Askia Muhammad I · Politics

Timbuktu, Djenné, and the Trade in Books

The intellectual flowering under Askia - his patronage of the scholars of Timbuktu and Djenné, the teaching circles of Sankore, and a trans-Saharan trade in which manuscripts sold for more than almost any other good - and the honest, un-romanticized truth of what that learning was.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that under Askia, Timbuktu and Djenné flourished as centers of Islamic learning; that Sankore was not a chartered university but a network of independent master-scholars teaching in mosques and homes; and that a trans-Saharan book trade made manuscripts a prized commodity. Explain how learning serve…

Leads to Leo Africanus.

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