Andalus in Timbuktu

Sunday, 05 June 2011 14:13 | J. Citizenship Rodher in Abroad | | |

Several books and exhibitions and especially the recent call by the Prince of Asturias Award for Andalusian Moors have andalus current footprint in the magical, mythical and mysterious Timbuktu, which traces still remain.

The dream was to create a new Al-Andalus on the Niger. So in March 1591, the remnants of an army of 4,000 arquebusiers Andalus, Maghreb Lancers 1500, 500 renegade Europeans, 1,000 camel, 10 guns and 8,000 camels, whose lingua franca was Castilian and Almeria a Moorish chief, conquered the legendary Timbuktu, then capital of the Songhai Empire. Thus began a long period of Moorish influence still reaches the shade today. The "weapon" of today are descendants of those first carry firearms in the remote Bilad al-Sudan, or Land of the Blacks. Who later became known as Pasha Yuder born, by the name of Diego de Guevara, in Vera Caves (Cuevas de Almanzora today) around 1560, into a family getaway land Moorish Granada. On November 28, 1573 a troop of 400 Barbary pirates, landed in Mesa Roldn a fleet of 23 ships under the command of the Sheik Said ad-Dugali, sacked the town and took a haul of Tetuan over a hundred slaves, including Diego teenager. Attempts to rescue the captives were here Yuder unsuccessful and ended up serving in the palace of Sultan Abd alMalik. Castrated by one of its owners, learned Arabic and converted to Islam after participating in the Battle of Alcazarquivir or Three Kings, the new Sultan of loa Saadi Dynasty, Ahmed al-Mansur, appointed Caid and later Marrakech I took over the powerful army that wanted to fulfill her dream of creating a great empire Moroccan Saharan Africa. Still hampered by the hardness of the voyage of over 3,000 miles of desert, Yuder army, who had managed strategic control wells, Tondibi defeated in the herds of cattle and camels and 40,000 men (including 10,000 infants chained to earth to be unable to flee) Askia Ishaq II that launched against their horses, muskets and cannons. The impact caused by the use of firearms comes the term "weapon" to define the descendants of those warriors. A military victory followed the taking of nearby after Gao and Timbuktu. THE TRUTH BEHIND THE LEGEND. Located several miles of the river Niger, tradition attributes the foundation of Timbuktu, "that of the 333 saints," a group of nomadic Tuareg Berbers from the north or in the eleventh century. The city flourished as a final destination of caravan routes of hundreds or thousands of camels crossing the Sahara from Marrakech, Tripoli and Cairo, being the closest city to the mythical also Djenn, capital of the empire of Mali, to the coming from the gold mines of South unknown. The canoes carried by the swampy delta of caravans goods until returned to Djenn and Timbuktu charged copper and gold.

Integrated domains principle of the rule of Ghana, which the king had taken Kaya Maghan Ciss in the eighth century to the banks of the Niger, Timbuktu development is associated with the rise of the empire of Mali and the reign of Kanku Mussa, popularizer of Islam and star of a legendary pilgrimage to Mecca between 1324 and 1330. Their fabulous entourage and the amount of gold you spent on alms during its passage through Cairo contributed as much as the hype of the merchants who came and went from the city (solid gold blocks where kings tie their horses, gold hanging from the trees) to extend his fame and adventurous imagination run wild and greedy. At the time the traveler Ibn Batuta visited Tunisia, Timbuktu had about 70,000 inhabitants, mostly massuffes organized by ethnic groups in slums, and was home to scholars of the Maghreb, Arab Eastern doctors, lawyers of the Sudan, the Sahel wise , but the world turned its back on black South. After a brief period (1435-1468) held by the Tuareg, Timbuktu became part of pop Songhay empire. The pagan king Sunni Ali el Grande fire and executed the Muslim scholars, but his successor Askia Mohamed converted to Islam and Ulema, traders and lawyers returned to the rebuilt city, he met a new period of intellectual and spiritual splendor. When in the late sixteenth century, the Sultan of Morocco, under pressure from the Ottoman Empire from the east and by the Portuguese on the coast, places in the hands of a Moorish and Andalusian conversos a foreign army taking salt mines Tagaza and the creation of a sub-Saharan empire, Timbuktu had begun its entry into the night and oblivion of history. The "weapon". While for some the presence of the Andalusians in the legendary capital of the empire was the end Songhay, heir of the mythical kingdoms of Ghana and Mali, the fact is that poverty and modesty Timbuktu's palace Pasha Yuder defrauded Askia, especially to discover that gold was going for it came from mines located much further south, in the land of the Blacks.

Although Al-Mansur suspicious immediately replaced him as head of several ephemeral pashalic pashas, Yuder continued living in Timbuktu and Gao until 1599, when, loaded with goods and gifts for the sultan, returned to Morocco. He died in 1605, victim of seizures caused by the struggles for the throne among the descendants of Al-Mansur. Following the exploits of Almeria eunuch, his companions were integrated among the local population, marrying the princesses officers and soldiers with the commoners, and established on the banks of the Niger an unusual Moorish dynasty, customs and language of Castile, whose power continued until the mid eighteenth century. A Yuder pashas succeeded him as other Andalusi: the crafty and warlike Zarqun ben Mahmoud, Guadix, who died in an ambush, and the conciliator Mansor Rahman Diago, called the Cordoba, which apparently was poisoned by a concubine Yuder. After returning it to Morocco, it was capricious Ammar al-Fata, also basket, which lost half army (500 renegade Andalus) in the desert and suffered a severe loss to the soldiers that surrounded Jenne Mali. He was deposed by Al-Mansor by pashalic leave the government in the hands of his lieutenants in the palace to enjoy a long honeymoonhoney with the Toledo Nana Hamma. He was succeeded by another Cordovan, Suleyman the prudent, and this a Moorish Seville, Mahmud Longo, deposed by the greedy and lustful Ali treasurer of Tlemcen. The last Moorish governor of Timbuktu was arbitrary Yahya of Granada, pasha appointed in 1648, who sacked without reason Bamba and Gao and died in prison in 1655. Years later passed by unnoticed pashalic another governor whose name betrays its Hispanic, Abderahman Ben Said Al-Andalus, and in 1707 reached the last Moorish governor of Timbuktu: The Ben-Mobarek Muhammad, a native of Granada, deposed by his troops for failing to stop the advance of the Tuareg tribes. Their victory at the Battle of Taya in 1737 ended the power of the gun. Although the government was left Timbuktu weapon of Moroccan Andalusian preeminence lasted until the final defeat of pashalic by peules in 1833 and the establishment of the kingdom of Macina. By then, Timbuktu was already in decline: the wise and the merchants were leaving, the caravans were scarce and the sultans had understood that it was too expensive to sustain a colony without gold mines. While the "weapon" of today (some 10,000 families, whose names define their office or position) are mostly of Moroccan origin, a minority, the Laluyi, descendants of the companions of Yuder andaluses Pasha, who continue to use Spanish words and proudly upheld Andalusian origin, singular testimony of the centennial Spanish presence in the remote Niger. Carry straight swords, eat a round loaf decorated with two cross-shaped cuts and Spanish heraldic blazon its stately homes in Gao and Timbuktu. In the western Sahel some towns, rivers and mountains are Valencian and Spanish names and surnames of many families keep clear of Spanish origin.

Poets, architects, scholars. But to be almost forgotten impressive feat of Almeria eunuch, Yuder was not the first Andalusian Timbuktu. In the middle of the thirteenth century, the hatred of the viziers Cordoba admired forced a mystic, Al-Fazzazi, named after Al-Qurtubi for his hometown, into exile in Morocco, where he composed a poem book, Kitab-al-Ishriniyyat , famous in every corner of the Sahara and still required reading in the mosques of Timbuktu during the festival of the birth of the Prophet. It was the first of a long series of linked Andalusian city history. By one of those marvelous coincidences of history, a notary of alcaicera of Granada met the king of Mali Kanku Musa in Egypt during this trip to Mecca, and ended up building one of the three great mosques of Timbuktu: the Yinguereber. Es-Saheli had everything (beauty, craft worthy admiration for his mastery of calligraphy, rhetoric and grammar, and respect for his skills as a preacher) when, upset by his addiction to cashew, wrote a version of the Legend of the Cave branded heretical and began pregonarse the streets as a prophet. His forced exile took him to Granada in 1322 and later to North Africa to Cairo, where he hosted a wealthy merchant named Kuwayk, Syria, Baghdad, Yemen and Mecca. Here he passed the huge entourage of Kanku Mussa Kuwayk friend, and decided to accept the offer of it to accompany you to his kingdom. Although Timbuktu shine as a diplomat and poet, the story-Saheli It reminds one of the great architects universal: Niani the royal palace, the house of the king of Timbuktu, Gao Mosque and the mosque excelsa Yinguereber are his works. Another Spanish, legendary Sidi Yahya Al-Andalus, born in Tudela and died on the banks of the Niger, where he earned his living by trade and education between 1440 and 1468, is considered by pattern of 333 saints Timbuktu and at his pray tomb students memorize the Koran and married out of the marital home after the first year of marriage. More if anything unusual is the story of Ben Ali Ziyad al Quti, descendant of King Visigoth Witiza, Toledo lawyer and bibliophile who left his homeland in 1468 following the persecution of the Catholic Monarchs against the Moors, became related to African royalty to marry with Kadhija Sylla, granddaughter of the great Emperor of Songhai, Sunni Ali, and became the patriarch of a family which arrives today. His son, Mahmud Alfa Kati (ie Gothic) is the first African historian, author of a history of the Goths in Spain, before and after the Muslim conquest, and especially of the Tarikh al-Fettach founding, work reference to the ancient empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhay and the heroic deeds of Yuder Pasha. Their meeting at the court of Gao in 1505 with Hasan al-Wazzan, later known as Leo Africanus, is one of the milestones in the history of the Sahara. The four manuscripts in Arabic, Hebrew and aljamiado, he took with him into exile Ben Ziyad Ali, along with his son Mahmud acquired during his successful political career and personal notes in the margins of both, form the core of the famous Library Timbuktu, but that's another story.

IN SEARCH OF THE GOLDEN DREAM If the exploration of Africa by European explorers nineteenth century portentous stories abound, finding Timbuktu is the crown jewel of extraordinary adventures. Maybe just the name of Samarkand similarly evocative power possesses. Although in 1375 the Majorcan cartographer Abraham Cresques across his Catalan Atlas emperor of Mali with a gold nugget in hand next to a city called Timbouch, and Hassan al-Wazzani, better known as Leo Africanus, first European Timbuktu became (in 1510 and 1515), included it in his famous description of Africa, it was not until the early nineteenth century when it attracted the attention of the European powers for their supposed wealth. The first European non-Muslim who reached the mythical city and returned to tell the tale was Ren Cailli in 1828. Others before him tried, and some even did, but did not return alive. Apparently a French sailor, Paul Imbert, prisoner came a caravan to Timbuktu, but died a slave in Morocco in 1640 leaving nothing written. While the adventures of Mungo Park Scottish doctor give to write several books and his description of the Niger Basin (1805) is paramount, it is certain that never reached Timbuktu. Alexander Gordon Laing, another Scottish military was not however the first Muslim stepped on, in August 1826, after an arduous journey from Tripoli and badly wounded by the Tuareg, but was assassinated by a fanatical tribal chief in the desert to take the return. Cailli, who had left while Gordon almost reached Timbuktu from Sierra Leone, and let him down while he described as "a mass of poorly built earthen houses," although he acknowledges "a something of imposing". Returned by the desert route to Fez and Tangier and from there sailed to Toulon to collect the prize of 10,000 francs promised by the Geographical Society of Paris. In 1880, the German geologist Oskar Lenz and Spanish Cristobal Bentez, after losing half his caravan along 40 scorching days and 40 nights cruise icy Saharan reached Timbuktu in decline, wracked by fighting between Tuareg and Fellata , but traces of its old splendor still perceptible. On 12 December 1893 the lieutenant Boiteux, followed just a month later by a column under Colonel Bannier, entered a city semi derelict, which was thus incorporated into the French colonial empire until independence of Mali in 1960.