Americans who keep up With news of Africa will know that the chaos of war has devastated the lovely northwest African nation of Mali since a military coup overthrew a democratically elected president in July 2012. Though the coup instigators later stepped down and handed power to a civilian transitional government, normal life has not returned to Mali. Timbuktu was not always at risk of being destroyed. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, no place burned more brightly in the imagination of European geographers -- and fortune hunters -- than the lost city of Timbuktu. The legendary "City of Gold," as it was known in London, had not been visited by Europeans since the Middle Ages. It held the rich promise of wealth and fame for the first explorer to make it there. In 1824, the French Geographical Society offered a cash prize to the first expedition from any nation to visit Timbuktu and return to tell the tale.
08-28-2019, 10:48 PM
Timbuktu's Bright History Contrasts Tragically With Today's Grim Reality Of War
العرض الشجري