The quest for Timbuctoo
This is neither a brilliantly written nor lavishly illustrated book but it gets under your skin all the same. Gardner has carefully documented the stories of three Europeans and one American who saw Timbuctoo in the nineteenth century at a time when the myth persisted that the remote Saharan town was a City of Gold. It is a sad commentary on human moral, ethnic, religious and nationalistic behavior, full of horror stories about the slave trade, the salt mines, the murders and extortions practiced by individuals or marauding Tuaregs. Strangely one feels less admiration than pity for the four men who do not seem heroes so much as capable of heroic acts of survival (cutting a vein to drink the blood to stave off thirst, for example). Reading the book today in a world in which men and nations are still vying, and hostilities in Africa between races, religions, and imperialist interests have not died, makes the book sadly timely. One feels that only the names have changed.
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While this book was a slow read for me, there were some external factors, such as the other three books I completed during the reading of this, that slowed me down. It is a thorough, detailed and well paced.
Split into chapters titled Prologue, The Legend, The American, The Briton, The Frenchman, The German and Epilogue, it covers more than it might seem.
The name Timbuctoo conjures a mystical and foreign place, renowned for being hard to get to, defended by vicious Tuareg tribesmen. All for good reason. Modern visitors are perhaps more taken with the place than history's explorers in this book, whose surviving letters and diaries show them to be somewhat underwhelmed with the city - crumbling mud-built houses, a significant number of poor people and slaves. None of the wealth, the golden riches, the fabulous people they expected.
So the first chapter explains the legend surrounding Timbuctoo. It also covers Mungo Parks and his exploration of the Niger river in 11795 and 1805, and his subsequent death.
The American - Robert Adams (real name Benjamin Rose) was a sailor on the ship Charles which in 1813 struck a reef and was wrecked where he was taken captive by slavers and visited Timbuctoo with them, eventually making his way back to civilisation where he told his story. It was widely discredited and considered false, but the author goes a long way to explaining some of the inconsistencies identified by others.
The Briton - This chapter introduces the competitiveness of Britain and France to be the first to visit Timbuctoo and establish trade. For the British, a number tried, and Denham, Oudney and Clapperton get their coverage of their journeys from 1822-1824, but the hero of this chapter is Alexander Gordon Laing. His extensive journey in 1825 is extensively covered in this chapter, including his untimely end, while Clapperton has a second go also in 1825.
The Frenchman is Rene Caillie, whose long term establishing of himself in Mauritania where he learned Arabic and the ways of Islam, and established his backstory (that he was a native of Alexandria and had been a captive of the French), thus was able to travel in disguise. His journey in 1827 made Caillie the first European to visit Timbuctoo and return to Europe.
The German - Firstly we get the brief interludes of Richard Landers, John Davidson and James Richardson (all British). Then the Germans Heinrich Barth and Adolf Overweg stepped into the spotlight. Barth, the Arabist is the hero of this chapter, with his journey from 1850 to 1855.
The Epilogue runs through other visitors after Barth up until the Republic of Mali being granted independence in 1960.
These are intricate journeys - shown on a single map, which would have been far better as a fold out page rather than the small pencil sketch in the book. They are very well described, but it is kept simple and non-academic, although there are plenty of footnotes for sources.
I found this an enjoyable read, but found it wasn't to be rushed.
4 stars
