3IO A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY for him, his fame was so widespread as to command respect in all centres of learning. When he arrived in Morocco he was treated with the respect due to his great reputation, and, though he was not permitted to return to Timbuctoo for many years, he was given practical freedom in Morocco, and allowed to form a school, where he continued the life of study and of teaching which he had led in the Soudan. Many others were less fortunate, and the note is to be found in more than one biography of his distinguished contemporaries : ** He died a martyr in Morocco." It is interesting, in the midst of all that the exiles had lost, to find them chiefly concerned for the destruction of their libraries. ** I," said Ahmed Baba afterwards to the Sultan of Morocco, ''had the smallest library of any of my friends, and your soldiers took from me 1600 volumes." Others, those who in the happier days had so generously lent their books to all who needed them, lost every volume that they possessed.

Unfortunately, while other forms of wealth were greedily appropriated, the contents of the libraries were destroyed.

The sack of Timbuctoo was the signal for the letting loose of all the evils of lawless tyranny upon the country. From this time the history of the Soudan becomes a mere record of riot, robbery, and decadence. The appropriation to himself of the immense wealth of Timbuctoo did not redound to the ultimate advantage of Mahmoud ben Zergoun. The caravan deporting all the distinguished exiles of Timbuctoo arrived in Morocco on the I St of June 1594. With it arrived information which led the Sultan to understand the extent of the wealth which had been confiscated, in comparison to which the 100,000 gold pieces sent to him as the royal share was as nothing. Informers further carried to him reports of the independent arrogance of Mahmoud ben Zergoun, from which it was not difficult to draw the deduction that he aimed at nothing less than the independent sovereignty of the Soudan. ''When any