Timbuktu, Mali

history

Egyptian Jews began trading with tribes in the northern part of Mali as long ago as biblical times and pushed further and further into the foreboding Sahara throughout the centuries. In the eighth century A.D. the Rhadanites (multi-lingual Jewish traders) settled in Timbuktu and used it as a base from which they could solidify their trade routes through the desert. In the 14^th and 15^th centuries Jews fleeing Spanish persecution settled in Timbuktu. Members of the Kehath (Ka'ti) family founded three villages that still exist near Timbuktu -- Kirshamba, Haybomo, and Kongougara. In 1492, King Askia Muhammed took power in Timbuktu and threatened Jews who did not convert to Islam with execution. Some Jews fled, some converted, some remained in Mali and faced centuries of persecution and the occasional massacre. By the 20^th century there were no practicing Jews in Mali. 

However, in the 1990s Malian Jewry has begun to experience a revival. Ismael Diadie Haidara, a historian from Timbuktu, has been at the forefront of the movement to explore Mali’s Jewish past. In 1993 Haidara established Zakhor (the Timbuktu Association for Friendship with the Jewish World) as an informal association of Malian descendants of Jews. Zakhor’s members hope to teach their children about their Jewish heritage, learn and use Hebrew as a second language and publish histories of their ancestry. In Timbuktu alone there are almost a thousand descendants of Jews who have become interested in exploring their identity.

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