#onthisday 7 September Heinrich Barth in Timbuktu

Today, 160 years ago, the German explorer and africanist Heinrich Barth reached fabled Timbuktu on the southern edge of the Sahara desert as one of the first Europeans ever to return and tell the tale. ''There are many judges, doctors and clerics here, all receiving good salaries from King Askia Muhammad of the State of Songhay. He pays great respect to men of learning. There is a great demand for books, and more profit is made from the trade in books than from any other line of business." (Leo Africanus) When Timbuktu belonged to the great West African empires of Gana, Mali and later the Songhai that flourished along the river Niger and south of the aṣ-Ṣaḥrāʾ al-Kubrā , the Great Desert', the city grew rich on the trade with the Muslim kingdoms north of the desert, the Near East and even southern Europe. Rulers like the legendary Mansa Musa, who employed architects from al-Andalus in Spain and invited scholars from all over the Islamic world, made Timbuktu a place of wealth and culture and learning, famed for its splendour even in the North. When the gold and slave trade was diverted to the coast, though, as soon as the Europeans established their colonies in Senegal and the Gold, the Slave and the Ivory Coast, Timbuktu's glamour began to fade. The rulers of Morocco captured the city and tried to restore the commerce -- Timbuktu has never ceased to be a centre of learning -- and failed. The caravans would rarely face the dangers of the Great Desert anymore. Nonetheless, the fame of Timbuktu attracted European explorers, adventurers and colonialists again and again. Serious men like Alexander Gordon Laing and René Caillié and nutters like Mungo Park who had lost his mind on the river and fired on everything that moved on the shores. Many were killed by regional princes fearing a European intervention. Not without good reason. When Heinrich Barth had begun his exploring journey in 1849 in British service that led him from Tripoli in Libya south through the Great Desert to Lake Chad, French troops already had occupied southern Algeria and Senegal. When Barth set forth to the west from the lake to Timbuktu 1.000 miles through hostile country, he had to pose as a Turkish scholar until he finally reached the place two years later in 1853. Mungo's savageries that happened two generations before were not forgotten along the banks of the Niger nor was the French threat. Barth was almost lynched when he arrived in Timbuktu, but since he managed to place himself under the protection of the local spiritual and political leader al-Bakkai, he was at liberty to study in Timbuktu's libraries and oral traditions for more than half a year. Heinrich Barth was an exception among the great explorers of the 19th century, rather not interested in trade routes or the exploit of the riches of a territory, but in the history and culture of the local peoples and a Christian-Islamic dialogue as probably the only Western scholar who studied in Timbuktu. His 5-volume journal became the standard work for African cultural and linguistic studies well into the 20th century. After his return to Europe, first to London in 1855 and then to Berlin a year later, he was denied most academic awards, mostly out of various political reasons and the failure to acknowledge his work. He died at the age of 44 in Berlin and the extent of his explorations were not fully appraised until the 1960s when basic colonial policy did no longer play a dominant role. Depicted below is Martin Bernatz's illustration of Barth's arrival in Timbuktu from Barth's "Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa: being a Journal of an Expedition undertaken under the Auspices of H.B.M.'s Government, in the Years 1849--1855" And more on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Barth