Sankore Scholarship Flourishes in Timbuktu

Timbuktu, in present-day Mali, became a major center of Islamic scholarship in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Scholars taught at the Sankore Mosque and its madrasa, where students studied law, grammar and astronomy. Many manuscripts from the period survive in private and public collections. The city was a stop on trans-Saharan trade routes. Its scholarly life declined after the Moroccan invasion of 1591.