The Timbuktu School for Nomads

by Nicholas Jubber

  Part Eight

  ‘The land of Negros’: Leo Africanus, Description of Africa, Vol.1, p.174.

  ‘The Bozo fishing people’: Homewood, Ecology of African Pastoralist Societies, p.22.

  ‘multitudes of … water-birds’: Caillié, Travels through Central Africa, Vol.2, p.15.

  ‘This land of Negros’: Leo Africanus, Description of Africa, Vol.1, pp.124–5.

  ‘a blunder of almost incredible magnitude’: Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors, p.152.

  Part Nine

  ‘Welcome to the world’s largest prison’: Belkacem Zaoudi, cited on www.361security.com.

  ‘Nothing so cruel had ever happened: Ahmed Baba quoted in Christopher Wise, ‘Plundering Mali’.

  ‘a descendant of the Prophet’: from The Account of the Anonymous Spaniard, quoted in Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, p.322.

  ‘stately temple’ etc.: Leo Africanus, Description of Africa, Vol.3, p.824.

  ‘His scouting trips to the ancient land of Songhay’: Christopher Wise, ‘Plundering Mali’.

  ‘repositories of goods and even libraries’: Tarikh al-Fattash, in John O Hunwick & Alida Jay Boye, Hidden Treasures of Timbuktu, p.83.

  ‘Slavery is an age-old institution’: Hall, History of Race in Muslim West Africa, p.211.

  ‘they keep great store of men and women slaves’: Leo Africanus, Description of Africa, Vol. 3, p.825.

  ‘spend a great part of the night in singing’: ibid., p.825.

  On extra-judicial killings by the Malian army, see www.hrw.org/africa/mali and www.amnesty.org/en/region/mali.

  ‘Not only their practices but their desires’: Majok & Schwabe, Development among Africa’s Migratory Pastoralists, p.247.

  ‘that I may promote’: Leo Africanus, Description of Africa, Vol.3, p.905.

  ‘Administrators regard pastoral populations’: Chatty, in Philip Carl Salzman, When Nomads Settle, p.80.

  ‘bad boys needing firm hands’: Dan Aronson, in ibid., p.173.

  ‘The best of men’: quoted in Amin Maalouf, Disordered World, p.17.

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  Acknowledgements

  THIS LIST MUST OF NECESSITY BE QUITE SHORT, AS I AM UNABLE TO NAME many of the people who helped me in the course of my travels. I have changed several names in the narrative, in the hope that nothing I have written will cause anyone any trouble.

  To the following I would like to express my gratitude: Sandy Ag Mostapha, Mohammed Ag Ossade of Tumast, the staff of the ALIF course in Fez, Amee, Assaytoun and family, David A. Andelman and Yaffa Fredrick at World Policy Journal, Boucoum in Bamako, Shindouk Ould Najim and Miranda Dodd, Salim Ould Elhadje, Bert Flint, Dr Habibulleye Hamda and the staff of the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu, Abdel Kader Haidara, Dr Jeremy Keenan, Andy Morgan, Omar in Timbuktu, Danielle Smith at Sandblast, Dr Jeremy Swift, Seydou and his friends in Sevaré.

  On the writing and publishing side, I am especially grateful to Sophie Lambert for her suggestions and advice. Thank you to Nick Brealey for taking on the book, and for all his editorial suggestions; and thanks to Nick, Louise Richardson, Sally Lansdell and everyone at Nicholas Brealey Publishing and John Murray for their work in producing the book.