Timbuktu

For a historian, the fact that the mosques and other holy places of Timbuktu have been
recorded from the late sixteenth century in the Arabic chronicles, or "tarikhs" of Timbuktu,
make the buildings as visualizing component and thus as speaking relics of this past even
more valuable. The Arabic chronicles record Timbuktu as a centre of West African Sudan
market and scribal culture. Because Timbuktu was at the crossroads of trade routes, the
mosques and holy places of Timbuktu were imperative for the development and spread of
Islam in Africa in late medieval and early modern times.
Figure 4: Sankore Mosque, Timbuktu. Photo Francesco Bandarin, date 01/02/2005;
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/119/gallery/&index=1&maxrows=12 (accessed April 5, 2019)
The buildings are architectural highlights from an era of great prosperity and intellectual
importance. The three mosques present a specific style of architecture, working with
earthen materials. Buildings as old as the mosques from these materials are very rare, but in
this case they also represent a high point of Islamic learning and cultural and trade exchange
of this region. How they were restored in the 16th century, which materials were used, how
the spaces within and outside the mosques were configured, can tell us about West African
Sudan architectural development, of which Timbuktu was the capital of culture in the 15th
and 16th century, the time when the mosques were restored.
As Elias Saad (Saad, p. 108) points out, the topography and thus, the urban space of
Timbuktu has always been dominated by its mosques: "Their architecture rose above
everything else in the city and they became the main points of referral and congregation in
their respective quarters." They served not only as centres for prayers, but also as charities
and hospitals for the poor. Saad assumes that the mosques determined the directions in