[1] The Koriomé canal from Daï to Kabara was dug by the emperor Soni Ali Ber when he captured Timbuktu in 1468.

[2] A small navigable waterway to the west of Timbuktu is shown on the maps published by Heinrich Barth in 1857 and Félix Dubois in 1896.

[6] A shallow canal meandered up from Kabara to Timbuktu, and was used when the Niger was in flood to transport goods to the city.

[6] From the 1970s prolonged drought caused a drop in the water level of the Niger River, and the canals no longer filled.

[2] The 14.3 kilometres (8.9 mi) long and 7 to 12 metres (23 to 39 ft) wide section from Kabara to Timbuktu was reopened in April 2007.

[10] In 1353 the Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta made the first recorded visit to Timbuktu and Kabara when returning from a stay in the capital of the Mali Empire.

[12] Kabara had a customs inspector who collected a large part of Timbuktu's revenue from tax on imports from merchant cities on the Niger.

The king of Timbuktu has sent a lieutenant there to facilitate royal audiences for the population, and to spare himself a journey of twelve miles.

Higher up the channel widened and led to a fairly large circular basin where seven good-sized boats were lying in front of the town, which was on the slope of a sandy hill.

[19] He revisited Kabara after the rains in October 1853, where he found all the fields overgrown with watermelons, a large part of the local economy.

He was given hospitality by the harbour inspector, 'Abd el Kasim, a "cheerful old man ... of supposed sherif origin.".

[20] Alfred Diban, father of the Burkinabe historian and politician Joseph Ki-Zerbo, was born in the second half of the 19th century in what is now western Burkina Faso.

[23] He eventually escaped from captivity and became a servant of the White Fathers, French Catholic missionaries, at their Ségou mission.

[21] In December 1893 Eugène Bonnier, commander in chief of French Sudan, launched an expedition to capture Timbuktu.

[28] Hacquard was invited by Émile Auguste Léon Hourst(fr), commander of the French flotilla of the Niger, on a mission to investigate the hydrology of the river.

[27] The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica said of the town, "From the south come cereals, gold, wax, ivory and coarse native cotton goods, now brought to Kabara (the port of Timbuktu) by steamers plying on the upper Niger...