Rebels in Mali have taken the historic city of Timbuktu, a place that has become shorthand in English for anywhere far away. How did this metaphor come about? The Islamist fighters have damaged the shrines of Muslim saints in the city of Timbuktu, witnesses say. (See related BBC news),(Source: persianrealm.com)
Ansar Dine fighters destroy Timbuktu shrines:
Fighters in Mali say they will continue to destroy the ancient shrines of Muslim saints in the famed city of Timbuktu. The rebel group Ansar Dine say the relics are un-Islamic. Just days ago, the UN cultural agency UNESCO placed the shrines on its list of endangered heritage sites. Al Jazeera's Dominic Kane reports.The town made its fortune through trade, where salt brought in from the Sahara was worth its weight in gold. Slaves and ivory were also traded.
With its distinctive mud mosques rising from the sand, the town is a centre for Islamic scholarship. About 700,000 ancient manuscripts are held in the town's approximately 60 libraries.
But the Timbuktu of today is very different from the golden age. It is poor and parts of it are sinking under the encroaching desert sands. It has until recently attracted tourists but they have been put off by a spate of kidnappings by a group with links to al-Qaeda.
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TREASURES OF TIMBUKTU
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Treasures Of Timbuktu – Mali:
Deep in the heart of Africa lies the fabled city of Timbuktu. Last year thousands of ancient manuscripts were unearthed here. But these priceless books are deteriorating due to lack of support from the West. Timbuktu was once the largest and most powerful empire in Africa, celebrated across the world for its wealth, culture and art. We have known the art of writing since the 11th century, says African historian Salem Ould Elhadsj. We started writing before most European countries. For Westerners however, Timbuktu is a semi-fictional land located in the back of beyond. Tackling Western ignorance is no simple task. The manuscripts prove we are a most important city, says Salem, but the rest of the world does not even know where we are. Will the West wake up to one of Africas greatest treasures in time? Produced by SBS/Dateline Distributed by Journeyman Pictures
Treasures of Timbuktu
1. Timbuktu was a centre of Islamic learning from the 13th to the 17th Centuries
2. 700,000 manuscripts survive in public libraries and private collections
3. Books on religion, law, literature and science
4. Letters between rulers, advisers and merchants on subjects as varied as taxation, commerce, marriage and prostitution
5. Added to Unesco world heritage list in 1988 for its three large mosques and 16 cemeteries and mausoleums
6. Unesco says they played a major role in spreading Islam in West Africa; the oldest dates from 1329
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RAIDERS OF TIMBUKTU
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"Premakes" Raiders of the Lost Ark (1951):
Indian Jones vs. The Swordsman :
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WHY DO WE KNOW TIMBUKTU ?
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Who, What, Why: Why do we know Timbuktu? Tom Geoghegan (bbc)
Rebels in Mali have taken the historic city of Timbuktu, a place that has become shorthand in English for anywhere far away. How did this metaphor come about?
The answer :
1. It has been, and still is, relatively inaccessible
2. Its immense wealth in the Middle Ages made it famous
3. But for hundreds of years it remained out of reach to European explorers
4. The word itself sounds very exotic to native English speakers
"Omg! Just found out Timbuktu is a real place!"
The news that the city of Timbuktu has been seized by ethnic Tuaregs has had some tweeters scratching their heads, unaware up to now that it even existed.
While some people will be familiar with the Tuareg people, almost everyone will recognise the place name Timbuktu, even if they think it's mythical.
Once spelt as Timbuctoo, the city in northern Mali has come to represent a place far away, at the end of the world.
As the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, "the most distant place imaginable".
Its first documented use in this sense is dated to 1863, when the English writer Lady Duff-Gordon drew a contrast with the familiarity of Cairo.
In one of her Letters from Egypt, while in the Egyptian capital, she wrote:
It is growing dreadfully Cockney here. I must go to Timbuctoo.
Writers as diverse as DH Lawrence, Agatha Christie and Mr Men creator Roger Hargreaves further strengthened this association by references in their books.
In one of his final works, Nettles, in 1930, Lawrence wrote:
And the world it didn't give a hoot
If his blood was British or Timbuctoot.
Phrases that develop this idea include "from here to Timbuktu" when describing a very long journey, or "from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo" (a city in Michigan, US).
So why Timbuktu?
It was founded by Tuareg nomads in the 12th Century and within 200 years had become an immensely wealthy city, at the centre of important trading routes for salt and gold.
Through writers such as Leo Africanus, tales reached Europe of its immense riches, which stoked an acute curiosity on the part of European explorers.
This mystery was enhanced by its inaccessibility and many European expeditions perished, leaving it tantalisingly out of reach for centuries.
Before it was discovered by Europeans in 1830, all documented mentions of Timbuktu are about the efforts to get there, says OED revision editor Richard Shapiro.
"In 1820, people were talking about it taking 60 days from Tripoli and there were only six days without water.
"It was this legendary wealthy city, and the British hoped they could get from Africa the kind of riches Spain had got from South America."
In 1829, Alfred Tennyson described it as "mysterious" and "unfathomable" in his poem entitled Timbuctoo, and compared it to El Dorado and Atlantis.
It was not until 1830, long after the city had fallen into decline, that the first European went there and back again, Frenchman Rene Caillie.
"The Europeans came very late to Timbuktu," says Marie Rodet, lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
"For centuries, they tried to reach the place because it was a mythological place of trade and Islamic scholars.
"It had been described in Arab manuscripts in the Middle Ages so they knew about the history but they never reached it because the population never allowed them."
locals regarded it as the holy city of 333 saints, she says, and Christians were the enemy, so Caillie went disguised as a Muslim. A Scot, Alexander Gordon Laing, beat him to it by four years but is thought to have been murdered before he could leave.
Even today, when the world has become a much smaller place, it remains relatively remote.
"You can get anywhere but Timbuktu is still very difficult to get to," says Richard Trillo, author of Rough Guide to West Africa. There is still no tarmac road to take travellers there.
The first time he went, he hitch-hiked from Hampshire in England in 1977, aged 21.
"We wanted to go to a place no-one else had been. Like many others, we had thought it a mythical place and when we realised it wasn't, it seemed like a good place for two guys to go on a gap year."
The journey was tough and took nearly six weeks, ending with a four-day boat trip on the River Niger and a truck ride supplied by a local police chief.
"Sub-Saharan Africa was so very different from the Arabic-speaking north. It felt like we had crossed an ocean, like we had skirted the edge of this huge continent. Timbuktu felt extraordinarily remote."
Trillo explains the endurance of the myth by the fact the city disappeared off the map when it fell into decline in the 17th and 18th Centuries, after the Moors deserted it and trade went elsewhere.
"For 200 years it was a city living on the sand but completely disconnected from the rest of the world and that was why it has such a mythology.
"Imagine New York suddenly under water for 200 years, and people still talking about it.
"That's when this explorer race started and everyone wanted to be the first to get to Timbuktu."
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Mali crisis: 'Foreign fighters come to help Islamists'
by Darius Kadivar on Wed Oct 24, 2012 03:31 AM PDT'Foreign fighters' arrive in Mali (bbc)
Foreign fighters have arrived in a northern Mali town, the exiled mayor of Gao tells the BBC, confirming reports of an influx of jihadists.
World leaders push for military intervention in Mali
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Bamako, Mali (CNN) -- A rapid deployment of an international military force is essential to solving Mali's security crisis, regional and international leaders said after a meeting Friday in the nation's capital.
TORY HIGHLIGHTS
Islamists destroy tombs in Timbuktu
by Darius Kadivar on Sat Oct 20, 2012 03:23 AM PDTIslamists destroy tombs in Timbuktu (cnn)
Al Qaeda-linked rebels in northern Mali destroyed historic and religious landmarks in Timbuktu on Thursday, claiming the relics are idolatrous, residents told CNN.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
UN adopts north Mali resolution
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The UN Security Council adopts a resolution that moves a step closer to foreign military intervention against Islamist rebels in northern Mali.
Hollande says no French troops in Mali offensive
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President François Hollande said French soldiers would not join any future combat operations against Islamic militants in northern Mali in an exclusive interview given on the eve of his first African tour as France’s head of state.
France urges UN Security Council meeting on Mali intervention
by Darius Kadivar on Wed Sep 26, 2012 12:35 PM PDTFrance urges UN Security Council meeting on Mali intervention (france 24)
Timbuktu Islamists ampute men & force women to wear black veils
by Darius Kadivar on Tue Sep 25, 2012 02:24 AM PDTOut with colour: Islamists force Timbuktu women to wear black veils (France 24)
To avoid being whipped, mutilated, and jailed, women in Timbuktu now have to wear black veils and loose-fitting clothing. Radical Islamists, who took control of the city months ago, are laying down their law – Sharia law – and for the first time since they’ve arrived, they’re specifically targeting women. Over the past few weeks, Islamists from two armed groups – Ansar Dine and Mujao, who took over northern Mali in April – have increasingly made use of corporal punishment against the local population. This includes whipping, amputations, and even stoning people to death who do not obey Sharia law.
In Timbuktu, the first amputation-as-punishment took place on September 16. Islamists cut the hand of a man suspected of having committed theft. Two months earlier, a man and women accused of having had an extra-marital affair were whipped in public.
'Thief's' hand cut off in Mali
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A crowd in the village square pleaded in vain with the militants to spare the man, Reuters news agency reports.
Northern Mali has been overrun by Islamist and Tuareg rebels following a coup in Bamako in March.
The Islamists have vowed to implement strict Sharia law, despite strong opposition from the local Muslim population.
Mali unwed couple stoned to death by Islamists
by Darius Kadivar on Mon Jul 30, 2012 09:03 AM PDTMali unwed couple stoned to death (bbc)
A couple who had sex outside marriage has been stoned to death at the weekend by Islamists in the town of Aguelhok in northern Mali, officials say.
The man and woman were buried up to their necks, then pelted with stones until they died.
The northern half of Mali has been overrun by rebels - Tuareg and Islamist - following a coup in Mali's capital.
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The Islamists in Aguelhok stoned the couple to death in front of about 200 people, officials said.
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African leaders seeking Mali intervention 'within weeks'
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Timbuktu mayor tells of Islamist destruction in his city
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Radical Islamists, who took control of Timbuktu in April, have been relentlessly destroying the tombs of Sufi saints, which are the pride of this pious city’s residents. One of our Observers there told us he feels helpless and powerless against the disappearance of ancestral symbols of his culture, which the Islamists consider to be idolatrous. Invited by the Islamists themselves, a journalist from Al-Jazeera filmed the fighters from the Ansar Dine movement as they destroyed two tombs at the great mosque of Djingareyber with the help of clubs and picks. Djingareyber is one of the three main religious shrines in Timbuktu, but also a pilgrimage destination for Sufi Muslims.
Exclusive images: northern Mali Gao’s youth side with Islamists
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Timbuktu's famous mosque tombs 'destroyed'
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Islamist fighters destroy two tombs at the Malian city of Timbuktu's famous Djingareyber mosque, residents say.
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by Darius Kadivar on Thu Jul 05, 2012 07:14 AM PDTThe Islamist fighters changing the face of ancient Timbuktu (bbc)
Some residents have been abandoning the city of Timbuktu in Mali because of the deadly unrest hitting the West African nation, but others have stayed there despite the tension.