Timbuktu was famous, both for it’s gold and for its bringing Muslim beliefs and teaching south of the Sahara. Timbuktu had been a Pashalik under the Sultan of Morocco. Then it fell to the African Berber Tuareg tribe. Soon it was French Sudan. Independence had the country looking south and while proclaiming Pan-African ideals but the reality was splintering. Maybe that is what happens when you entrust leadership to an ant with a big mouth. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp shows well the new Mali National Museum. It had been built 5 years before under a French program to preserve the history of the area. The architecture was in the Arab Sudan style and it contained one of the biggest collections amassed by a prominent Ukrainian archeologist and priest. After independence, the professional staff disappeared and even the collection began to walk out. In 2006 the Aga Kahn Foundation made a big investment and so what remains is still open, above par for the area.
Todays stamp is issue A5 a 2 Franc stamp issued by independent Mali on December 24th, 1961. It was a 15 stamp issue in various denominations showing off the productivity of the new country. Most of the issue shows agriculture, the Timbuktu era was over so no Arab traders and trade routes. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether unused or cancelled to order.
The name Mali comes from an ancient kingdom that ruled the area to 1600. It fell to the Berber Tuareg tribe that then moved the capital out of Timbuktu. This then fell to Morocco who set up Timbuktu as a big Arab trading post of gold and slaves with long trade routes back to Morocco and much involvement of Jews relocated from Spain. The city also became a center of Muslim teaching and efforts to convert the Africans. Who knew the Arabs had their own burden?
The distances back to Morocco were long and soon the area fell again to the Tuareg who were more Nomadic. In the late 19th Century came the French whose burden was to stamp out the slave trade and also to provide labor to French coastal outposts in Senegal. Seems a weird combo that and sure enough French Sudan was not a successful colony. The French had trained a few local tribesman and it was to them that now Mali was turned over. For a year there was a federation with Senegal but that ended as President Modibo Keita consolidated power.
Consolidate he did. Keita jailed and then killed his rival. He started a new Mali Franc and consolidated all exports and imports into the country into a company controlled by him. The company might have worked better if there was still things being imported and exported. The people noticed that the new currency wouldn’t buy anything and began to riot. I should say had another excuse to riot. In 1968 there was finally a military coup and it was Keita’s turn to be jailed and then die there.
No Keita’s name was not Bagabaga Daba. It was not legal or safe to satarize what was happening in Mali under Keita. Instead Malian griot Massa Maken Diabate wrote a book about a fictional country of Kouta ruled by a butcher who resembled a ant and had a big mouth. Changing names worked wonders has everybody could laugh, at least the few that could read and Diabate won several pan African book awards.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the African Griot. It is his job to orally pass down history. Some feel, including Diabate, that the tradition is ruined by those who tell tall tales and puff up whoever pays them. Perhaps, but sometimes the truth is so pathetic that some puffery is welcome. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.