Timbuktu's Patriciate

Elias Saad's Social History of Timbuktu: The Role of Muslim Scholars and Notables, 1400–1900 is an important study of the social tradition of the scholar-notable as a Timbuktu patriciate for about 500 years of urban history. This social tradition of scholar-notables helped define a recurring theme of autonomism in Timbuktu as scholars, through the judgeship and imamates, effectively administered the city through the long series of conquerors and states or empires that absorbed it. This rather unique position of Timbuktu and its renown as a center of Islamic learning makes it an interesting case study for understanding the Islamic city and its relationship with the Saharo-Sahelian and Sudanic contexts in which Timbuktu was intimately linked. 

Indeed, early Timbuktu, from the earliest chains of transmission still extant, was heavily indebted to southern Soninke and Malinke locations for its early Islamic scholars. Timbuktu's position as a site of prominence for Islamic scholarship in the Saharan, Sahelian and Sudanic regions was also based on the wealthiest families of different ethnic origins found the city to be a site where the pursuit of the acquisition of Islamic learning (especially jurisprudential learning) served an integrative function. This allowed Sanhaja, Arab, Soninke, Malinke, Songhai, Fulani, and others to come together in Timbuktu's early origins as a trading center. While not the only city in the Western Sudan to have an origin in a multiethnic trading center, in Timbuktu the goal of wealthy families, tailors, some craftsmen, and others to acquire literacy and gain the reputation of learned status, plus the ability of the wealthier families to produce renowned scholars, established Timbuktu as the city par excellence with scholar-notables as a patriciate. 

Saad seems to think the 'patriciate' of Timbuktu was defined by Islamic scholarship and the development of a social tradition that favored Timbuktu's autonomy throughout most of the period from c.1400-1900. While the Mali, Mossi, Magsharen Tuareg, Songhai, Ruma (Moroccan invasion force that integrated into society rather quickly), Kel Tadmekkat Tuareg, Kunta, and jihadist Hamdullahi states all claimed suzerainty over Timbuktu at various times in this 500 year period, the scholar-notables always dominated the city (at least in religio-legal spheres) and through the judgeship and the imamates of the main mosques actually administered the town. This appears to have been the case under Malian, Songhai and Ruma rule, attesting the longevity of this social tradition. One could conquer Timbuktu, but in the end the conquerors or invaders were integrated or accepted in some form or another this arrangement. One is not sure if any other city in the Western Sudan could be said to have encompassed a similar social history of a patriciate based on the scholars.