Located in West Africa near the river Niger in the country of Mali, Timbuktu developed as an important trading center of the Empire of Mali in the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, under the Songhai Empire, the city became one of the most prosperous trans-Saharan entrepôts and attracted many scholars and merchants. In 1591, Timbuktu was conquered by the army of the Moroccan Saʿdi sultan, Aḥmad al-Manṣūr al-Dhahabī (r. 1578–1603). The descendants of the Moroccans maintained an independent state in Timbuktu until the nineteenth century.

      In the fiftee…