The Trans-Saharan Caravan Trade

Sources

Origins. As Adu Boahen has explained, the trans-Saharan caravan trade began to take place on a regular basis during the fourth century, as an expanded version of the pre-existing intra- and interregional trade among peoples of the forest, savanna, Sahel, and Sahara. While Ghana was an integral part of the early trans-Saharan trade, neither it nor any other Western Sudan state was built by, or specifically

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for, the trans-Saharan trade. Fundamentally important to the success of the Empire of Ghana between the eighth and twelfth centuries, this trading system reached its peak during the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, during the heydays of the Mali and Songhai Empires.

Routes. There were seven primary north-south routes, six principal forest routes, and two west-east routes. During the 500-1590 period, routes rose and declined in importance depending on the empire in power and the amount of security it could maintain for traders and trade routes.

North-South Routes. To obtain gold from the Bambuk goldfields—particularly during the ascendency of Ghana and the competing state of Takrur—traders from Fez and Marrakesh in Morocco traveled what is sometimes called the Audaghost Trail through Sijilmasa and Wadan to Azukki or Audaghost and from there to Kumbi Saleh in Ghana, or to Takrur. For gold from the Bure fields, especially when the Empire of Mali was at its height, merchants traveled from Fez through Sijilmasa, Taghaza (or Tuat) and Tichitt-Walata, to Timbuktu and Djenné. Another route to gold from the Bure fields led from Algiers through Wargla, In Salah, and Arawan to Timbuktu. For gold from the Lobi-Pourra fields traders left Qayrawan in Tunisia and traveled through Wargla, In Salah, Tadmekka, and Timbuktu to Gao, a route particularly active during the Songhai Empire. From Tripoli, caravans traveled through Ghadames, Ghat, and Takedda or Agades to the Hausa cities of Katsina or Kano. Another route began in Tripoli and passed through Fezzan, Bilma, and Kanem to the Bornu city of Bauchi. Finally, from Cyrenaicain or Aujila in eastern Libya a route led through Wadai to Bornu. Not counting Cairo, Egypt, there were five major starting or ending points for the trade in the north (from which some gold and other products were regularly transported into the Mediterranean and Europe): Marrakesh, Fez, Algiers, Qayrawan, and Tripoli. There were also five major rendezvous stations where merchants gathered money, camels, drivers, guides, water, provisions, and trade goods for the journey south: Sijilmasa, In Salah, Wargla, Ghadames, and Aujila.

West-East Routes. There were two routes from Timbuktu or Gao to Egypt. One went through Takedda, Agades, Bilma, and Tibesti to Cairo. The other ran through Takedda, Ghat, Fezzan, and Aujila to Cairo. Also called the Gao or Mecca Road, this second route was the preferred route and was also used by West African Muslims on pilgrimages to Mecca.

Southern Routes. From the end points of the camelcaravan routes, trade goods were carried farther south to the forest regions by donkeys, human porters, or canoes. One route from Kumbi Saleh went through Diara, down the Senegal and Faleme Rivers to the Bambuk goldfields. Another led from Kumbi Saleh to Kangaba, down the Niger to the Bure goldfields. From Djenn´e one could travel through Bobo, Dyulasso, Kong, and Begho to Kumasi (in the modern nation of Ghana). From Kano a road led through Zaria and Old Oyo to Benin. Another road went from Katsina through Kano and Bauci to Wukari.

Economic and Social Consequences. The establishment of regular trade routes stimulated the development of various monetary systems in the Western Sudan, which used cowrie shells (from the Maldive Islands), strips of cotton cloth, minted gold dinars from North Africa, standard weights of gold dust, kola nuts, glass beads, and salt as currency. Trade also created a need among the indigenous kafu to control the centers of strategic productivity. For example, the Empire of Ghana extended its territory as far north as Audaghost in an attempt to secure direct access to salt production, while it simultaneously maintained direct linkages to the Bambuk goldfields across the Senegal River. Mali went even further north, capturing Taghaza for its salt mines and incorporating Bure, in the Niani region, for direct access to its gold. Songhai seized Takedda in the desert, mainly for its salt and copper, so the Songhai rulership could maintain direct control of salt and gold production at opposite ends of its territories.

Trade and State Building. Trans-Saharan trade also provided strong motivation for the formation of large Sudanic states and empires to protect traders and trade routes, which in turn brought in the necessary wealth to conduct wars of population and territorial expansion, to acquire horses and superior iron weaponry, to send thousands of soldiers into battle, and to outfit and maintain garrisons of soldiers in conquered provinces. The need for places where business could be transacted promoted increased urbanization in the Sudanic and Sahelian areas, from villages to walled cities and commercial centers with populations in excess of one hundred thousand residents. The rise of trade strongly promoted the specialization of clans and the establishment of clan “monopolies” in particular crafts, crucially important in iron smelting and smithing. Finally, the trans-Saharan trade brought the Sudanic states and their access to gold to the attention of the world outside the insular West African region.

Trade Commodities. Salt, gold, and slaves were the essential commodities throughout the 500-1590 period. Cloth also became an important trade good. A viable cloth-production industry began around the eleventh century in Djenné, Takrur, Timbuktu, and Gao and lasted well into the eighteenth century. By the thirteenth century, Timbuktu was reported to have more than twenty-six tailor shops with approximately one hundred apprentices in training at each one. The first cloth was made for local and intraregional consumption only, but production gradually became large enough and skilled enough to create textiles for regular export. The Western Sudan also imported European and Moroccan cloth and clothing, especially from the eleventh century onward. These textiles were generally for the elite—including resident foreign merchants, rulers, and highly placed administrative staff—rather than the local population. Modern archaeological excavations in the region have uncovered remains of silk clothing, presumably from commercial contacts with China or the Mongol Empire through the Maghrib. By the fifteenth century, the Portuguese were bringing in large quantities of cloth to pay for the slaves and gold. Copper from southern Morocco and the Byzantine Empire was also imported to the Sahel and the Western Sudan, as were silver, tin, lead, perfumes, bracelets, books, stone and coral beads, glass jewelry, and drinking implements. In addition to gold, slaves, and cloth, the Western Sudan exported animal hides, civet musk, spices, ambergris, kola nuts, and shea butter (used for cooking oil, lamp lighting, and soap manufacture). Kola nuts became one of the primary sources of income for Mali and Songhai. Dyula-Wangara traders carried them from their forest source to the savanna and Sahel in pouches of wet leaves to keep them fresh. They did not become an important product of international trade until the nineteenth century, but they were widely traded in the Western Sudan from the twelfth century onward. Known by several different names—“the nut,” “bitter fruit,” “carob of the Sudan,” and goro—kola nuts became important enough to be given as special presents by one ruler to another and to his honored guests. Kola nuts were frequently used in rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations. They were chewed to relieve thirst in desert caravans, and they were such a popular stimulant that their use by West Africans sometimes approximated addiction.

Pattern of Trade. By the eleventh century a typical caravan included one thousand camels. It might, for example, set out from Sijilmasa loaded with salt from Taghaza, foodstuffs, cloth, perfumes, and other goods from the Maghrib. Its next stop was Wadan, an oasis in the present-day nation of Mauritania, where some of the goods were sold and new items purchased; then the caravan went to Walata or Tichitt on the southern edge of the Sahara, and finally it went on to Timbuktu. From there the salt and other products would likely be taken by canoe to Niani or Djenné, where the salt was broken into smaller pieces and carried into the forest areas via the slave porters and donkeys of the Dyula-Wangara. These itinerant merchants traded the salt and other items from the north for forest gold, kola nuts, animal hides, and other products and then returned to Djenné, Niani, and Timbuktu. The number of camels on a return journey to Sijilmasa was typically less than half the number that arrived in Timbuktu because gold and other forest products were less bulky and much lighter in weight than the blocks of salt.

The Dyula-Wangara Trading Network. Only a small group of people in each state participated in longdistance trade in the Western Sudan. The bulk of the population was fishermen, herdsmen, agriculturalists, and hunter-soldiers. One group that was essential to the trade process was the itinerant Mande-speaking traders known as the Dyula or the Wangara, who from at least the eighth century operated trade routes along the upper Niger River from Timbuktu and across the Senegal. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they traveled into the

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Akan forests, as gold trade shifted from the upper Gambia and Casamance area of Bambuk to Bure. After the arrival of Europeans along the coast of West Africa, their routes took them southward from Niani to Worodugu along the Côte d’ivoire and the Gambia Valley to the western Atlantic coast, to the Portuguese fortress at Elmina and other European trading posts; they also traveled eastward into Hausaland. In fact, they attempted to dominate the role of commercial middleman throughout the region, linking Guinea, the northeast, and the northwest along the Djenné-Be’o-Bonduku route, establishing routes across the Gambia and Casamance Rivers, and connecting Bondu, Kedougou, Futa Djallon, Niokholo, and Dantilia. Leo Africanus, who visited the Songhai Empire in 1513-1515, described these itinerant merchants selling their wares throughout West Africa, and German explorer Heinrich Earth found them living and trading among the Hausa at Katsina in the nineteenth century. The Portuguese reported that Dyula-Wangara trading activities between the coast and the Sahel were so important that Europeans who hoped to have successful commercial ventures in the region should accommodate their plans to the habits of those indigenous traders or risk unnecessary disruptions in the flow of trade goods.

Insular Clan. The Dyula-Wangara have been described as a rather insular, endogamous clan of occupational merchants who characteristically married within their own group and traveled as whole families along established commercial routes. Their small to large donkey caravans carried books, slaves, cotton cloth, iron bars, kola nuts, gold, salt, perfumes, beads, cowries, and copper, among other items. They apparently enjoyed a special status in a broad area of West Africa and were allowed to travel even through war zones without fear of harm from either side of the combatants. The Dyula-Wangara were recognizable by several other names in West Africa, including Marka among the Bambara, Yarse among the Mossi-Dagomba between Djenné and the Ashanti region, and Malinke-Mori in Guinea and the Ivory Coast region. By the seventeenth century, they were also called Kong, Bobo-Dyulasso, Buna, Bonduku, Black Volta Gonja, Diakhanke, and “Mary Bucks” (marabouts) after towns and settlements they founded with those names.

African Jews. From the twelfth century onward, significant numbers of Jews residing in Morocco helped to finance and expand the trans-Saharan trade. They migrated from southern Morocco, especially Wadi Dara, into the Sahel. By the fifteenth century, Jews made up roughly half the population of Sijilmasa in southeastern Morocco, the central city for the trans-Saharan trade going to Ghana and the rest of the Western Sudan. Becoming well known as merchants, financiers, goldsmiths, and silversmiths, they invested in long-distance trade along the principal routes from Sijilmasa to Walata through Taghaza. In addition to organizing caravans, they operated sections of the continuous traders’ market in Sijilmasa, and they exported goods to Europe, Egypt, and other areas. Jewish goldsmiths and silversmiths also resided in Walata and Audaghost, and the oral traditions of Mauritania credit them with introducing goldsmithing in the Sahel and savanna. Gold from the Sahel was regularly exported north in twisted threads and coils that were fashioned by Jewish goldsmiths or smiths they had taught.

Sources

Adu Boahen, with J. F. Ade. Ajayi and Michae Tidy, Topics in West African History, second edition (Harlow, U.K.: Longman, 1986).

Robert O. Collins, Western African History (Princeton: Wiener, 1990).

J. Devisse, “Trade and Trade Routes in West Africa,” in Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century, edited by M. El Fasi and I. Hrbek, volume 3 of General History of Africa (London: Heinemann / Berkeley: University of California Press / Paris: UNESCO, 1988), pp. 367-435.

Raymond Mauny, Tableau géographique de l ‘Ouest africain au Moyen Age, d’après les sources écrites, la tradition et I’archéologie (Dakar: IFAN, 1961).