Following up on Champagne Fairs: An Important Center for European Trade, this week we’ll go back and discuss the Trans-Saharan trade network in further detail. Specifically, from the standpoint of the kingdom of ancient Ghana, Wagadu.

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The Trans-Saharan trade network, facilitated trade between sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. It was not a single, continuous route, but rather a complex network of interconnected routes active from approximately the 7th to the 11th century AD.

Not connected geographically to the modern state of Ghana, the Empire of Ghana occupied an area that included the present-day nations of Mauritania and Mali. It was one of the first of three powerful centralized states to emerge in the savanna, a vast, flat grassland area between the Sahara Desert on the north and the coastal rain forest along the Atlantic Ocean to the south.

Trade across the Sahara gradually intensified between the 5th and 7th centuries. In the 8th and 9th centuries, a series of main links became established. These developments were made possible primarily as the result of two important changes:

1. Ghana emerged as one of the earliest large-scale political entity in the region.
2. The Islamic conquest of North Africa led to the rise of Muslim states and a general cultural unification of the region.

These developments brought people with shared interests together in conditions that enabled them to consolidate and expand their economic interests, particularly as demand increased for gold.

In addition to income from passing trade, the Ghana Empire had access to its own resources, notably iron ore and gold.  Local deposits of copper were exploited and used for trade, while metalworking in the region, as indicated by archaeological finds, dates back to at least the 6th century.

At its peak, Ghana was chiefly bartering gold, ivory, and slaves for salt from Arabs and horses, cloth, swords, and books from North Africans and Europeans. Much like imports/exports today, merchants who traveled through the Sahara to reach Ghana were taxed for both what was imported as well as what they exported.

In the mid-11th century, a Muslim group known as the Almoravids launched an invasion on the capital city of Koumbi Saleh. Weakened by subsequent attacks, and cut-off from international trade, the kingdom of Ghana was unable to prevent defeat. The empire faded toward the end of the 11th century, when its power was broken by a long struggle with the Almoravids led by 'Abdullah ibn Yasin. Ghana subsequently fell to the expanding Soso kingdom.

Dinga Cisse is considered the first ruler of unified Ghana. He established the capital at Kumbi Saleh which sat along one of the emerging Trans-Saharan trade routes. Later the city of Awdaghust became another major commercial center.

In the early 13th century, the exiled prince Sundiata Keita led a Mande revolt against the Soso king Sumanguru Kante that marked the ascension of the Mali empire.

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