Publisher's Synopsis
AN ACCOUNT OF TIMBUCTOO AND HOUSA, TERRITORIES IN THE INTERIOR OF Africa, By; EL HAGE ABD SALAM SHABEENY; WITH NOTES, CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY. TO WHICH IS ADDED, LETTERS DESCRIPTIVE OF TRAVELS THROUGH WEST AND SOUTH BARBARY, AND ACROSS THE MOUNTAIN'S OF ATLAS; ALSO, FRAGMENTS, NOTES, AND ANECDOTES; SPECIMENS OF THE ARABIC EPISTOLARY STYLE Roughly 250 years after Leo Africanus' visit to Timbuktu, the city had seen many rulers. The end of the 18th century saw the grip of the Moroccon rulers on the city wane, resulting in a period of unstable government by quickly changing tribes. During the rule of one of those tribes, the Hausa, a 14 year old child from Tetouan accompanied his father on a visit to Timbuktu. Growing up a merchant, he was captured and eventually brought to England. Shabeni, or Asseed El Hage Abd Salam Shabeeny stayed in Timbuktu for three years before moving to Housa. Two years later, he returned to Timbuctoo to live there for another seven years - one of a population that was even centuries after its peak and excluding slaves, double the size of the 21st century town. By the time Shabeni was 27, he was an established merchant in his hometown. Returning from a trademission to Hamburgh, his English ship was captured and brought to Ostende by a ship under Russian colours in December, 1789. He was subsequently set free by the British consulate, but his ship set him ashore in Dover for fear of being captured again. Here, his story was recorded. Shabeeni gave an indication of the size of the city in the second half of the 18th. In an earlier passage, he described an environment that was characterized by forest, as opposed to nowadays' arid surroundings. Timbuktu was a world centre of Islamic learning from the 13th to the 17th century. The Malian government and NGOs have been working to catalog and restore the remnants of this scholarly legacy: Timbuktu's manuscripts. Timbuktu's rapid economic growth in the 13th and 14th centuries drew many scholars from nearby Walata, leading up to the city's golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries that proved fertile ground for scholarship of religions, arts and science. An active trade in books between Timbuktu and other parts of the Islamic world and emperor Askia Mohammed's strong support led to the writing of thousands of manuscripts. Timbuktu served in this process as a distribution centre of scholars and scholarship. Its reliance on trade meant intensive movement of scholars between the city and its extensive network of trade partners. In 1468-1469 though, many scholars left for Walata when Sunni Ali's Songhay Empire absorbed Timbuktu and again in 1591 with the Moroccan occupation. This system of education survived until late 19th century, while the 18th century saw the institution of itinerant Quranic school as a form of universal education, where scholars would travel throughout the region with their students, begging for food part of the day. Islamic education came under pressure after the French occupation, droughts in the 70s and 80s and by Mali's civil war in the early 90s.
