History of Timbuktu visited the governor, Farba Musa, and the grave of the poet Al Sahili. Timbuktu was peacefully annexed by King Musa I when returning from his pilgrimage in 1324 to Mecca. The city became part of the Mali Empire and Musa I ordered the construction of a royal palace. Both the "Tarikh al-Sudan" and the "Tarikh al-fattash" attribute the building of the Djinguereber Mosque to Musa I. Two centuries later in 1570 Qadi al-Aqib had the mosque pulled down and rebuilt on a larger scale. In 1375, Timbuktu appeared in the Catalan Atlas, showing that it was, by then, a commercial
Timbuktu has been dubbed the 'Harmattan Haze'. Additionally, when the dust settles in the city, sand builds up and desertification looms. The wealth and very existence of Timbuktu depended on its position as the southern terminus of an important trans-Saharan trade route; nowadays, the only goods that are routinely transported across the desert are slabs of rock salt brought from the Taoudenni mining centre in the central Sahara north of Timbuktu. Until the second half of the 20th century most of the slabs were transported by large salt caravans or azalai, one leaving Timbuktu in early November and the other in