Timbuktu
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- Best time to go
- June–October
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Timbuktu's name became shorthand for the ends of the earth, yet in the 15th and 16th centuries it stood at the centre of things: a desert-edge capital of scholarship where the Sankore mosque-university and dozens of madrasas drew students from across Africa, and manuscripts piled up in private libraries. The earthen mosques of Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia survive from that golden age. UNESCO inscribed them in 1988, and the site is listed today as World Heritage in danger.
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