It will be seen from the preceding sketch, and become still more apparent from the chronological tables at the end of the volume, that Timbúktu has rather unjustly figured in Europe as the centre and the capital of a great Negro empire, while it never acted more than a secondary part, at least in earlier times; and this character evidently appears from the narrative of Ebn Batúta’s journey, in the middle of the fourteenth century. But on account of Timbúktu becoming the seat of Mohammedan learning and Mohammedan worship, and owing to the noble character of its buildings, well deserving to rank as a city or “medína,” a title which the capital itself perhaps never deserved, it always enjoyed great respect, even during the flourishing period of the latter; and after Gágho or Gógó had relapsed into insignificance, in consequence of the conquest by the Rumá at the end of the sixteenth century, Timbúktu, on account of its greater proximity to Morocco, became the more important place, where gradually the little commerce which still remained in that distracted region of the Niger was concentrated. But, nevertheless, during the age of anarchy which succeeded to the conquest of the country by the Rumá, and owing to the oppression from the Tawárek tribes on the one side, and the Bámbara and Fúlbe on the other, the state of affairs could not be very settled; and the town, shaken as it was to its very base by that fearful struggle of the inhabitants with the Kádhi Mústapha, with massacre, rapine, and conflagration following in its train, could not but decline greatly from its former splendour; yet under the alternately predominating influence of paganism, represented most strongly by the warlike tribe of the Bámbara, and of Mohammedanism represented by the Arab tribes[120], it struggled on, till in consequence of its being conquered by the Fúlbe of Másina, in the year 1826, a few months before the unfortunate Major Laing succeeded in reaching the town, it was threatened with the loss of all its commerce. For these people, owing to the impulse given to Mohammedanism in this part of Negroland by their countryman ʿOthmán dan Fódiye[121], had become far more fanatical champions of the faith than the Arabs and Moors; and treating the inhabitants of the newly conquered city, as well as the foreigners who used to visit it, with extreme rigour, according to the prejudices which they had imbibed, they could not fail to ruin almost the whole commercial activity of the place. Their oppression was not confined to the pagan traders, the Wangaráwa, who carry on almost the whole commerce with the countries south of the Niger, but extended even to the Mohammedan merchants from the north, especially the traders from Tawát and Ghadámes, against whom the Morocco merchants, instigated by a feeling of petty rivalry, succeeded in directing their rancour. It was in consequence of this oppression, especially after a further increase of the Fúlbe party in the year 1831,