Timbuktu

Timbuktu lies at the gateway to the Sahara near the Niger River, a trading town where salt from the north met gold and grain from the south. It grew rich after the visit of the Mali emperor Mansa Musa around 1325, and the first building of the Djingareyber Mosque is linked to Musa on his return from Mecca.

The town reached its economic and cultural peak in the 15th and 16th centuries, and according to UNESCO the University of Sankore had 180 Koranic schools and 25,000 students. Al Aqib, the qadi of Timbuktu, rebuilt and enlarged the Djingareyber Mosque between 1570 and 1583, and between 1578 and 1582 he rebuilt the sanctuary of the Sankore Mosque to the dimensions of the Kaaba in Mecca. A Moroccan army occupied the town in 1591, and in 1593 many of its scholars were executed or exiled.

Timbuktu was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1988 but was on the danger list from 1990 to 2005, partly because of encroaching sand. In 2012 armed groups seized the town, and Ansar Dine destroyed shrines including the mausoleum of Sidi Mahmoud. The site went back on the danger list that year, and reconstruction of the mausoleums began in March 2014.