Trans Saharan Trade
Trans Saharan Trade: Before the Romans came to North Africa, trade went across the Sahara between North Africa and the West African Sudan. The camel was the only animal suitable for regular, large-scale trade in the Sahara during the first few hundred years. When the Arabs took over North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries, the trans-Saharan caravan trade grew. This was a big reason why there were governments south of the Sahara.
Going north, the main goods were gold, slaves, spices, leather, and later ostrich feathers. Going south, the main goods were guns, horses, textiles, and paper. From the eighth century on, North African Arabic writers get more specific about kingdoms in the Western Sudan that were on the edges of the Sahel and Sahara: Takrur in the far west, on the Senegal; Ghana in the open Sahel farther east; and Gao on the Niger bend, which became the center of the Songhay empire.
The Malinke people were reportedly building a kingdom further south on the upper Niger and its branches in the eleventh century. This kingdom was a likely ancestor of the Mali empire. Until the 1590s, these states were the foundation of the political and business powers in western Sudan (Curtin et al., 1984).
Permanent towns in Saharan pastoral nomad areas were also very important, such as Aoudaghost in Mauritania, Tadamakkat-Es-Suk in Mali, and Takadda-Azelik in Niger. These places were important for trade, religious learning, and the arts. Islamic learning took place in places like Timbuktu, Jenne, Takedda, and Gazargamu from the 1400s to the 1600s. From these places, Islamic scholars rose to power as officials, scribes, envoys, and peacemakers.
Scholars and mystics who lived in the Mali Adrar and the Air Mountains built cells and monasteries there. Many of the Shaharans were descendants of Arab and Berber families who had lived in these areas for hundreds of years. One of them was Massufa Sahhaja. They regarded the Inessufa Icherifan as their ancestors. These people, who now live mostly around the town of In Gall in Niger, around Takadda (Azelik), and in Agadez itself, were in charge of the copper and salt complex of Takadda in the Middle Ages.
In addition, they resided in Anu Samman, the “town of scholars,” whose ruins are located west of Agadez. Before Agadez gained fame, Takadda established itself as a hub for commerce and the teaching of Islamic studies (Norris 1990). Political groups, sometimes at odds with each other, could conduct business thanks to the infrastructure of these settled centers and the setup of the caravan trade.
At the edge of the desert, trans-Saharan trade came together. A state that didn’t move around much and was close to the desert would want to control the desert ports and as much of the border between the desert and the grassland as possible. Because there were only a few buyers and sellers, there was no need to set a market price when trading gold for salt.
The few salt sources in the Sahara made it easy to control who got the salt. In the same way, one state could rule all of gold, but no country south of the Sahara has ever taken over the three main gold fields in West Africa. The people who lived in the oases and across the Sahara gained from this trade by setting up markets there or by getting tolls and protection money from foreign traders.
The group controlling the trade route could also exert control over the local population, thereby converting these profits into political wealth. Farmers could use the money to cultivate crops in areas near deserts. In local and regional trade, salt has been the most important good. People in the south have traded salt for rice or other foods.
The deserts of Mauritania and Mali, the Saharan Tenere in eastern Niger near Fachi, and the Kawar region at Bilma all contain significant amounts of it. The first known rock salt mine was in Idjil, which is now Mauritania. From the 10th century to the 15th, workers dug up the reserves.
During the 1400s, Taghaza, which is now Mali, was also fully operational. Taodeni (Taghaza al Ghizlan) replaced Taghaza after its destruction in the 1600s. By the mid-1900s, it was still making several thousand tons of salt every year.
The Tuareg participated in the salt trade, and they used the money they made from selling salt and dates to buy things like indigo cloth, spices, household items, and tools. Large yearly caravans of several thousand camels each brought salt and dates to markets in cities on the Sahel’s edge.
Tuareg traders made most of the money from the salt trade, though, compared to other trans-Saharan trades. At first, there were three trans-Saharan travel routes used for this trade. Over time, only two routes remained important: the route east to Bilma and the route to Fachi for salt and dates. In October or November, men from the Air region go on leave. They trade millet for salt and dates in that place, then go back to the air for a short time before going south to Kano to trade millet, salt, and dates there.
Five to seven months out of the year, caravanners stay in the Hausa Southlands and bring back millet, tools, pots, cloth, spices, and other things. They used camel pastures to the west to feed them before they left.
One camel carried three sacks of millet from Hausaland. When trucks started crossing the Sahara, they didn’t replace camel caravans, but they did make them less important because one truck can carry as much as twenty camels’ loads. There are camel caravanners who go themselves, as well as those who send family members or former slaves who are still working for the caravanner’s family.
If a caravanner takes one camel, he gets to keep half a sack of millet. If he takes six camels, for example, he gets to keep three sacks, while the owner who sent him gets fifteen sacks, and so on. Nobles used to bring back one sack of millet for each family of a smith or craft client.
Before, slaves went with the caravans to cook and take care of the horses. Tuareg noble women haven’t usually gone on caravan trade trips; in the past, only slave women went to cook and gather firewood. However, women can be indirectly involved in the caravan trade by sending camels with male relatives (Rasmussen 1998).
The trans-Saharan trade mostly involved Tuareg people as guides, messengers, and hired security guards. They also held control over a significant amount of desert-edge goods intended for export across the Sahara. In the 1870s, Sudan’s exports of ostrich feathers grew quickly. They dropped again in the 1880s, but by the 1890s, they made up about half of the country’s total export value.
North Africans who lived outside of North Africa, mostly from Ghadames, provided most of the money for the feather trade. There weren’t many nomads with the money to spend directly on trans-Saharan trade. Instead, camel owners received payment for each load they transported, allowing North Africans to manage the logistics due to their greater market knowledge and financial connections.
Trade was what kept the Mali and Songhay countries going. The discovery of trade routes in new areas, particularly in the Americas, led to a decrease in both the volume and value of trade. For instance, traders could buy and sell gold across the Atlantic. Ships could sail to the coast of West Africa and back to Europe by the middle of the 1400s, thanks to the development of the lateen sail and the stern-post rudder.
People who wanted to trade with West Africans no longer had to cross the desert. As a result, long-distance trade moved away from the Sahel and toward the ports of Africa.
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