Note 85 — GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA;

Various early Arab MSS., lately found by the French in Tombuttu ("Timbuktu"), especially the Tarik-es-Sudan of "Abderrahman ben Amr-Sadi-Tombukkti," according to Félix Dubois (Tombouctou la Mystérieuse), supply important rectifications of the standard accounts here; e.g. (1) Islam is found in the Western Sudan from the close of the ninth century. (2) The Songhay were converted in 1010; were for a time subject to the Kings of Melli; but gained freedom in 1355. (3) The Songhay took Timbuktu in 1469; and from this date, for more than a century, dominated all the West and Central Sudan from their capital at Gao. (4) Jenné, on the Upper Niger, was the furthest point westward of the original Songhay migration from Nubia. It was founded in 765; was converted to Islam in 1050, but "Pagan idols" were not completely rooted out till 1475. (5) Jenné was, in the Middle Ages, the greatest emporium of the Western Sudan, far outshining Timbuktu, which owed its foundation in part to Jenné. (6) Jenné was also a chief centre of Sudanese Islam. Its great Mosque, built in the eleventh century, partially destroyed in 1830, was the finest in all Negroland. (7) Its control of the salt and gold trade, as well as of most other branches of Sudanese merchandise, was such that it gave the name of Guinea to a vast region of West Africa, especially along the coast. (8) But Timbuktu, geographically, stood between Jenné and Barbary, and so between Jenné and Europe, and prevented Jenné from becoming famous in Christendom. (9) Jenné was connected primarily with a migration from East to West; Timbuktu, with a migration from North to South. (10) Timbuktu was founded [α] by the Tuareg, who owed their new energy in part to Moslem migrations from Spain, c. 1100 (1077 according to some authorities); [β], by merchants from Jenné, who made it an emporium in the twelfth century. (11) In the twelfth century, Walata, or Gana, in the great bend of the Niger [? dominated by Jenné] was the most prosperous commercial district of West Soudan; but in the thirteenth century the conquests of the Kings of Melli [placed by these authorities west-south-west of Timbuktu, to the north of the Upper Niger] disturbed the old trade-routes, and diverted commerce to Timbuktu; which, however, was never itself very populous, and served chiefly as a place of passage and commercial rendezvous. (12) From 1330 to 1434 the Kings of Melli were usually masters of Timbuktu, where they built a pyramid minaret for the chief mosque; but at least during some years of the fourteenth century, Timbuktu was conquered by an invasion from Mossi. (13) From 1434 to 1469, the Tuareg regained possession of Timbuktu, and drove out the Melinki; but in 1469 the Songhay took the town, and held it for more than 100 years. (14) In the fourteenth century the Kings of Melli built a great palace in Timbuktu, which did not disappear till the sixteenth century. (15) From the fourteenth century Timbuktu was the intellectual capital of the Sudan. This was due to the Spanish-Moorish influence. (16) The patron saint and doctor of Timbuktu, Sidi Yahia, was practically contemporary (1373-1462) with Prince Henry the Navigator. (17) The town of Kuku, Kuka or Kokia, in the W. Sudan, mentioned by mediæval Moslem travellers, was probably either a city on or near the Niger, immediately south of Gao, the Songhay capital; or else Gao itself, which is sometimes called Kuku or Gogo. Even this place was conquered by Melli, in the fourteenth century, which thus dominated part of the Central Sudan. The ruins of the great mosque at Gao still commemorate Kunkur Musa, King of Melli, who built this house of prayer on his return from the Mecca pilgrimage, about 1325. See Tarik-es-Sudan, composed about 1656, and giving a history of the Sudan down to that year: the fragments remaining of the Fatassi of Mahmadu-Koti (1460-1554); Nil-el-Ibtihaj bitatriz el-dibaj, or Supplement to the Biographical Dictionary of Ibn-Ferhun by Ahmed Baba, 1556-1627.