- Timbuktu, a trading city in central Mali, is still referred to as the most isolated remote location in the world.
- Timbuktu started as a summer encampment for nomadic tribes of the region.
- During World War II Timbuktu was used to house prisoners of war.
- Today Timbuktu is very, very poor.
- Both droughts and floods consistently threaten the city. Flooding happens because the city doesn’t have an adequate drainage system to keep rainwater from building up.
- The movement of salt from the mines in the middle of the Sahara desert through Timbuktu to the Niger River is what Timbuktu depends on for its survival.
- Rice is the predominant crop grown in the area.
- It is about 15 km north of the Niger River.
- In the 14th Century it became the commercial, religious and cultural center of the West African empires of Mali and Songhai.
- Timbuktu’s greatest contribution to Islam and world civilization was its scholarship. By the 14th Century important books were written and copied in Timbuktu.