Harvard Gazette in conversation with Ousmane Kane author of Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa:
More hereGAZETTE: Your book’s title is “Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa.” What is the significance of Timbuktu, the ancient city in Mali, in the history of Islam?
KANE: Timbuktu is famous as a great center of trade and Muslim learning from Islam’s Golden Age. It is renowned for its many old mosques and colleges and for its collections of rare Arabic manuscripts. For centuries, it has attracted Muslim scholars and merchants, but Timbuktu was not unique. It was only one among many scholarly centers that flourished in West Africa in the last several centuries. My book charts the rise of Muslim learning from the beginning not just in Timbuktu, but in other parts of West Africa as well, to the present. It also examines the shifting contexts that have influenced the production and dissemination of Islamic knowledge.
