University of Timbuktu the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a terrorist group, took control of the city in 2012. They were forced out by French and Malian government troops the next year, but not before setting fire to two buildings housing many of the manuscripts, including the Ahmed Baba Institute. Most of the manuscripts had been removed and hidden before the AQIM takeover. University of Timbuktu The University of Timbuktu is a collective term for the teaching associated with three mosques in the city of Timbuktu in what is now Mali: the masajid (mosques) of Sankore, Djinguereber, and Sidi Yahya. It was not a university
History of Timbuktu Adams' account, more recent scholarship concludes that while Adams was almost certainly in Northern Africa, the discrepancies in his depiction of Timbuktu make it unlikely he ever visited the city. Three other Europeans reached the city before 1890: Heinrich Barth in 1853 and the German Oskar Lenz with the Spaniard Cristobal Benítez in 1880. After the scramble for Africa had been formalized in the Berlin Conference, land between the 14th meridian and Miltou, South-West Chad, became French territory, bounded in the south by a line running from Say, Niger to Baroua. Although the Timbuktu region was now French in name,