Gold, salt and the Sahara roads (to c. 1235)

Part oneAcross the sand sea

The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, but it was never a wall. For centuries before Islam, people crossed it by known routes between oases. When the camel came into wide use, crossings grew longer and regular. After the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the seventh century, Arab and Berber merchants took over these roads and used them more than anyone had before.

The trade rested on two goods. In the middle of the desert lay mines of rock salt, such as Taghaza, where slabs of salt were cut from the ground. South of the desert, people of the Sahel and the forests needed salt to live and had little of their own. They had gold instead, from fields along the upper Niger and Senegal rivers. Caravans of camels carried salt south and brought gold north to towns such as Sijilmasa in Morocco, and from there it travelled on to Cairo, Spain and the Mediterranean.

The merchants were Muslims, and where they settled, Islam arrived with them. They built small mosques in the market towns, kept their prayers and fasts in front of their hosts, and married local women and raised Muslim children. Clerics travelled with them or after them, opened schools and became advisers to kings. Nobody conquered the Sahel for Islam. It came on foot and by camel, through trade and teaching.

Part twoGhana and its twin towns

The first great state of the region was Ghana, in the lands north of the upper Niger, far from the modern country of that name. Its people, the Soninke, controlled the gold that came out of the south. The Andalusian geographer al-Bakri described its capital in the eleventh century. It was two towns a few miles apart. One belonged to the Muslims, with many mosques, imams and scholars. The other was the king's town, with the sacred groves of the old religion and one mosque for Muslims who came to court.

The king of Ghana was not a Muslim, but he kept Muslims as advisers and officials, among them his treasurer, because they could write and keep records. Muslims were excused the prostration that his own subjects made before him and greeted him by clapping instead. Each side gave a little. The king needed the trade, and the Muslims knew that a quarrel over religion could close the roads.

In the eleventh century a reforming movement rose among the Berbers of the western Sahara, the Almoravids, al-Murabitun, who followed a teacher named Ibn Yasin. They took control of the desert routes, and in 1076 or 1078 they took Ghana. They did not wipe out the local faiths, but after them more of the Soninke elite became Muslim, and Ghana slowly faded.

Part threeThe first Muslim kings

Other rulers had already accepted Islam on their own. Gao, on the bend of the Niger, had a Muslim king by about 985 CE. On the Senegal River, War Jabi, king of Tekrur, became Muslim in the 1030s and brought in Islamic law, and his people, the Tukulor, followed him. Al-Idrisi wrote that Tekrur's sultan was firm, patient and known for justice.

Al-Bakri also tells of a small kingdom called Malel on the upper Niger. A long drought had ruined its crops. A Muslim teacher who lived there told the king that if he accepted Islam and prayed, God might send rain. The king learned some verses of the Quran and the duties of the faith, made ablution, and prayed beside the teacher through the night on a hill. In the morning the rain came. The king became a Muslim and was known after that as al-Muslimani. Malel stood in the Mandinka homeland, the land that would become Mali.

From the Quran

فَقُلْتُ ٱسْتَغْفِرُوا۟ رَبَّكُمْ إِنَّهُۥ كَانَ غَفَّارًا ۝١٠ يُرْسِلِ ٱلسَّمَآءَ عَلَيْكُم مِّدْرَارًا ۝١١ وَيُمْدِدْكُم بِأَمْوَٰلٍ وَبَنِينَ وَيَجْعَل لَّكُمْ جَنَّـٰتٍ وَيَجْعَل لَّكُمْ أَنْهَـٰرًا ۝١٢

¹⁰saying, ‘Seek your Lord’s forgiveness, ˹for˺ He is truly Most Forgiving. ¹¹He will shower you with abundant rain, ¹²supply you with wealth and children, and give you gardens as well as rivers.

Nobody conquered the Sahel for Islam. It came by camel, through trade and teaching.

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The mapWhere it happened

• Sijilmasa
• Taghaza
• Awdaghust
• Kumbi Saleh
• Gao
• Tekrur
• the Niger
• the Senegal

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter