History of Timbuktu city in 1468. A Moroccan army defeated the Songhai in 1591, and made Timbuktu, rather than Gao, their capital. The invaders established a new ruling class, the Arma, who after 1612 became virtually independent of Morocco. However, the golden age of the city was over, during which it was a major learning and cultural center of the Mali empire, and it entered a long period of decline. Different tribes governed until the French took over in 1893, a situation that lasted until it became part of the current Republic of Mali in 1960. Presently, Timbuktu is impoverished and suffers from
Timbuktu Manuscripts receiving no more funds from the South African government. A book about Timbuktu, published in 2008, contains a chapter with some discussions of a few of the texts. Digital images of thirty-two manuscripts from the private Mamma Haïdara Library are available from the United States Library of Congress; a subset of these are also accessible from the United Nations' World Digital Library website. A movie about the Timbuktu Manuscript Project, "The Ancient Astronomers of Timbuktu", was released in 2009, with funding from the Ford Foundation and Oppenheimer Memorial Trust. Also in 2009, the French/German cultural TV channel ARTE produced a