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TBMs to Timbuktu: Mission Progress |
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| Timbuktu's geographical setting made it a natural meeting point for nearby African populations and nomadic Berber and Arab peoples from the north. Its long history as a trading outpost that linked west Africa with Berber and Islamic traders throughout north Africa, and thereby indirectly with traders from Europe, has given it a fabled status, and in the West it was for long a metaphor for exotic, distant lands: "from here to Timbuktu". Timbuktu's most long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization is scholarship. By at least the fourteenth century, important books were written and copied in Timbuktu, establishing the city as the center of a significant written tradition in Africa. This is a picture of its largest mud mosque, the Sankoré Mosque. |
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| Here are Barb and their 4 x 4 driver, Abdul, in front of an oven used for baking bread. |
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| Boys playing in the street--the rainy season was just over. |
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| Barb with her new boyfriends. |
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| Jay and George investigate Buctu's Tim. "Tim" is the word for "well", and Buctu was the name of the old lady who tended the original well. |
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| When he first arrived in Timbuktu, Mel was greeted by Abdoulaye, who wrapped Mel in the traditional Tuareg headgear. |