Let’s go to Mali, to Timbuktu in the Niger loop. These are words that make you dream, yet the Jewish presence in these places belongs to the domain of history and not of legend. Ismael Diadié Haidara writes in his book The Jews of Timbuktu: “The Jews who fled from Castile, Aragon, Baleares and North Africa, went down to the Niger River where lived a Jewish community with its synagogue, its wells and gardens. Remember that at the time when we discover Africa, the Jews played a major role. The oldest maps of Africa (the Catalan Atlas of Abraham Cresques in the fourteenth century) were compiled by cartographers from the Mallorca School.
They were also rabbis and ran yeshivot. Mapping was one of their sources of income. In 1492, there was not only the expulsion of the Jews from Spain but also a massacre of Jews in the Sahara, by a Muslim religious leader, El Maghrili. The Jews defended themselves. Some fled to an African king’s home in Gao’s kingdom. It is likely that Jews have descended further south in the forest countries, perhaps this is where we can make a connection with the Ashantis of Ghana and the Ibos of Nigeria. Mali is a Muslim country. There are people there who evoke a Jewish origin by name.
Timbuktu
