Timbuktu and the Detroit Public Schools

Part 1 of 13 in our journey for Timbuktu to Kalamzoo
(connecting landmarks in Michigan and African history)

Half of all Detroit public schools will be closed by 2014. 59 schools were closed in 2010 and another 70 schools were announced to be closed in 2011. Student enrollment has been halved over the last decade, falling 83,336. [1] Schools are being closed so quickly, that they are not fully emptied and sealed as if frozen in time. The School District’s graduation rate is 62.27%.[2]

It seems unlikely that this condition would find similarity with a city thousands of miles away along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, just north of the Niger River within the West African country of Mali. Present day Timbuktu (or Timbuctoo) is a city of 54,000 that has long since succumbed to political and economic decline. But at its peak during the 15th and 16th centuries (under rule of the Songhay empire), 25,000 students (one quarter of its population) studied at its universities. It was the center of the Islamic intellectual world, and the site of one the world’s first universities (Sankoré Madrasah or Sankoré University).[3]

The salt comes from the north, the gold from the south and the money from the whites, but the stories of God…these we find at Timbuktu.[4]

An author,Granadan born Hasan ben Muhammed al-Wazzan-ez-Zayyati, but known to Europeans as Leo Africanus, would write about his travels to Timbuktu in 1510 in his book Descrittione dell'Africa (Description of Africa). His own biography is just as fascinating, which includes being sold into slavery, being baptized and freed by Pope Leo X, and possibly serving as the basis for Shakespeare’s character Othello.[5]

In Timbuktu there are numerous judges, scholars and priest, all well paid by the king, who show great respect to men of learning. Many manuscript books coming from Barbary are sold. Such sales are more profitable than any other goods.[6]

His descriptions fascinated Europeans, but it wouldn’t be until 1828 that the first European would live to return and provide their own firsthand account (Frenchman René Caillié). By that time, the City had long been ravaged by decline.

What remains are no fewer than 700,000 manuscripts on a multitude of topics that have been taught at Timbuktu since near its beginning. For 400 years, these Arabic manuscripts have been passed from family to family as proof of its former glory. Their topics include, but are not limited to astronomy, law, mathematics and history. Scholars are just beginning to uncover their unstudied Black African secrets.

But for all the monument that have been reduced to rubble and for all the other terrible cruelties visited upon the African people, the denial of their fundamental equality of intellect has been, perhaps, the most long lastingly destructive. It is this denial of the mind of Africa that the legacy of Timbuktu refutes with devastating finality.[7]

Funding from the Malian government, UNESCO, Arab governments and international foundations fund the Timbuktu Manuscript Project which is attempting to preserve and catalogue these volumes.

Today, the word Timbuktu is synominous with places that are impossible to reach. Perhaps as Detroit attempts to reinvent itself and the world begins to recognize Timbuktu’s legacy, a City can be inspired to reform its educational system and more importantly inspire its youth to reach their full potential.

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[1] CNN Money Article dated February 22, 2011 by Ben Rooney, Michigan Approves Plan to Close Half its Schools.
[2] Detroit Free Press Article dated January 16, 2012 by Kristi Tanner, Database: Dropout and graduation rates for Michigan public schools.
[3] Said Hamdun & Noël King (edds.), Ibn Battuta in Black Africa. London 1975, pp. 52-53.
[4] Gates, Jr., Henry Louis, Wonders of the African World, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999, p. 143-144.
[5] Verde, Tom (2008), A Man of Two Worlds, Saudi Aramco World (January/February 2008): 2–9.
[6] Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sadi’s Ta’rikh Al-Sudan Down to 1613 and other Contemporary Documents, trans. John Hunwick (Leiden, The Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1999), 280-281.
[7] Gates, Jr., Henry Louis, Wonders of the African World, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999, p. 146.