Salt of Mali, Books in Timbuktu

 

Keep the soul unworked

And unpretentious

____ 

We were in our old home 

In the dalles, still ours but just hadn't been there in awhile 

The front window looking toward

 The columbia hills stained glass above  

I found some windex started to clean Trimming a cluster of small red roses 

As alarm chime and trash truck bottle banging me to awaken  

 * 

"In popular Western culture, Timbuktu is also often considered an idiomatic stand-in for any faraway place 

A 2006 survey of 150 young Britons found that 34% did not believe the town existed, while the other 66% considered it "a mythical place". 

the picture of the city as the epitome of distance and mystery is a European one.

Stories of great riches served as a catalyst for travellers to visit the inaccessible city, with prominent French explorer René Caillié characterising Timbuktu as "a mass of ill-looking houses built of earth." 

The musical Timbuktu! premiered on Broadway on March 1, 1978. With lyrics by George Forrest and Robert Wright, set to music by Borodin, Forrest and Wright and a book by Luther Davis, it is a retelling of Forrest and Wright's musical Kismet, changing the setting to mid-14th century Timbuktu" 

Timbuktu" – regardless of spelling, has long been used as a metaphor for "out in the middle of nowhere". E.g. "From here to Timbuktu and back." 

"Mali is considered one of the poorest countries in the world.The average worker's annual salary is approximately US$1,500. 

Gold is mined in the southern region and Mali has the third highest gold production in Africa (after South Africa and Ghana) "

"At its peak in 1300, the Mali Empire was the wealthiest country in Africa 

 with its 14th-century emperor Mansa Musa believed to be one of the wealthiest individuals in history. 

 Besides being a hub of trade and mining, medieval Mali was a centre of Islam, culture and knowledge, with Timbuktu becoming a renowned place of learning with its university, one of the oldest in the world and still active. "

 By the end of Mansa Musa's reign, the Sankoré University had been converted into a fully staffed university with the largest collections of books in Africa since the Library of Alexandria. The Sankoré University was capable of housing 25,000 students and had one of the largest libraries in the world with roughly 1,000,000 manuscripts 

Mali's wealth in gold did not primarily come from direct rule of gold-producing regions, but rather from tribute and trade with the regions where gold was found.[135] Gold nuggets were the exclusive property of the mansa and were illegal to trade within his borders. All gold was immediately handed over to the imperial treasury in return for an equal value of gold dust. Gold dust had been weighed and bagged for use at least since the time of the Ghana Empire. Mali borrowed the practice to stem inflation, since it was so prominent in the region. The most common measure for gold within the realm was the mithqal (4.5 grams of gold).[49] This term was used interchangeably with dinar, though it is unclear if coined currency was used in the empire. Gold dust was used all over the empire, but was not valued equally in all regions. 

By the beginning of the 14th century, Mali was the source of almost half the Old World's gold exported from mines in Bambuk, Boure and Galam. 

 "This T and O map, from the first printed version of Isidore's Etymologiae (Augsburg, 1472), identifies the three known continents (Asia, Europe and Africa) as respectively populated by descendants of Sem (Shem), Iafeth (Japheth) and Cham (Ham)." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_World

"Salt, another critical trade good, was as valuable, if not more valuable, than gold in sub-Saharan Africa. It was cut into pieces and spent on goods with close to equal buying power throughout the empire. 

While it was as good as gold in the north, it was even better in the south, as it was rare there.  

Every Year merchants entered Mali via Oualata with camel loads of salt to sell in the capital. Ibn Battuta had written that in Taghaza, one of Mali's most important salt mines, there were no trees, only sand and the salt mines.  

Nobody lived in the area except the Musafa servants who sug the salt and lived on dates imported from Sijilmasa and the Dar'a valley, camel meat and millet imported from the Sudan.

The buildings were constructed from slabs of salt and roofed with camel skins. 

 The salt was dug from the ground and cut into thick slabs, two of which were loaded onto each camel where they would be taken south across the desert to Oualata and sold.  

The value of the salt was chiefly determined by the transport costs. 

 According to Ibn Battuta one camel load of salt sold at Walata for 8–10 mithqals of gold, but in Mali proper it was worth 20–30 ducats and sometimes even 40."