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50 free Timbuktu trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
For centuries Europeans used 'Timbuktu' as a byword for the ends of the earth, while the city itself was one of the richest and most learned places in the medieval world. This quiz covers the real Timbuktu: the Tuareg seasonal camp that became a Niger-side trading city, Mansa Musa's gold and the mosque he paid for, the Sankoré scholars and their hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, the Songhai conquest of 1468, the Moroccan musketeers who broke the empire in 1591, and the salt slabs still hauled from Taoudenni by camel. It also covers the explorers who chased the legend (Leo Africanus, Gordon Laing, René Caillié and Heinrich Barth), the French conquest, UNESCO's listing, the desert blues of Ali Farka Touré, the 2012 occupation, the smashed mausoleums, the ICC's first cultural-destruction conviction and the librarians who saved the books. Questions run from easy (which country Timbuktu is in) to expert (the size of the prize the Société de Géographie offered). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Timbuktu, its monuments, empires, explorers and manuscripts, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Mali, African empires and Sahara quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Timbuktu is a city in which modern country?
Mali
It sits on the southern edge of the Sahara, about 15 to 20 km north of the River Niger.
Q 02Timbuktu lies a short distance north of which great river?
Niger
Its river port, Kabara, is 8 km south of town and only works in December and January when the flood is high.
Q 03Timbuktu began as a seasonal Tuareg camp and became a permanent settlement early in which century?
12th
Iron Age settlements nearby predate the traditional founding by more than a thousand years.
Q 04Per a 17th-century chronicle, Timbuktu was named after a slave woman guarding Tuareg goods. What did her name mean?
'The one having a lump'
Other theories derive it from Songhay words for a hollow, a Berber phrase for small dunes, or a Zenaga root meaning 'hidden'.
Q 05Timbuktu grew rich from its position on trans-Saharan trade routes in which three commodities?
Salt, gold and ivory
Salt came south from the desert, gold went north to the Mediterranean, and the city sat between them.
Q 06Which Mali Empire ruler's visit around 1325 helped turn Timbuktu into a centre of Islamic learning?
Mansa Musa
He recruited scholars from across the Muslim world, including the Andalusian poet Abu Ishaq al-Sahili.
Q 07The Mali emperor's 1324 hajj gifts are said to have depressed gold's value in which city?
Cairo
His hajj put Mali on European maps, including the 1375 Catalan Atlas.
Q 08Which mosque, built in 1327 under the Mali emperor, is the oldest of Timbuktu's three great mosques?
Djinguereber
Its design is credited to the Andalusi scholar Abu Ishaq al-Sahili and it is built almost entirely of earth.
Q 09Apart from limestone reinforcement and its minaret, Timbuktu's oldest mosque is made of what?
Earth and organic materials
It has three inner courts, two minarets and 25 rows of pillars, with room for 2,000 worshippers.
Q 10Roughly how many students did the University of Timbuktu's three great mosques teach at their height?
25,000
An active book trade and Askia Muhammad's patronage produced thousands of manuscripts.
Q 11Imam al-Aqib had the Sankoré mosque's sanctuary rebuilt to the dimensions of what?
The Kaaba in Mecca
The mosque was originally financed by a Tuareg woman of the Aqit family.
Q 12The Sidi Yahya Mosque was founded in 1400 by Sheikh El-Mokhtar Hamalla and named after whom?
Its first imam
Construction was completed in 1440, making it one of the oldest mosques in the city.
Q 13Which empire absorbed Timbuktu in 1468 after a brief spell of Tuareg rule?
Songhai
Sonni Ali took the city; Djenné followed in 1475.
Q 21What prize did the Société de Géographie offer to the first person to return with a description of Timbuktu?
9,000 francs
Caillié, refused government funding, paid for the trip himself and worked in Sierra Leone to save money.
Q 22Which German scholar-explorer reached Timbuktu in 1853 and published a five-volume account?
Heinrich Barth
He thought the name came from Songhay words for a hollow in the sand-hills.
Q 23Timbuktu came under French control in which decade?
The 1890s
It became part of French Sudan and stayed French until Mali's independence in 1960.
Q 14Which ruler took the Songhay throne in 1493 and became a patron of Timbuktu's scholars?
Askia Muhammad I
His support and the book trade led to the writing of thousands of manuscripts.
Q 15At which 1591 battle did a Moroccan army crush the Songhai Empire that held Timbuktu?
Tondibi
The Songhai tried to break the Moroccan lines with a stampede of 1,000 cattle, which the gunfire turned back on them.
Q 16Which weapon gave Judar Pasha's Moroccan force its decisive edge over the empire's cavalry in 1591?
The arquebus
Many of his 2,500 infantry were converts from Christianity or émigrés from Granada, and he also brought eight cannons.
Q 17What was the ruling class of Moroccan invaders' descendants in Timbuktu, virtually independent after 1612, called?
The Arma
The city then entered a long decline until the French arrived in the 1890s.
Q 18Which Granada-born traveller visited Timbuktu around 1510 and wrote its famous description?
Leo Africanus
Captured by corsairs, he was presented to Pope Leo X and baptised, hence his name.
Q 19Who was the first European to reach Timbuktu, arriving from the north in August 1826?
Gordon Laing
The Scottish major was murdered five weeks after leaving the city.
Q 20Frenchman René Caillié became the first European to return alive from Timbuktu in 1828 by travelling how?
Alone, disguised as a Muslim
He had spent eight months with nomads in Mauritania learning Arabic and Islamic customs first.
Q 24What was Timbuktu's estimated peak population in the medieval period?
About 100,000
By 1300 it had reached 10,000 and about 50,000 in the 1500s.
Q 25Salt for Timbuktu is dug by hand at Taoudenni, how far to the north?
About 660 km
A prison was built at the mines in the late 1960s and inmates were forced to work them.
Q 26What is the name for the great camel salt caravans that traditionally left Timbuktu twice a year?
Azalai
Caravans of thousands of camels took three weeks each way, each animal carrying four or five 30 kg slabs.
Q 27Timbuktu's libraries were estimated in 2003 to hold up to how many manuscripts?
700,000
Many survived the city's decline hidden in cellars, buried, or tucked into mud walls.
Q 28The Timbuktu manuscripts are written mostly in which language?
Arabic
Some use African languages such as Fula, Songhay and Bambara written in Arabic letters, known as Ajami.
Q 29Roughly how many manuscripts were spirited out of Timbuktu to safety during the 2012–13 crisis?
About 350,000
Some 300,000 were still in Bamako in 2022; 4,203 were burned or stolen.
Q 30Which South African-funded Timbuktu manuscript centre did fleeing Islamists set on fire in January 2013?
Ahmed Baba Institute
About 28,000 of its manuscripts had already been moved to safety.