where is timbucktoo?

Answer 1

Timbuktu
This word originated in Mali

Unlike Shangri-La, Xanadu, and Atlantis, the fabled city of Timbuktu really exists. It remains remote from the rest of the world, but its former fame is remote now too. There is not much to attract a present-day traveler to the sleepy town of barely 20,000 located way up the Niger River, at the edge of the Sahara Desert, in the West African republic of Mali. Hundreds of years ago, however, that oasis was an important crossroads for caravans from the desert and merchants from all over West Africa. Timbuktu was known for its wealth and for its learning; it was the starting point for Muslims in western Africa making the pilgrimage to Mecca, and it was a mecca of Muslim scholarship.

The fame of Timbuktu first spread far and wide when it became part of the Mali Empire in the fourteenth century. Sultan Mansa Musa, the Mali ruler, attracted the outside world's notice in 1324 with his opulent pilgrimage from Timbuktu to Mecca and back. He had tens of thousands of attendants and fifteen thousand camels carrying food, salt, perfume, and gold. After that, the wealth of Timbuktu seemed truly fabulous.

In Europe and the Middle East, the city's remoteness enhanced its charm. In the English language, as the city's prosperity became only a distant memory, the name Timbuktu came to stand for any remote place, a usage we find as long ago as 1863.

We owe the name to the Tuareg people who founded the town in about 1100. They spoke a language known as Timbuktu Tamasheq, still used by about a quarter of a million people in Mali. It is from the Berber branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. No other words from Timbuktu Tamasheq are found in English; it's too remote.

Answer 2

Timbuktu, Timbuctu or Timbuctoo (Koyra Chiini: Tumbutu, French: Tombouctou) is a city populated by the Songhay, Tuareg, Fulani, and Moorish people in the West African country of Mali. It is often said to lie on the River Niger, but is actually 15 km north of the river.

Its geographical setting made it a natural meeting point for nearby African populations and nomadic Berber and Arab peoples from the north. Its long history as a trading outpost that linked west Africa with Berber, Arab, and Jewish traders throughout north Africa, and thereby indirectly with traders from Europe, has given it a fabled status, and in the West it was for long a metaphor for exotic, distant lands: "from here to Timbuktu." Timbuktu's most long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization is scholarship[citation needed]. By at least the fourteenth century, important books were written and copied in Timbuktu, establishing the city as the centre of a significant written tradition in Africa.

Answer 3

Timbuktu, Timbuctu or Timbuctoo (Koyra Chiini: Tumbutu, French: Tombouctou) is a city populated by the Songhay, Tuareg, Fulani, and Moorish people in the West African country of Mali. It is often said to lie on the River Niger, but is actually 15 km north of the river

Answer 4

Home of the prestigious Koranic Sankore University and other madrasas, Timbuktu was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a centre for the propagation of Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its three great mosques, Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia, recall Timbuktu's golden age. Although continuously restored, these monuments are today under threat from desertification.

Answer 5

Timbuktu is one of the biggest cities in the West African state of Mali, in the southwest of the Sahara desert. It lies just 15km north of the Niger river.

The entire city is inscribed on the United Nations World Heritage List as one of the most important cultural locations on the planet.

Answer 6

In Mali, New Jersey, Pensilvenia and Oregon.
Source: Microsost Street and Maps

Answer 7

Capital of Mali, north Africa

sometimes residence of legendary African bluesman Ali Farka Toure

Answer 8

Just south of the sahara desert - Gabon?

hang on.

Close - Mali

Answer 9

city in the West African nation of Mali, historically important as a trading post on the trans-Saharan caravan route and as a centre of Islāmic culture (c. 1400–1600). Located on the southern edge of the Sahara, about 8 miles (13 km) north of the Niger River, the city was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988.


Timbuktu was founded about AD 1100 as a seasonal camp by Tuareg nomads. There are several stories concerning the derivation of the city's name. According to one tradition, Timbuktu was named for an old woman left to oversee the camp while the Tuareg roamed the Sahara. Her name (variously given as Tomboutou, Timbuktu, or Buctoo) meant “mother with a large navel,” possibly describing an umbilical hernia or other such physical malady. Timbuktu's location at the meeting point of desert and water made it an ideal trading centre. In the late 13th or early 14th century it was incorporated into the Mali empire.

By the 14th century it was a flourishing centre for the trans-Saharan gold-salt trade, and it grew as a centre of Islamic culture. Three of West Africa's oldest mosques—Djinguereber (Djingareyber), Sankore, and Sidi Yahia—were built there during the 14th and early 15th centuries. After an extravagant pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, the Mali emperor Mansa MÅ«sā built the Great Mosque (Djinguereber) and a royal residence, the Madugu (the former has since been rebuilt many times, and of the latter no trace remains). The Granada architect AbÅ« Isḥāq as-Sāḥili was then commissioned to design the Sankore mosque, around which Sankore University was established. The mosque still stands today, probably because of as-Sāḥili's directive to incorporate a wooden framework into the mud walls of the building, thus facilitating annual repairs after the rainy season. The Tuareg regained control of the city in 1433, but they ruled from the desert. Although the Tuareg exacted sizable tributes and plundered periodically, trade and learning continued to flourish in Timbuktu. By 1450, its population increased to about 100,000. The city's scholars, many of whom had studied in Mecca or in Egypt, numbered some 25,000.

In 1468 the city was conquered by the Songhai ruler Sonni Ê¿AlÄ«. He was generally ill-disposed to the city's Muslim scholars, but his successor—the first ruler of the new Askia dynasty, Muḥammad I Askia of Songhai (reigned 1493–1528) used the scholarly elite as legal and moral counselors. During the Askia period (1493–1591) Timbuktu was at the height of its commercial and intellectual development. Merchants from Ghudāmis (Ghadames; now in Libya), Augila (now Awjidah, Libya), and numerous other cities of North Africa gathered there to buy gold and slaves in exchange for the Saharan salt of Taghaza and for North African clothand horses.

After it was captured by Morocco in 1591, the city declined. Its scholars were ordered arrestedin 1593 on suspicion of disaffection; some were killed during a resulting struggle, while others were exiled to Morocco. Perhaps worse still, the small Moroccan garrisons placed in command of the city offered inadequate protection, and Timbuktu was repeatedly attacked and conquered by the Bambara, Fulani, and Tuareg.

European explorers reached Timbuktu in the early 19th century. The ill-fated Scottish explorer Gordon Laing was the first to arrive (1826), followed by the French explorer René-Auguste Caillié in 1828. Caillié, who had studied Islam and learned Arabic, reached Timbuktu disguised as an Arab. After two weeks he departed, becoming the first explorer to return to Europe with firsthand knowledge of the city (rumours of Timbuktu's wealth had reached Europe centuries before, owing to tales of Mūsā's 11th-century caravan to Mecca). In 1853 the German geographer Heinrich Barth reached the city during a five-year trek across Africa. He, too, survived the journey, later publishing a chronicle of his travels.

Timbuktu was captured by the French in 1894. They partly restored the city from the desolate condition in which they found it, but no connecting railway or hard-surfaced road was built. In 1960 it became part of the newly independent Republic of Mali (see also Index: Bambara states).

Timbuktu is now an administrative centre of Mali. Small salt caravans from Taoudenni still arrive, but large-scale trans-Saharan commerce no longer exists there. Although the city has a small airport, it is most commonly reached by camel or boat. Islamic learning survives among a handful of aging scholars, and a language institute (Lycée Franco-Arabe) teaches Arabic and French. In the late 1990s, restoration efforts were undertaken to preserve the city's three great mosques, which are threatened by sand encroachment and by general decay. Pop. (1976) 19,165; (1987) 31,962.

Answer 10

i thought its tombucto ,,lol
anyway its in Mali south of sahara ,,africa,, it was the old capital and big trade center in africa