Page 107 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

1884 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

the lands of pagan black Africans (Sudan is the Arabic became the monopoly of Sudanic merchants who them-
word for “black”) was not entirely acceptable.This situa- selves became Muslims.
tion changed in the eleventh century when, under the
impetus of the desert-based Almoravid empire, the Slaves
Berbers of the western Sahara converted to very strict The other major trans-Saharan export of this era, slaves,
Sunni Islam and the rulers of adjoining Sudanic states came mainly from central rather than western Sudan.The
such as medieval Ghana also become Muslims. Indeed, Islamic Middle East and adjoining Christian societies had
the Sahara then became not only a commercial highway a great need for slaves to perform household chores, carry
but also a route of Islamic pilgrimage and advanced reli- out agricultural labor (although never on a scale compa-
gious education for devout Sudanis. rable to European New World plantations), and to serve
as military forces. Immediately after the Arab conquest of
Gold North Africa many Berbers were forced into slavery, and
Along with horses, the goods taken by caravans into later a brisk trade in captives supplied the Mediterranean
western and central Sudan included such items as cloth, from the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.
glassware, weapons, ceramic and metal housewares, However, sub-Saharan Africa soon became the largest
paper, and books. As exports, these cargoes played little supplier of such human commodities, not only on trans-
role in the international economy, since they were simi- Saharan routes but also along the Nile Valley and via the
lar to commodities already circulating within the coasts of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.
Mediterranean and the volume of items traded was not The total number of slaves who crossed the Sahara
large enough to make much impact upon Mediterranean between 800 and 1900 is about 4 million. When the
commerce or its production base. It was, however, highly numbers transported to Islamic lands by other routes is
significant that for such a low barter price (but at high added, the total comes close to the 11 to 12 million esti-
risk for those who actually crossed the desert) the mated for the Atlantic slave trade, mainly between 1650
Mediterranean world could obtain what were then con- and 1850. However, the Muslim trade was not only
sidered quite large amounts of gold (a little more than spread out over a much longer period, it also brought
one ton per annum). Gold not only had value in the Africans into situations where they were much less seg-
Muslim and Christian Mediterranean lands for coinage, regated from the indigenous population. Almost all
jewelry, and storing wealth, but it was also needed to African slaves in the Muslim world converted to Islam,
purchase luxury goods from India, Southeast Asia, and and very frequently they were assimilated into local soci-
China, regions that had little interest in Middle Eastern ety through either manumission or intermarriage.
or European exports. Descendants of black slaves form a large portion of the
Gold crossed the Sahara by western caravan routes present-day North African population and are much less
whose southern termini were towns located in present- marked than in the New World as a separate social, cul-
day Mauritania or along the northern bend of the Niger tural, or racial group.
river. The actual sources of gold lay considerably to the
south of these desert-edge entrepôts around the Senegal Caravans
river, the southwestern Niger Valley, and the Volta River The caravans that brought slaves and trade goods across
basin. Camel caravans could not travel into such climates, the desert, especially from north to south, were often very
and Sudanic rulers even discouraged their exploration by large, amounting to as many as five thousand camels and
North Africans, claiming that the inhabitants were exotic hundreds of people. They traveled mainly during the
and dangerous savages. In reality there were few cultural cooler seasons of the year, from October to March, and
differences between the gold-bearing zones and those just even then moved mainly at night to avoid the intense
south of the Sahara. However, commerce between them Saharan heat. Caravans usually assembled at entrepôt