When Mansa Musa brought back scholars and architects he was emerging his culture with the culture of Islam resulting in cultural exchange. When Mansa Musa made the Hajj he brought back architects that built the Djinguereber Mosque, Sidi Yahya Mosque, and the Sankore Madrasah. As the architects came back to Timbuktu they brought with them different materials to build these mosques with, including limestone. Limestone was very different than the clay huts that were used for homes. Temple buildings were made of stone and mortar also unlike the limestone. Timbuktu gained Islamic and commercial significance which Mansa Musa encouraged. Sankore Madrasah, Sidi Yahya Mosque, and Djinguereber compose the make-up of the University of Timbuktu. The University of Timbuktu is known as a Qur'anic school. In the 16th century Timbuktu had 150 to 180 Qur'anic schools where reading and the recitation of the Qur'an were taught. In order to graduate from a Qur'anic school you must have mastered the Arabic language and memorized the Qur'an. These are also some of the qualities you need to become a scholar, which was very important to the people in the Islamic World. Yahya proved this statement by noting: "Sidi abd al-Rahman al-Tahimi came from the Hijaz. He settled in Timbuktu, and realized that it was full of Sudanese fuqaha. When he saw that they surpassed him in [the knowledge of] fiqh [jurisprudence] he travelled to fes [Fez] to study fiqh, and then returned to Timbuktu to settle there." .
Sidi Yahya's account of the Arabian traveler emphasized that the highest levels of scholarly efforts in Timbuktu matched and in some cases surpassed their brethren in the greater Islamic world." Becoming a scholar meant you could copy and learn about libraries and books, which were sacred to Timbuktu and the Islamic world. Libraries were so important that works from the libraries if Aqit, agha-Muhammad, and Ahmad Umar's were documented.
The classical civilization of Rome, Greece, and Africa used art for ceremonial purposes. The three classical civilizations used sculptures for prayer, murals for entertainment, and masks for ceremonial dances. In Rome the great sculptor Phidias carved a sculpture of Athena, looking like a warrior. H...
