Cecille's Creativity

Timbuktu is an ancient African town just south of the Sahara Desert. It was once one of the biggest, richest and most famous cities in Africa.

Timbuktu is near the Niger River, in the center of the republic of Mali. Here the desert meets more fertile land to the south. Timbuktu grew up where farmers met nomads of trade. Its name means "place of Buktu." According to legend, a slave called Buktu was left there to mind her nomad owners' possessions.

In the Middle Ages, Timbuktu became famous for gold, salt and slaves. Camel caravans stopped there on long trading treks across the Sahara. By the 1500s, Timbuktu was also a great center of Muslim learning and had a million inhabitants.

Hundreds of years of warfare followed. Timbuktu was a ruined town when the French conquered it in 1893. Today Timbuktu is a small town of flat-roofed homes built of sun-dried mud brick. It trades mainly in salt.