At no time was Timbuktu the capital of a great kingdom. Its greatness solely depended upon its trade, and its convenience as a collecting and dispersing centre. That it should have become so well known above all the places of the Sudan is easily understood if it be remembered that it was the goal for which all the merchants of Northern Africa aimed. Politically, Timbuktu was thus raised to a position of undue importance, though commercially, as the merchant capital, it could not be overrated. With the rise of the Songhay power Timbuktu became subject to that kingdom. With the fall of the former it assumed a measure of political importance as the centre of Moorish power, till on the division from Morocco it resumed its old status as nothing more nor less than a trading centre, a position it has retained to this day. Among a people of such commercial activity and enterprise as the Arabs of Morocco, Tripoli, and Egypt, naturally there were not awanting numbers of students eager to collect and collate information regarding the inland countries to which their merchants travelled. Among the host of historians and geographers who supply us with interesting facts, we may mention El Bekri, El Edrisi (1153), Ebn Said (1282), Ebn Khaldun (1382), and Makrizi (1400). But the Arabs had their explorers as well as their writers. Among these two stand out with marked prominence, viz., Ebn Batuta (1353), and Leo Africanus (1528). Ebn Batuta, who seems to have been devoured with a thirst for travel, and had visited almost all the countries of the then known world, commenced his Central African explorations from Morocco, and crossed the desert to Walata, the frontier province of Melli, situated not far from the Niger. From Walata he crossed the Niger to the capital of the kingdom, and thence by land proceeded to Timbuktu. From Kabara, the “port” of Timbuktu, he sailed down the Niger to Gogo, the capital of Songhay, and thence turned northward again across the desert by way of the oasis of Tawat to Morocco.