In modern times Timbuktu has become a synonym for a remote place. But the city thrived for centuries at the crossroads of the region’s two great highways: the caravan route across the Sahara passed right by its narrow warren of streets, bringing salt, spices and cloth from the north, and the Niger River brought gold and slaves from West Africa. - Mitchell Tsai

Traders brought books, and the city’s scribes earned their living by copying them out by hand. These manuscripts cover a vast range of human knowledge — Islamic philosophy and law, of course, but medicine, botany and astronomy as well. - Mitchell Tsai