Unit IV

Unit Summary

The most northerly belt is the intensely arid Sahara, home to oasis-dwellers and pastoral nomads. Just south of the desert is the semiarid Sahel zone, where cattle and camel herding predominated. Third is the tropical grassland, or savanna, which had sufficient rainfall to support farmers and their fields of rice, sorghum, and millet. In the far south is the wet tropical forest. There, settled life depended on cultivation of root crops and other forest foods. In the Sahel and savanna, agriculture and herding supported the growth of regional trade. Tracing a great arc across West Africa, the Niger River provided a natural highway of communication linking different ecological zones. Farming, trade, and early development of iron smelting stimulated town building. The city of Jenne-jeno, built in the early centuries CE, was home to artisans who produced iron tools, copperware, gold jewelry, and fine painted ceramics.

In addition to local markets, West Africa contained rich deposits of gold. Both Muslim and Christian rulers and traders in the Mediterranean region craved African gold, notably for coinage. West African merchants acquired gold from mines in the Sudan and shipped it to towns in the Sahel, where Arab and Berber merchants carried the gold north on trans-Saharan camel caravan routes. Some of this African bullion then flowed into Europe or eastward toward India.

The centralized state of Ghana emerged around the eighth century in the western part of the Sahel zone. The king of Ghana commanded a large royal household, a hierarchy of officials, and an army of infantry archers. The Ghana empire had Muslim officials, though the kings probably did not convert. Ghana slowly crumbled in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but around 1240, Mali emerged to rule over a large part of the western Sudan. Mali’s rulers accumulated wealth collecting tribute from African farmers and taxing trans-Saharan trade. The royal court employed staffs of both foreign and native-born Muslims as administrators, and Arabic became the written language of government and diplomacy. Most of the kings and their officials professed Islam and introduced Islamic law, though most of West Africa’s population adhered to their local religions for several more centuries. In the 1300s Timbuktu, a city near the Niger River, rose as a regional center of trade and Islamic learning.

The gold trade across the Sahara involved Ghana and Mali in Afroeurasian trade networks. Northbound caravans also shipped ivory, ostrich feathers, and slaves captured in raids and wars. Merchants marched these captives, including many women, to the Mediterranean or Middle East principally to serve in Muslim households. The southbound trade included salt from Saharan mines, a commodity that commanded huge demand in West Africa. Other southbound commodities included copper, horses, and Arabic books. Arabic- and Berber-speaking merchants from North Africa likely introduced Islam to West Africa in the eighth century. They established bonds with Sudanic traders, many of whom converted to the new faith. Even for those Africans who did not convert to Islam, Muslim culture had a significant impact on West African architecture, education, and languages.