Much the same occurred centuries later in the fabled town hall meetings of New England.
Rattled recent arrivals at a 92,000-person makeshift camp here at Mauritania's remote eastern edge describe an influx of jihadists — some homegrown and others possibly from afar — intent on imposing an Islam of lash and gun on Malian Muslims who have long coexisted with Western tourists in the fabled town of Timbuktu.
In the past week, Islamists have destroyed and desecrated the tombs of Muslim saints in the fabled town of Timbuktu in northern Mali, recalling the Taliban's 2001 destruction of two giant Buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.
The earliest Americans, according to the popular imagination, were models of virtue, governing themselves wisely through the fabled town-hall meetings of New England, and through a variety of voluntary associations.
It is home to some of the oldest fabled towns in the world: Samarkand, with exquisite Islamic architecture, and Bukhara and Khiva, with dominant fortresses.
Large boats carry hundreds of people on the Niger River at this time of year, and the journey can take up to two nights and two days to reach the fabled northern town of Timbuktu.
Nevada, which in the early 21st century was one of the fastest-growing states in the country, appears far removed from the days when Virginia City was a fabled frontier town, thriving on the rich silver mines of the Comstock Lode.
To begin my quest I booked a guide online and then flew from Beijing to Urumqi before boarding a plane southwest to Kashgar, the once fabled oasis town that is now a chaotic metropolis choked with taxis and cranes as well as Chinese investors.
It also delivers an implicit rebuke to Lord Rothschild's father, a socialist who sold a nearby estate, as well as the family's fabled Piccadilly town house and its staggering collections, abdicating a heritage that the incumbent peer has labored hard to recoup.
In this regard they resemble the "wise men of Chelm," who inhabited the fabled Jewish town that, according to the Yivo Institute Encyclopedia, "spawned hundreds of tales describing outlandish naïveté and stupidity".
The mayor said the Islamist rebels, who had occupied the fabled trading town since a Tuareg-led rebellion captured it on April 1 from government forces, also torched his office and the home of a member of parliament.
