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
History of Timbuktu desertification. In its Golden Age, the town's numerous Islamic scholars and extensive trading network made possible an important book trade: together with the campuses of the Sankore Madrasah, an Islamic university, this established Timbuktu as a scholarly centre in Africa. Several notable historic writers, such as Shabeni and Leo Africanus, have described Timbuktu. These stories fueled speculation in Europe, where the city's reputation shifted from being extremely rich to being mysterious. This reputation overshadows the town itself in modern times, to the point where it is best known in Western culture as an expression for a distant or outlandish place.