| Program from The Story of Africa part 9. The Kingdoms of Mali and Songhay www.bbc.co.uk At the height of its power, Mali had at least 400 cities, and the interior of the Niger Delta was very densely populated. One of the cities, Timbuktu rose from obscurity to great commercial and cultural importance. It became a centre of learning, one of the foremost centres of Islamic scholarship in the world. The mosque of the University of Sankore was highly distinguished for the teaching of Koranic theology and law, besides other subjects such as astronomy and mathematics. In the 14th century, Timbuktu had an estimated population of 115000 people. Typically, 25000 were at university and 20000 were at school. London, by contrast, had a total 14th century population of 20000 people. Similarly, Old Djenne, one of the early cities that date back to 250 BC (the city was part of the old Ghana Empire and passed on to the Mali Empire when Ghana fell), had a population of 20000 people. London, again, would wait another 700 years to reach this figure. Also, old astronomical manuscripts from the medieval desert collections in Mali and Mauritania show that the Africans knew about the lunar cycle and its shadows long before any European thought about it. In 2002, Michael Palin, a BBC programme maker, returned from Timbuktu to report that the Great Mosque of Timbuktu "has a collection of scientific texts that clearly show the planets circling the sun. They date back hundreds of years ... It is ... |
