THERE ARE SOME NAMES that always seem to evoke a tangible sense of mystery and elusiveness. Timbuktu is one pf those conjurer's names. Timbuktu -the mystical, historic city- the destinations of an endless stream of European explorers during the 19th century.

Strategically located on the banks of the powerful Niger River, Timbuktu was once an obligatory point of call for all the camel caravans headed towards the Sahara Desert.

During the 14th and 15th centuries, the high point of the city's history, Timbuktu had as many as one hundred thousand inhabitants and was home to wide range of different ethic groups, including Berbers, Arabs, Mauritanians, Bambaras and Tuaregs, to name but a few. Although each group built and lived in their own street or neighbourhood, trade thrived between them and the city was the setting for a large-scale exchange of merchandise carried by the numerous caravans across the desert.

From the Mediterranean, traders brought a wide range of products and foodstuffs, especially salt, which they exchanged for gold in Timbuktu. The origin of this gold, which was none other than the mountains of nearby Guinea, was a secret closely guarded by the Niger tribes, and was almost certainly the factor which most contributed to creating and enhancing the legend of Timbuktu.

However, even more valuable than its famous gold was the city's cultural wealth, since Timbuktu flourished as one of the most important Islamic intellectual centres of the era, thanks to the diverse faculties which together made up its prestigious university. The city became so famous that scholars and scientists came from Egypt, Persia, Spain and, above all, The Maghreb, to study at Timbuktu, which at one time had as many as twenty-five thousand students. The countless manuscripts and books that have survived down the ages in many of Timbuktu's most important houses constitute another of the many secrets of this fascinating city.

The cultural and historical value of this legendary place was recognised by UNESCO when it declared it a World Heritage site in 1988. However, this mythical gateway to the desert still holds many mysteries yet to be revealed.

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