An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa

One of the rarest books in existence, this 1820 travel narrative offers something extraordinary: an African merchant's firsthand account of the West African interior, not a European explorer's fantasy. Abd Salam Shabeeny, a Moroccan trader and pilgrim, journeyed from Tetuan across the Sahara to Timbuctoo and the Hausa territories, documenting what he saw as an insider in the trading networks that connected the Islamic world. The result is a window into cities that European geographers could only speculate about, revealing bustling markets, Islamic universities, sophisticated governance, and economies woven into trans-Saharan commerce. Shabeeny records the texture of daily life: how merchants conducted business, how rulers governed, what people ate, which wildlife roamed the savanna. Four copies of this work are known to survive; one sold at auction for over a1.3 million. For anyone seeking to understand West Africa before the colonial carve-up, this is as close as we get to hearing from someone who actually lived there.