1.  Corners of Timbuktu  
[Photographs from southing.com, & U.S Library  of congress]

If the River Niger bursts its banks, more damage will be caused

2. Floods damage ancient Timbuktu
[BBC NEWS,Tuesday,9 September,2003]
Heavy rains have destroyed at least 180 ancient mud buildings in the Unesco-designated world heritage city of Timbuktu.

The floods have also caused the deaths of at least four people in central Mali.  Timbuktu has a poor drainage system meaning that some 30mm of water that fell on the city some two weeks ago had nowhere to go, and soaked into the brittle, hard earth-built walls and foundations.  

3.  Islam in Mali
[By WIKIPEDIA]The Great Mosque of Djenné, the largest mud brick building in the world, is considered the greatest achievement of the Sudano-Sahelian architectural style. The first mosque on the site was built in the 13th century; the current structure dates from 1907. Along with the city of Djenné, it was designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO

Muslims currently make up approximately 90 percent of the population of Mali, the largest country in West Africa. The bolaka majority of Muslims in Mali are Sunni.

It is estimated that Kanoute has spent almost a year's salary to buy the mosque.

4. Kanoute Saves Spanish Mosque
[By IslamOnline (IOL)]
MADRID — Malian Muslim footballer Frederic Kanoute, the striker of Spain's Seville FC, has saved the only mosque in the southern Spanish city of Seville from closure.

Kanoute has paid 510,860 euros (some $700,000) so that fellow Muslims in Seville would not find themselves without a mosque, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) Thursday, December 13.

The privately owned mosque was due to be sold after a contract to use the premises by the local Muslim population had expired.But Kanoute stepped in to purchase the building.The 30-year-old striker has not made any comment on the matter. 

5. Mansa Musa, King of Mali
[By Aisha R. Masterton]
King Mansa Musa is famous for his Hajj journey, during which he stopped off in Egypt and gave out so much gold that the Egyptian economy was ruined for years to come. Mansa Musa was the great-great-grandson of Sunjata, who was the founder of the empire of Mali. His 25-year reign (1312-1337 CE) is described as “the golden age of the empire of Mali” (Levztion 66). While Sunjata focused on building an ethnic Malinke empire, Mansa Musa developed its Islamic practice. He performed his Hajj in 1324.

6. Saving Mali's written treasures
[By Justin Pearce BBC News website, Johannesburg ]
People around the world know the name Timbuktu but few know where it is, or why a town now in northern Mali has achieved such fame.

In the 16th Century, the town was a centre of Islamic learning with links extending as far as Spain in the north and Central Asia in the east. "We are looking at an earlier phase of globalisation in the region," Dr Shamil Jeppie of the University of Cape Town, who is part of a joint South African and Malian project to preserve the vast intellectual heritage of Timbuktu.
 

Image of the Broadway staging of ‘Sunjata, The Lion King’

7. Sunjata: A Muslim Hero in 13th Century Africa
[By Aisha R. Masterton, IslamOnline (IOL)]
Sunjata, the founder and mansā (king) of Mali, Empire of the Malinke, is said to have fought his decisive battle against Susu Sumanguru in 1240. Just over one hundred years later, Ibn Battuta visited Mali, by which time it had become a predominantly Muslim region.

8.  The Tomes of Timbuktu
[by  Alan Huffman, Washington Post]
A dusty haze mutes the horizon in Timbuktu during the dry season, so on this mid-December evening the sun simply fades away without setting. Dusk settles upon the wide, sandy streets and mud-bricked alleys, and the city, without streetlights, descends into the darkness of the desert. Silhouettes drift past lamp-lit windows, and the fires of street-side clay ovens send shadows dancing up the walls. Children materialize from the darkness, run up and clasp the hands of strangers, then disappear.

Camel caravans used to carry gold across the Sahara

9. Timbuktu - city of legends
[By the BBC's Joan Baxter ,Timbuktu, northern Mali] 

The fabled city of Timbuktu is not a myth - it does indeed exist - in northern Mali, on the edge of the Sahara desert.

These days, it pretty much lives up to its reputation as "the end of the world" but once upon a time, it was the centre of important trade routes. Muslim merchants took gold north from West Africa to Europe and the Middle East and returned with salt and other goods.

10.