The center of Timbuktu is a flat sandy area called Sankore Place, under the Sankore Mosque which used to host the famous Sankore University 700 years ago. There, 20,000 people came from all over the Muslim world to study using the Socratic method. They have an epic library, 500,000 manuscripts from philosophers and medicine and astronomy to cooking and religious books. It is said that once a famous Islamic scholar came to Timbuktu to teach, but couldn’t pass the entrance exam to be a teacher and had to go to Fez in Morocco for four years of remedial studies before being allowed to return.

Timbuktu is now again besieged by jihadis, as it has been off and on for centuries. It is a perilous place to go, and very, very poor. But if you have your histories and your stories, you are never totally destitute.

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