MALI

I'm impressed at how much geography one is learning from the present Middle East turmoil.  One learned how important the area of Iraq was in the history of Christianity as well as Islam for just one example.  I don't recall ever hearing the word Mali until recently and assumed it was in the Indonesian Archipelago.  You know, Bali, Mali.  It figured.  But then I heard that Timbuktu was in it, and I knew that Timbuktu* was in the interior of northern Africa so was I ever wrong.

Now I am finding out that Mali played a key roll as a center of learning in African Islam and had a library with 30,000 of documents, some of which have recently been destroyed (http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/malis-culture-war-the-fate-of-the-timbuktu-manuscripts/?ref=mali).  Much to my surprise, Mali also is the third largest producer of gold in Africa and has a history of being an important producer of rock salt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali).

* I'm not sure why I knew this, except maybe I saw the movie Timbuktu at some point.  I think it was a common word to say "the end of the earth."  Timbuktu conjures up images of long camel caravans out on the edge of the sand-strewn Sahara — a remoteness so legendary that the ancient city is still a byword for the end of the earth (http://www.npr.org/2013/01/29/170562921/from-here-to-timbuktu-myth-and-reality-at-the-world-s-edge).