DOCUMENT 3 Excerpt from The Sahara: A Cultural History. The excerpt quotes Spanish-born
Leo Africanus, who traveled through Africa in the 1500s and wrote about his experiences. In the
following, Leo Africanus describes some of the foreign influences on Timbuktu.
"[T]here is a most stately temple to be seen, the walls whereof [of which] are
made of stone and lime; and a royal palace also built by a most excellent artist
from Granada [in Spain]," adding: "And hither [here] do the Barbary merchants
[Berber traders] bring cloth of Europe.... The coin of Timbuktu is of gold.
but in matters of small value they use certain shells brought hither out of the
kingdom of Persia." This last point is another indication of how widespread the
Songhai Empire's trading networks were, with Persia and the Barbary Coast
[North Africa] both being in regular contact with the kingdom in the desert.
Source: The Sahara: A Cultural History, 2011, Eamonn Gearon, Oxford University Press
2-3 Critical Observations:
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