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When Was Timbuktu Founded?

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Open Question

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.
OpenArchaeology and historical philologyEncyclopaedia Britannica
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Timbuktu, Cities
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Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.View the Source
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