Trans-Saharan Gold Trade
Around 1000 AD, the trans-Saharan trade was one of the most consequential commercial networks in the medieval world. Caravans carried gold from West Africa across the desert to North Africa and the Mediterranean, and brought salt, cloth, copper, and other goods south. The trade enriched powerful states, spread Islam and literacy across the Sahel, and supplied much of the gold that circulated in Europe and the Islamic world. A note on dates: the trade did not begin in a single year, and 1000 AD is a convenient marker for a system already well established.
Long-distance desert crossings existed before the medieval period, but they expanded greatly after the introduction of the domesticated camel to the Sahara in the first centuries AD, and especially after Muslim North Africa became a major market in the centuries following the 600s. Berber merchants, the oasis towns of the Sahara, and trading cities on the desert's southern edge such as Awdaghust and later Timbuktu formed the links in the chain. Gold came mainly from fields in regions such as Bambuk and Bure, near the upper Senegal and Niger rivers, while salt, scarce in the savanna, was mined in the desert at places like Taghaza.
The empire of Ghana, centered in the region of present-day southeastern Mauritania and western Mali, is the best-known beneficiary of the early trade. Arab writers of the 900s and 1000s, such as al-Bakri, described its rulers as extremely wealthy and noted that the state taxed goods moving in and out. Historians believe the gold itself was mined by communities outside direct imperial control, and that rulers profited chiefly by taxation and by managing trade. Ghana here is not the modern country of that name, which lies farther southeast.
Mali later inherited and expanded this commercial role. Its rise in the 1200s, associated with the founder Sundiata, brought the gold fields under much firmer control. The most famous episode came in 1324, when the ruler Mansa Musa made a pilgrimage to Mecca, giving away so much gold in Cairo that, according to contemporary accounts, it affected the metal's value there. After this, Mali appeared on European maps as a land of fabulous riches.
The consequences were wide-ranging. Muslim merchants and scholars settled in Sahelian towns, and cities like Timbuktu and Gao grew into centers of trade and learning. Gold fed the mints of North Africa and, indirectly, Europe, and it later drew Portuguese sailors down the Atlantic coast in search of its source. The overland trade declined in relative importance as maritime routes developed, but it left a lasting mark on the religion, politics, and cultural life of West Africa.