Timbuktu
The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold
The first book for general readers about the storied past of one of the world’s most fabled cities.
Timbuktu — the name still evokes an exotic, faraway place, even though the city’s glory days are long gone. Unspooling its history and legends, resolving myth with reality, Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle have captured the splendour and decay of one of humankind’s treasures.
Founded in the early 1100s by Tuareg nomads who called their camp “Tin Buktu,” it became, within two centuries, a wealthy metropolis and a nexus of the trans-Saharan trade. Salt from the deep Sahara, gold from Ghana, and money from slave markets made it rich. In part because of its wealth, Timbuktu also became a centre of Islamic learning…
Born in South Africa, Marq de Villiers is the author of nine books on exploration, history, politics, and travel, including Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, which won the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction. With his wife, Sheila Hirtle, he is also the author of Into Africa: A Journey through the Ancient Empires, Sahara: A Natural History, and A Dune Adrift: The Strange Origins and Curious History of Sable Island. Formerly a nationally renowned journalist, and executive with the Key Magazine group, Marq now devotes himself to writing books from his home in the teeth of the weather in Port Medway, Nova Scotia.
Timbuktu
Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle
Our Way Out
Marq de Villiers
Dangerous World
Marq De Villiers
Windswept
Marq de Villiers
A Dune Adrift
Marq De Villiers and Sheila Hirtle Sheila Hirtle
Sahara
Marq De Villiers and Sheila Hirtle