kuniga.me > Books > The Golden Trade of the Moors

The Golden Trade of the Moors

The book tells the history of the trans-Saharan caravans, in particular between West Africa and Northwest Africa.

Summary

What motivated the trade through the Sahara was that North Africa was connected to Europe via the Mediterranean while West Africa, especially the interior, was more isolated and the main way to connect with the outer world was via North Africa but that required crossing the Sahara. West Africa provided gold, ivory and slaves, while North Africa provided salt and textile.

More broadly this book covers the history of a region the book calls the Sudan, not to be confused with present day Sudan nor South Sudan, but rather a region in the west comprising today’s Mali, Niger and Chad. It also covers a bit the history of Morocco.

It starts from Roman times during which a small amount of trade happened between Romans in Tripolitania (region in today’s Libya) and the Garamantes in Fezzan (Southern Algeria) - who acted as intermediaries to traders further south. During this time the camel was introduced to Africa which enabled the arduous crossing of the desert.

In later times the Berber tribes such as the Sanhaja confederation were the ones running the desert caravans between the Ghana empire and the North (Morocco, Ifriquia, Andalucia). In the 11th century the Almoravids, a Sanhaja tribe, took control of Morocco and officialized the caravan trading. After the Almohads took over they were less connected with the caravan trade since they were from a different Berber tribe. Control started becoming more decentralized to individual merchants.

In the 13th century the Mali empire rose to power and control of gold production shifted east. The famous Mansa Musa was one of the emperors of this empire. In the 15th century the Songhai empire emerged centered in Gao, shifting the gold trade further east.

In 1561 the new ruling dynasty of Morocco, the Saadian Al-Mansur defeated the Songhai empire, taking over control of Timbuktu. The Moroccans gained control of this region of the trading route but not of the final goldfields. The invasion had the effect of destabilizing the region which hurt gold trade. At the same time Europeans like Portugal started reaching further south along the Atlantic and creating ports on the coast south of the Sahara, which provided an alternative route for the trade from the South.

Afterwards there was never a central power in the region. The garrisons left by the Saadians became increasingly independent and intermixed with the locals. There were some smaller kingdoms like the Benue, Fulani and Hausa in the region. The nail in the coffin of the caravans was put by the French colonizers, who introduced railways to the region and defined country borders which cut off network links.

Slave trade happened in parallel to the gold trade but it was secondary to gold. By the time slavery really picked up, the Atlantic trade already dominated.

The book also covers the lives of famous people such as Mansa Musa, Ibn Battuta, Leo Africanus, who either were part of the region or spent time there.

Interesting Topics

Salt for Gold

The trade of salt for gold is one of the most fascinating aspects of the book. According to it, gold was dug by the Wangara, who lived in caves or pits. The way they traded was by leaving piles of gold outside and waited for the visiting traders to place piles of salt and other goods next to the gold. The outsiders would retreat and the Wangara would come out: If they were not satisfied with the amount they would remove part of the gold. This process avoided contact and relied entirely on trust.

However it seems like this was a myth and I don’t recall the book mentioning that. It’s more likely silent trade happened due to language barriers but not as without contact as suggested. What was true is that gold was abundant in the region, but salt was lacking so the economy of supply and demand took effect.

European Renegades

During the conquest of the Songhai empire the elite soldiers from al-Mansur’s military entourage were European, especially from Andalusia. In fact, war with Spain provided Morocco with access to modern firearms which in turn enabled them to defeat the more numerous Songhai empire.

Exonyms

I find it interesting that many words in use today with negative connotation were used by Western civilization to refer to other people. For example, Berber and barbarian have the same root. Another example is the word vandal, which came from the Vandal people.

From this book I learned about the word troglodyte. It means cave-dweller and it was first used by the Greeks to refer to people in North Africa who lived in caves. The demonym Ethiopian comes from the Greek for “burnt-faced people”.

The word “sudan” comes from the Arabic for “the lands of the black peoples” and “maghrib” means “west”.

Conclusion

I liked the theme of the book and the overall content, but I didn’t like the organization of the book. I found that the topics were disjoint and felt like the author could have made the themes of the caravans a bit more central and discuss the topics in relation to it. I got a much better picture when writing a summary and doing extra reading / search to complement.

The edition I got also had some bad typos, like entire words missing from a phrase.