Cities
Timbuktu
tim-buhk-TOO (English)
Also Known As Tombouctou French spelling, in official and colonial-era use; Mali's official language is French.
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Timbuktu is a city on the southern edge of the Sahara in present-day Mali, sited near the point where the Niger River bends closest to the desert, which made it a natural transfer point between trans-Saharan camel caravans and river trade heading south. Its role as a seat of the medieval Mali Empire and a center of Islamic scholarship is treated further on the family's History Atlas; here it is described in its geographic frame, a desert-edge trading city whose location, not its walls, was its defense and its fortune.
Facts
Population2023 figure. Area (sq km) Population Estimate Year Elevation (m) Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Mali, Countries Timbuktu own entity-description already places it in Mali, on the upper Niger River.
On Continent
Sources
1. Timbuktu (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationLead sectionQuote, Lead section
tɪmbʌkˈtuː
1. Timbuktu (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationInfoboxQuote, Infobox
Area • Land: 21 km2 (8.1 sq mi)
1. Timbuktu (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationInfobox, Population (2023)Quote, Infobox, Population (2023)
Population (2023) 84,821
1. Timbuktu (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationInfobox, ElevationQuote, Infobox, Elevation
261 m (856 ft)
1. Timbuktu (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationInfobox, coordinatesQuote, Infobox, coordinates
16.77583°N 3.00944°W
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Niger River (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Niger River, Lead sectionQuote, Associated With: Niger River, Lead section
Timbuktu is a city... sited near the point where the Niger River bends closest to the desert
Open Questions (1 open question)
When Was Timbuktu Founded?
Timbuktu's traditional founding is dated to around 1100 CE by oral tradition and early Arabic chronicles such as the Tarikh al-Sudan, but no archaeological or documentary evidence fixes an exact founding year, and estimates in the scholarly literature range across more than a century.
What would resolve this A stratigraphic excavation of the city's earliest occupation layers, or the discovery of an earlier independent written record naming the settlement, would narrow the range historians currently work with.
Archaeology and historical philologyEncyclopaedia Britannica
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