he was well treated. His efforts to learn more about the sources ofgold werefruitless, however; he lost money on his goods, and his journey had no knownsequel (Crone 1937:85-90). Yet several decades later, the Chronicle of BenedettoDei, a representative of the Florentine banking family of Portinari,contains thefollowing cryptic entry (de la Ronci~re 1924:163): "I have been toTimbuktu, aplace situated below the kingdoms of Barbary in a very arid land; and [there] theydo a great business in coarse stuffs, in serges and ribbed materials made inLombardy." This is the sum total of Dei's comments about Timbuktu andtheSudan in the catalog of his travels. His visit would have occurred in 1470, and thetraffic in Lombard textiles was confirmed early in the sixteenth centuryby LeoAfricanus (Jean-Lon l'Africain 1956:471). Though Dei's mention of the wholeaffair is so casual as to suggest he did not consider it unusual, the more likelyexplanation is that all such ventures were kept highly secret because of the fiercecommercial rivalries of the period.If the Saharan approaches to Timbuktu were dead ends, the Portuguese soonfound gold aplenty along the Guinea Coast. The fort at Sao

440 EUGENIA HERBERTJorge da Mina, built in 1482, became the fulcrum of Portuguese activity on theWest African coast for 150 years. By 1500 they were obtaining some 170,000dobras of gold annually from Mina (Pacheco Pereira 1937:120) andlesseramounts from the Gambia (Rodney 1970:81). Paradoxically, this golden harvestmade them more eager than ever to reach Timbuktu in order to dominate the tradeat what they believed was its center - ending their dependence on Africanmiddlemen while triumphing over European interlopers on the coast.The main stumbling block was that the Portuguese never learned just whereTimbuktu was. They and other Europeans after them generally underestimated thedistance from Timbuktu to the coast - indeed, underestimated the north-south andeast-west dimensions of West Africa- as well as believing that the river systems were interconnected.4 Soconvincedwas King John II ("the Perfect") of Portugal that the Senegal penetrated far intothe interior, to the very gates of "Tambucutu and Mombare where are the richesttraders and markets of gold in the world, from which all Berberia from east andwest up to Jerusalem is supplied and provided," that he conceived anaudaciousplan of attack. A Wolof prince named Bemoym had been taken to Portugalearlier, converted to Christianity, and brought back to Africa. With Bemoym as apuppet king on the Wolof throne, John II counted on opening up a direct route to

Timbuktu in order to divert the gold trade to the mouth of the Senegal. He alsohoped to make contact with the king of Mossi, who seemed to him to answerthedescription of Prester John, the Christian king of the Indies. Before thegeographical and ethnological fallacies of the scheme became evident, Bemoymwas murdered by the Portuguese leader of the expedition (Crone 1937:128-141).The Portuguese made at least two more attempts to reach Timbuktu in thenextcentury - both failures, it seems, although they did make contact withthe king ofMali much closer to the coast (Crone 1937:143; Blake 1942:34-35).If the Portuguese did not reach Timbuktu and take control of the African trade atits reputed source, the larger question remains: Did their grand strategynevertheless succeed? Did they outflank the Moor and divert the golden trade ofTimbuktu to their coastal factories? The general verdict of recent scholarship (incontrast to earlier work) would appear to be negative. Hopkins (1973:80) finds"little evidence... that the arrival of the Europeans on the West Coast had adramatic or even an immediate impact on the economy of the interior." He argues(p. 131) that the trans-Saharan trade not only survived, but increased in valueduring the nineteenth century, declining only in its last quarter. Newbury4 There were two widely held but conflicting views of the Niger: one, dating fromHerodotus and Pliny and followed by most Arabs, insisted that the river flowedfrom west to east and eventually joined the Nile; the other, deriving from LeoAfricanus, held that it flowed west, emptying into the Atlantic by its branches, theSenegal and Gambia.

Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in History(1966:233-234), too, has contended that the desert and coastal trades were "twounrelated activities," and Curtin's (1975:281) research on Senegambian tradewould seem to confirm this view.5THE MOROCCAN INVASION OF THE WESTERN SUDANThe next important turning point in the history of Timbuktu came with theinvasion of the Songhay Empire by al-Mansur of Morocco in 1591. The purposesof the invasion were threefold: (1) to establish a universal caliphate in response tothe expansionism of the Ottoman Turks in North Africa, (2) to counter theChristian Portuguese, lest the latter divert the trans-Saharan trade tothe Atlantic,and (3) to control the wealth of the Sudan itself. The army of 3,000 whichconquered Songhay was made up largely of enslaved mercenariesfrom Spain andMorocco led by Jawdhar Basha, and the resulting administration was primarily amilitary one relying on Moroccan divisional leaders (qa'ids) rulingthroughtraditional Sudanese officials. There are a number of myths connected with theMoroccan invasion, including the seizure of great wealth by the sultan and thebreakup of the trans-Saharan trade to the extent that the economy andtheintellectual life of the Western Sudan was thrown into chaos and stagnation forcenturies. Each of these myths can be challenged. Certainly the Moroccansexpected the sack of the Songhay capital at Gao to yield untold riches, but not asingle object of gold was found. The longer the army stayed encamped at theSonghay capital, the greater the toll from disease, and it was to escapethis that theinvaders moved their headquarters to Timbuktu. Using the resistanceof local

merchants and ulama as a pretext, the Moroccans then sacked the proud city andsent the notables, deprived of their books and wealth, into exile. The treasureobtained must have been considerable; yet the sultan's share 100,000 mithqals ofgold - was considered by all to be shamefully meager (al-Sa'di1964:261).Looting cannot provide a steady source of riches, nor can rulers control thecupidity of soldiers hundreds of miles away beyond the desert; forall thepropaganda put out by Sultan Mawlay Ahmad, now surnamed alDhahabi, "theGolden," it seems highly probable that his expectations were bitterlydisappointed. Even the reports of European agents in Marrakech must be viewedwith caution: in some cases they claim to have seen trains of pack animals ladenwith gold dust; in others they only relate ' There may have been pointsofinteraction between the two systems, however, at least at certain periods. Forexample, the great fluctuations in the amounts of gold reaching the Gold Coast -indeed, the virtual cessation in the later eighteenth century, when Europeans hadto pay for slaves with gold - suggests a flexibility in the trade; thus, depending onconditions, gold from the Akan fields probably could have been directed eithernorth or south.

442 EUGENIA HERBERTthat such shipments are "expected" (de Castries 1905-1936:83-84; cf. al-Ufrani1889:16-19; Bovill 1958:179-181).Ironically, more gold may have flowed into the sherifian treasury from the ransomof Christian captives after the battle of al-Ksar al-Kabir (the "Battle of the ThreeKings") than from the Sudan in the years following the conquest (Julien1966:215-216).The Moroccans had made the same mistake as the Portuguese, confusing tradingentrep6ts with centers of production; they assumed that the conquest of theSonghay Empire would automatically lead to direct control over the landsof gold.There is no evidence that they ever reached the goldfields or that theirpowerextended beyond the cities of the Middle Niger. While some tribute wasforthcoming, the only steady supply of gold came indirectly, as it had long done,by way of the trade in salt and other goods.Like the Portuguese bid for empire, too, the Moroccan invasions and occupationof the Western Sudan proved in the end a greater drain of manpower than thecountry could survive. Regular communication could not be maintained withMarrakech and Fez over such vast distances. Civil strife broke out even inMawlay Ahmad's lifetime, and affairs were left to drift in Timbuktu, so that it wasabandoned altogether in the next century: "When the Moroccan army arrived inthe Sudan, it found one of the lands most favored by God in its richness andfertility. Peace and stability reigned everywhere .... All that changed in thismoment" (al-Sa'di 1964:222-223). The Middle Niger became an intermittentbattle zone for Fulani, Bambara, Tuareg, and Arma (the descendantsof theMoroccan soldiery). Pashas came and went, scarcely able to control their owngarrisons, much less to protect the few cities they professed to govern. Ageneration of scholars had been deported, their libraries scattered to the winds;

without them "Timbuktu became a body without a soul" (Kati 1964:308;Tedzkiret en Nisian 1964: passim).With the fervor of the moralist, al-Sa'di exaggerates both the perfection of life inTimbuktu before the Moroccan conquest and the ruin that followed. Willis (1971)is surely right in asserting that the picture of anarchy, famine, pestilence, anddarkness for the period 1591-1750 is overdrawn. The Moroccan rulers wanted tomaintain political stability and the flow of trade. Thus, merchants were protectedrather than dominated and exploited. Nor was Timbuktu extinguished as a centerof learning. Both ta'rikhs and undoubtedly other books now lost were completedin the seventeenth century. Animism may have experienced a resurgence in theNiger bend, but Timbuktu continued to be visited by peripatetic scholars and holymen and to send her own teachers to found schools in the central Sudan. The cityhad always been vulnerable to the depredations of the Tuareg and Mossi;insecurity was nothing new, even if it now became more the rule than theexception.

Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in HistoryIn the Sudan itself there is testimony to the continuation of trade implicit even inthe reports of brigandage. The Tadhkirat al-Nisyan, a biographical dictionary ofthe pashas of Timbuktu, mentions, for example, that in about 1694 acommanderof the Moroccan garrison confiscated thirty-seven boats, seventeen of themloaded with salt and seventeen bearing goods from Jenne, including 37,000mithqals of gold dust (Tedzkiret en Nisian 1964:149-150).BRITISH AND FRENCH PROBES - "TIMBUKTU THE MYSTERIOUS"Whatever the vicissitudes that followed the downfall of Songhay, it isevident thatTimbuktu (and to a lesser extent Gao) continued to incarnate the riches of theSudan in European eyes and to act as a powerful lure to the more adventurousamong their traders. In the opening decades of the seventeenth century, Englishmerchants descended on the River Gambia, rivals to the Afro-Portugueselanpados, who had evolved into an indigenous trading caste (see Mouser, thisvolume). Like the Portuguese crown in its more energetic days, theEnglishidentified Timbuktu with their dreams of gold and hoped "to discover some wayto those rich mines of Gago or Timbatu, from whence is supposed the Moores ofBarbary have their gold" (Jobson 1904 [1623]:4).An English company was formed in 1618 expressly to penetrate to thegoldcountry and to reach Timbuktu, still believed to lie in the heart of the goldfields.Since the Gambia was assumed to be one of the mouths of the Niger, this seemedthe obvious route, but the first expedition ended in disaster. Undaunted, thecompany sent out a second, commanded by Richard Jobson, in 1620. Jobsonsucceeded in finding Buckar Sano, the leading merchant on the river, and intrading with him. At Tenda he heard of two cities, Tomba-konda and Jaye, whichhe assumed to be the Timbuktu and Gao of Leo Africanus, subscribing as he didto the prevailing view that these cities were not distant from the coast. Since hisinformant "tolde us of houses covered with gold," his confusion wasonly natural(Jobson 1904[1623]:129). A factory was established on the Gambia and gold ofgood quality obtained in the form of bars, but his countrymen madeno sustained

effort to reach its source and, owing to the secrecy of their African suppliers,never learned where it was coming from.French enterprise on the Senegal followed a parallel course. Gold was the lure,and Delcourt (1952:170) argues that it was the detailed information gainedthrough their consuls in the Maghreb and through French slaves thatprovided theimpetus to French attempts to reach Timbuktu and the gold country via theSenegal. An overenthusiastic champion of empire claims that Colbertwas thefather of the scheme (Gatelet

444 EUGENIA HERBERT1901:11), but the honor belongs more properly to Andr6 Brue, the energeticgovernor of Senegal 1697-1702 and again 1714-1720.Even before Brue's first administration, the French had reached Galam, near theconfluence of the River Faleme and close to the frontiers of Bambuk.Little goldwas obtained, nevertheless, and Brue was determined to send out explorers topress the trade more vigorously and to find out more about the country beyond,specifically to "learn about the route to Timbuktu and its riches which are said tobe immense and which is thought to be about 600 leagues east of Galam." Like somany others, Brue believed Timbuktu to be the "pays de l'or," although he seemsto have been aware that it was not identical with Bambuk (Delcourt 1952:170-175; cf. Labat, quoted in Moore 1738:303; Pruneau de Pormegorge 1789:77; cf.Curtin 1973:623-624). He also underestimated the hostility of Mandingo andMoorish traders and the indigenous population of the region, few of whom wereeager to see an extension of French commerce into the interior. Afterseveral moreattempts to open up Bambuk, Brue's successors fell back to the Senegal and thesafer trade in slaves and gum.Though Timbuktu seemed destined to remain a will-o'-the-wisp, a "miragesoudanais," English and French trade with West Africa increaseddramaticallyduring the eighteenth century and with it the clash of their interests inSenegambia. Mercantile and political rivalries of themselves provoked a certaincuriosity, but it was also a time of great interest in travel, universal history, thenatural sciences, and geographical discovery. In an age of enlightenment, it was asobering thought that the best source on Africa, the Description ofLeo Africanus,was several centuries old, that Europeans still had not set eyes on the sources ofSudanese gold (at Timbuktu or elsewhere), and that none of the great riversystems of the continent was understood.All that changed in a few decades at the turn of the century. The catalyst wasprovided by the African Association, founded in 1788 by a private group of well-to-do Englishmen, many of them amateurs of botany, interested inpromoting thecause of African exploration in the broadest sense and willing to support it at theirown expense. In due time its efforts were joined by the British government, theParis Soci6t6 de G6ographie, the administration of Senegal, and a handful ofintrepid private travelers. The paramount object was to discover the course of theNiger and to reach Timbuktu. The sequence of expeditions, the great majority ofthem tragic failures, is too well known to need repeating (see e.g., Hallett 1964;Bovill 1968; Midge 1961-1962: vol. 2, pp. 148-149; Bodichon 1849). What is not

always brought out is that the legend of Timbuktu created by the publication andrepublication of Leo Africanus in Europe since the sixteenth century could nothave persisted with such power had it not been constantly corroborated, indeedmagnified, by

Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in Historyreports out of Barbary. These convinced the African Associationnot only thatTimbuktu was "one of the principal marts for the supply of the Interior of Africa"(Hallett 1964:74), but that the area it drained was rich and vast, as tempting aplum for European enterprise as it had ever been.The most glowing and detailed report came in 1790 from a Moor called Shabeeny(al-Shabbani), who claimed to have lived for seven years in Timbuktu. "Some ofits inhabitants," he declared, "are amazingly rich. The dress of common womenhas been often worth 1000 dollars." Shabeeny also dwelt on the tradition oflearning still very much alive in Timbuktu, as well as on the security, toleration,and stability of government there and in the neighboring and evenmoreprosperous city of Houssa (Awsa) (Hallett 1964:103f.; cf. Wilks and Ferguson1970:48-51; see Jackson 1820). So excited was one Association member by thesedisclosures that he wrote a friend: "We have heard of a city called Tombouctou,gold is so plentiful there as to adorn even the slaves .... If we could get ourmanufactures into that country, we should soon have gold enough" (Hallett1964:108 n.), and the secretary of the Association speculated thatthese citiesmight be the heirs to ancient Carthage, with "those arts and sciencesand thatcommercial knowledge, for which the inhabitants of Carthage were once soeminently famous" (Hallet 1964:117). Mungo Park's (1799:215) data seemed toconfirm this picture of the wealth of Timbuktu, although it was basedonly onhearsay:The present King of Timbouctou is named Abu Abrahima; he is reported topossess immense riches. His wives and concubines are said to be clothed in silk,and the chief officers of state live in considerable splendour. The whole expenseof his government is defrayed, as I was told, by a tax upon merchandize which iscollected at the gates of the city.With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, interest in West African discovery wasrekindled. There was little talk for the moment of conquest but a great deal aboutthe "civilizing mission" - and profitability - of trade. The most indefatigablepublicist was the former English consul in Mogador, James Grey Jackson. In aburst of enthusiasm, he wrote that "the immense quantity of gold dustand goldbars that would be brought from Timbuctoo, Wangara and Gana, in exchange forour merchandize, would be incalculable, and perhaps has neveryet beencontemplated by Europeans" (Jackson 1819; cf. 1810, 1814, 1820). The governorof Sierra Leone, General Charles Turner, proposed that patrol boats and militaryunits be sent to the Windward Coast to insure British control of trade with theinterior and that the British resident at Timbo spearhead peacefulcommercialpenetration to Segu and Timbuktu (Curtin 1964: 171). The British governmentbalked at the commitment demanded by the Turner plan, but it did favorsubsidizing exploration with the aim of

446 EUGENIA HERBERTopening up the continent to British manufactures - as long as it did notcost toomuch.The lure of commercial gain and British-French rivalries are inadequate to explainthe veritable ruse sur Tombouctou of the 1820's. As Baron Rousseau, Frenchconsul-general in Tripoli, expressed it, "Timbuctoo.., has become for us what theenchanted city of Irem-Zatilemad was to the ancient Arabs or the fountain ofyouth to oriental mythology" (Rousseau 1827:176). A footnote explained thatIrem-Zatilemad (Iram Dhdt al-'Imdd) was a splendid pleasure-city built by asultan of the Hadramawt to rival the deity. While the English painted the city intones of gold, it was the French, apparently beginning with Rousseau, who addedthe adjective "mysterious." With more perception than many of hiscontemporaries, however, Rousseau wondered if the glory of Timbuktu mightafter all be only a "chimera that will evaporate as soon as the many obstacles thatblock its access have been surmounted."No such doubts assailed explorers such as Major Alexander Gordon Laing.Making his painful and almost fatal journey across the Sahara to thefabled city,he wrote:I have not travelled to Timbuctoo for the sake of any other reward than that whichI shall derive from the consciousness of having achieved an enterprise which willrescue my name from oblivionTis that which bids my bosom glowTo climb the stiff ascent of fameTo share the praise the just bestowAnd give myself a deathless name.Laing's obsession grew almost to megalomania as the city appearedalmost withinhis grasp: he was willing to give everything he had to get there "because I am wellaware that if I do not visit it, the World will ever remain in ignoranceof theplace" (Bovill 1964:286-303).In 1825 the Paris Soci6t6 de G6ographie had offered a prize of 10,000 francs anda gold medal to the first man to reach Timbuktu by way of Senegambia andproduce a description of the city. A half-dozen explorers were rumored to be inthe field or about to set out, in spite of the many who had already lost their livesin the attempt. British magazines parodied the craze for Timbuktu andthecredulity of savants in accepting the claims of shipwrecked sailorssuch as Adams(1816) and Riley (1817) that they had been to that metropolis in their wanderings(H. 1824; R.S.T. 1826).Of the twenty-odd adventurers who had set their sights on Timbuktusince 1788,the first to make it was indeed Laing, who reached the city in August 1826. In thesingle extant letter written from Timbuktu, he deliberately avoidedanydescription save that "in every respect except in

Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in History

size (which does not exceed four miles in circumference) it has completely metmy expectations" (Bovill 1964:312). A few days later he was murdered in thedesert and his journals were lost forever.Not quite two years after that, Ren6 Cailli6 entered the city disguisedas an Araband lived to return to France and claim the gold medal. There is no needto repeatthe arrogant incredulity with which the news was received in Britain, the bittercharges made against Jomard, his champion and the president of theSoci6t6 deG6ographie, or the insinuations in some quarters that the entire story was afabrication drawn from the papers of the murdered Laing (e.g., Barrow 1830:450-475). The sad truth was that Laing had been cast in a heroic mold befitting theconqueror of Timbuktu and Cailli6 was uneducated, a provincial, a man obsessed,acting entirely on his own. Not until Barth (1965 [1865]) verified the essentialstwenty years later was Cailli6 grudgingly given his due in England.To compound the insult of Cailli6's success, he had found Timbuktu wanting. Thecity, he declared simply but unforgivably (Cailli6 1830: vol. 2, p.49),did not answer my expectations. I had formed a totally different idea of thegrandeur and wealth of Timbuktu. The city presented, at first view, nothing but amass of ill-looking houses, built of earth. Nothing was to be seen in all directionsbut immense plains of quicksand of a yellowish white color. The sky was a palered as far as the horizon: all nature wore a dreary aspect, and the most profoundsilence prevailed; not even the warbling of a bird was to be heard.... Still, therewas something imposing in the aspect of a great city, raised in the midstof sands,and the difficulties surmounted by the founders cannot fail to excite admiration.The contrast with Jenne was particularly striking. Though Jenne, like Timbuktu,had been caught up in the turmoil of Fulani expansion under Seku Ahmadu, it was"full of bustle and animation; every day numerous caravans of merchants arearriving and departing with all kinds of useful products" (Cailli6 1830: vol. 1, p.460). It was an important market town as well as an entrep6t, evenif the bulk ofthe traffic in gold had shifted to Sansanding and Bamako. In Timbuktuthe soletrade of importance was the long-distance trade, and this went on behind closeddoors: only a glimmer of it could be seen in the ornaments worn by female slavesof rich masters.THE FINAL ACT: FRENCH CONQUEST, 1894Timbuktu had been unveiled, but it had not been "opened up" by theEuropeanpowers. British interest shifted increasingly to the Central Sudan and, above all, tothe Lower Niger, which held out greater promise

448 EUGENIA HERBERTof return. Across the Channel, however, interest in the Western Sudan was stillvery much alive. Two points of view tended to dominate French imperialistthinking with respect to Africa, the one emphasizing Algeria, the other Senegal.The long-drawn out French conquest of Algeria was proving to be a commercialdisappointment. Surveys showed that the caravan trade was still immenselylucrative but was bypassing Algeria for Morocco, Tunis, or Tripoli.Thegovernment therefore addressed itself to reversing this tide and finding the meansto exploit the Sudan as the natural and integral hinterland of Algeria (Emerit

1941; Mi6ge 1961-1962: vol. 2, p. 154; vol. 3, pp. 74-79; Newbury1966:233-246). Initially they thought of accomplishing this by creating a series of oasesacross the desert to Timbuktu; later there was the much more ambitious project ofa transSaharan railroad.For Louis Faidherbe, governor of Senegal (1854-1861, 1863-1865), the Saharawas irrelevant (see Barrows, this volume). What was far more practicable andwould bring rich rewards to France would be to join the Senegal and NigerValleys in order to gain complete control over the commerce and production ofthe Sudan (see Quintin 1881:514; KanyaForstner 1969:28f.). Though theeconomy of the Sudan was in serious decline because of the devastation of theFulani and Tukulor jihads, he did not doubt that, once the area was joined to thecoast and exposed to the civilizing influence of France, trade and agriculturewould regain their former levels (Faidherbe 1889:8, esp. 349; cf. Bodichon's[1849:9] reference to the Sudan as "une Californie africaine" as well as Tautain1885:633). Timbuktu was the linchpin of the design.Faidherbe's ideas were to triumph, but not immediately. They wereonly taken upby influential members of the government and public in the later 1870'sand1880's, given a greater urgency by the perennially revived fears ofBritish - andthen German - schemes for the Sudan (Hopkins 1973:157-166). Even so, theChamber was reluctant to vote the credits necessary for expansion. The result wasthat commanders in the field were in the habit of taking the initiative, then callingon the government to accept faits accomplis and assume the expenses involved.To put an end to this practice, the government of Senegal and the Sudan wasreorganized in 1893 and placed under civilian control. "The periodof conquestand territorial expansion must be considered .,. at an end," theMinister of theColonies wrote emphatically to the new civil governor, Grodet (Kanya-Forstner1969:211). Ironically, it was this intended reform that set the stage for an act ofthe purest insubordination - of vainglorious mutiny: the capture of Timbuktu.The military commander of the Sudan, Lieutenant Colonel Etienne Bonnier, wasdetermined to fulfill his lifelong ambition to conquer Timbuktu, civilian governoror no. On December 25, 1893, before Grodet

Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in Historyhad had time to interfere, Bonnier set off with transport barges down the Niger.Grodet quickly guessed what was being planned and ordered Bonnier back toSegu. Bonnier ignored the order but was faced with a problem of disobedience ofhis own: his subordinate, Lieutenant Boiteux, had defied his orders and taken aflotilla from Mopti to Timbuktu ahead of him and was now calling for help. Thisprovided a useful pretext for Bonnier, who telegraphed Grodet that he was on hisway to Timbuktu, "whose submission has been seriously offered," to rescueBoiteux.Boiteux occupied Timbuktu on December 15. His contingent of nineteenhadtaken the city without firing a shot, but though the inhabitants of the city wereresigned to their fate, the Tuareg in its environs were intensely hostile and for atime were able to cut the lifeline to Kabara; only the arrival of Bonnier with histroops on January 10, 1894, secured the occupation.

Almost immediately Bonnier set out again with most of his men to meet ColonelJoffre, who was approaching by land, although it is not clear whythis wasnecessary. Not far from Goundam, an early morning attack by Tuareg from whomthe French had been raiding cattle virtually wiped out the French force: Bonnier,twelve of his European officers and N.C.O.s, and sixty-eight native tirailleurswere killed. It was the worst disaster of the Sudanese campaign (Kanya-Forstner1969:216-221).News of the capture of "la ville sainte et mystrieuse" (Le Temps, January 26,1894) brought a thrill even to those Frenchmen opposed to unchecked militaryexpansion. It quickly turned to horror at the news of the massacre at Dongoi(referred to as a "glorieuse catastrophe"). The English spitefully suggested itmight be wise to withdraw, but the French flag had been raised overTimbuktu,and there it would remain for sixty-seven years.CONCLUSIONThe image of Timbuktu that gained currency in North Africa and Europeand thatexerted such a powerful attraction on individuals and nations wasa composite offact, distortion, and contradiction, fed by ignorance, credulity,and above all theaurae sacra fames, the consuming passion for gold that obsessed Muslim andChristian alike. "The extraordinary city... created solely by the wants ofcommerce and destitute of every resource except what its accidental position as aplace of exchange affords" (Cailli6 1830: vol. 2, p. 71) became confused with thesources of wealth themselves, with the mines of gold that were the lodestone fordiscovery and conquest. It was a case of historical metonymy, where the partcame to stand for the whole, an entrep6t for a center of production. It was also, toborrow another term from rhetoric, a case of hyperbole. Just

450 EUGENIA HERBERTas the genuine wealth that passed through Timbuktu was exaggerated beyond allreason, so the real and solid tradition of Islamic scholarship of the city wasmagnified; it became Carthage and Alexandria rolled into one, a repository of lostknowledge of the ancients as well as of gold.The question remains: why Timbuktu? Why not Jenne, or even Gao orKano? Allwere trading cities of great importance as well as centers of learning, but nonecould match the fame of Timbuktu outside the Sudan. One need only lookat theindex for the Bulletin de la Socite de G~ographie 1822-1861, wherethere are onlytwo references to Jenne, one to Kano, none to Gao, and some sixty-four toTimbuktu. The reasons for this singular preeminence are certainly many. Is itfrivolous to suggest that there is something in the name itself that catches the earand conveys images of wonder? On a more concrete level, Timbuktu was ideallyoriented geographically for the caravan trade of the western Saharaand hence bestknown to the Arabs and Berbers from Barbary, who in turn were the major sourceof Europe's knowledge into the nineteenth century.Perhaps the most important reason is the most revealing about the nature ofcultural contact. Timbuktu was sought out by travelers, traders, and settlers fromNorth Africa not only because of its geographical position and commercialadvantages, but also because it was the least African of the cities of the Sudan. It

was a city where one could live surrounded by North Africans or at least fellowMuslims, largely insulated from the alien culture that prevailed to the south.Intermarriage of course took place, but the sources give an impression of almosttotal lack of genuine interest on the part of North Africans in the more profoundreality of Sudanese culture; integration of the Saharan and Sudanese economicsystems does not seem to have brought in its wake integration of cultural systems.Like the proverbial "ugly American," Arabs and Berbers came with preconceivednotions which they sought to verify, often unaware of the contradictions theseimplied. Is not Leo Africanus, who could declare at one moment thatall Africanslived like beasts, without laws or governments or customs, and then proceed, infact, to describe a perfectly orderly society, the prime exampleof this type oftraveler?Legend is by nature oversimplification. Timbuktu provided the stuffof legendbecause it could be simplified into basic elements of the most universal appeal,material and spiritual.REFERENCESADAMS, ROBT.1816 The narrative of Robert Adams.... London: Murray.

Timbuktu: A Case Study of the Role of Legend in HistoryAL-SA'DI, ABDERRAHMAN1964 Ta'rikh al-Sudan. Translated by 0. Houdas. Paris: Maisonneuve. AL-UFRANI, MUHAMMAD AL-SAGHIR1889 Histoire de la dynastie saadienne au Maroc (1511-1670). Translated by0. Houdas. Paris: Leroux. [BARROW, JOHN]1830 M. Cailli6, Central Africa. Quarterly Review 42:450-475. BARTH,HEINRICH1965 [1865] Travels and discoveries in north and central Africa, 1849-55,three volumes (centenary edition). London: Frank Cass. BLAKE,J. W.1937 European beginnings in West Africa, 1454-1578. London: LongmansGreen.1942 Europeans in West Africa, 1450-1560, volume one. London: HakluytSociety.BODICHON, DR.1849 Projet d'une exploration politique, commerciale et scientifique....Bulletin de la Socit6 de Gcographie 12:5-56.BOVILL, E. W.1925 The Niger and the Songhai Empire. Journal of the African Society25:138-146.1958 The golden trade of the Moors. London: Oxford University Press.1968 The Niger explored. London: Oxford University Press. BOVILL, E. W.,editor1964 Missions to the Niger, volume one. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress for the Hakluyt Society. BRAUDEL, F.1946 Monnaies et civilisation: de l'or du Soudan A l'argent d'Amrrique.Annales: Economies, Socictes, Civilisations 1:9-22. CAILLIE, R.

1830 Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo, two volumes. CRONE, G. R.,translator and editor1937 The voyages of Cadamosto and other documents on western Africa in thesecond half of the fifteenth century. London: Hakluyt Society. CURTIN, P. D.1964 The image of Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.1973 The lure of Bambuk gold. Journal of African History 14:623-631.1975 Economic change in precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the era of theslave trade. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. DE CASTRIES,H.1905-1936 Les sources indites de l'histoire du Maroc, volume two. Paris:Guethner.DE LA RONCIERE, C.1924 La d~vouverte de l'Afrique au moyen age, volume one. Cairo: InstitutFranqais d'Archdologie Orientale. (Translated from the French.)London: Colburn and Bentley. DELCOURT, A.1952 La France et les 9tablissements fran~ais au Sgn~gal entre 1713 et 1763.Dakar: Institut Franqais d'Afrique Noire. DUBOIS, F.1897 Tombouctou la myst~rieuse. Paris. EMERIT, M.1941 Les Saint-Simoniens en Algdrie. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

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