[Ohioan]

Have not studied the other two cities, but Timbuktu had a cosmopolitan population in which the leadership was either Arab or Berber, at the time of the study that I read. It is a serious logical error to simply lump all the peoples in a vast geographical region together.

This is true not only in Africa, but everywhere. All Europeans are not similar in talent; nor are all Asians, etc.. Moreover, all aptitudes are not measured by IQ. The fact is that all races and sub-races are different, and should be respected for whom they are, not whom the internationalists & other international meddlers, seeking to remake other people's heritage, want to pretend they are.

People are not interchangeable. Those who want to pretend that they are have agendas that are not compatible with anyone's liberty or well being.

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Timbuktu was conquered by the Berbers out of Morocco in the 16th Century. Before that it was ruled by Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically the Ghana/Mali/Songhia empires that ruled the Western stretch of the area known as the Sahel. (The Sahel is the stretch of mostly savannah land that divides the Sahara desert from the wooded lands further south.)