Pekka Masonen
University of Tampere
|
In spite of her vast geographical dimensions and natural extremes, the Saharahas never been a barrier which had completely isolated Black Africa from othercivilisations, in the same sense as the Atlantic Ocean separated the New Worldfrom the Old. Yet it was not a long time ago when European historians werewilling to explain that the apparent backwardness of African cultures was aconsequence of their lack of contacts with the outside world. Contrary to thisopinion was the more widespread tendency to claim that all progress in Africanpast had been initiated by invasions of more advanced peoples arriving from theMediterranean. This idea was propagated especially by colonial writers who wereeager to find traces of Egyptian, Jewish, Phoenician, Roman and Arab culturalinfluence everywhere in Africa, including the southernmost tip of CapeProvince. Today this arrogant attitude is often replaced by a more neutralconcept of cultural diffusion, although the fundamental idea is still intact:the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa were not able to develope any innovationslike metallurgy, urbanism, or state-formation themselves, but already since thedistant past they have needed the help of foreign advisors.
However, the notion that Africans have always been nothing but passive objectsin their encounter with other civilisations, "having no interests to explorethe world outside their own home village," is both oversimplified andahistorical. The establisment and success of regular trans-Saharan trade, forexample, was not possible without the active participation of West Africans whounderstood perfectly well, how to utilize the new opportunities offered by thecommercial contacts to the Islamic world. Yet, in the authorized Africanhistoriography, this point is usually passed over with few words only.
The trans-Saharan trade was not merely an economic phenomenon, but it connectedWestern Africa to the Mediterranean world on the intellectual level, too.Listening the tales of traders, the medieval Arab geographers learnt to knowthe sub-Saharan Africa which they called Bilad al-Sudan, "The Land of theBlacks", although their knowledge covered only the areas lying close to thedesert edge, Sahil, or "the shore". In Christian Europe, the gradualaccumulation of rumours concerning the treasures of Western Africa encouragedthe Portuguese to seek their way to the fabulous Guinea where gold was said togrow in earth like carrots. The Arab and European discovery of sub-SaharanAfrica is documented and discussed in numerous works - much less attention hasbeen paid on the West African discovery of the world behind the Sahara. Areason for this silence is certainly the lack of evidence: it is extremelydifficult to reconstruct the West African idea of the world, contemporary tothat of the medieval European and Arab, because those West Africans who crossedthe Sahara left no documents, and all that is known about them is based onaccounts written by others. Yet there are some pieces of information both inthe contemporary and in the later Arabic and European sources which allow us tomake speculations - or at least questions - concerning the West Africanknowledge of outside world during the age when the caravans of Sahara were theonly link between the African, the Islamic, and the European cultures.
Establishment of the early trans-Saharan contacts is customarily attributed tothe Libyan tribe of Garamantes. According to the Greek historian Herodotus,they hunted with their chariots the Ethiopian Troglodytes, or "cave-dwellers",who lived in the desert. This account has been associated with the rockpaintings depicting horse-pulled chariots, the first of which were found inFezzan in the early 1930s. Afterwards more paintings were discovered in Tassiliand southern Morocco, and they seem to form two tracks leading to the directionof the Niger Bend. Subsequently, a theory was created, according to which theGaramantes (or alternatively some other Saharan people) had carried WestAfrican gold and ivory to the markets of Carthage and Rome.
The theory of chariot routes became soon widely accepted, and it is still foundin numerous general histories of Africa, although severe criticism against itshistoricity began in the early 1970s. Opposers of the theory have correctlypointed out that the existence of paintings depicting chariots is notsufficient proof that the desert was ever crossed with such vehicles.Furthermore, all paintings depict light, two-wheeled chariots. According to theexperimental tests made by French researchers, these tiny vehicles, which havehardly room enough even for the driver, cannot be used for transporting heavymaterial for long distances. It is also interesting that no skeletal remains ofhorses, contemporary to the paintings which were created during a long periodreaching from 1000 BC till 500 AD, has been found in southern Mauritania or inthe vicinity of Niger Bend. Thus it is likely that the rock paintings representnothing but the diffusion of a form of art from the Mediterranean coast to thesouthern Sahara.
On the other hand, there are few mentions in classical Graeco-Roman literature,which suggest that some occasional contacts did really take place. Herodotus,for example, has another interesting account, according to which some youthsbelonging to the Libyan tribe of Nasamones travelled to the south until thearrived in a swampy area. There they met small-sized black men who took theminto their town. This story has been associated both with the "little people",a common element in West African oral tradition referring to the originalinhabitants of the area, and with the geographical conditions of the Nigerinland delta. On these grounds, it has been suggested that the young Nasamoneshad reached the Niger valley. According to another Greek writer, Marinus ofTyre, a Roman merchant called Julianus Maternus had travelled with the King ofthe Garamantes to a land called Agisymba where he had seen a lot of rhinoceros.Since no rhinoceros lived in Northern Africa in the classical Antiquity, it iswidely assumed that Julianus Maternus probably visited the areas of northernChad.
There is also some archaeological evidence of the early contacts of WestAfricans with the classical world. Some Roman objects, dated to the 3rd centuryAD, has been found in Abalessa, in Ahaggar, in the so called tomb of queen TinHinan. Beyond Ahaggar, Roman objects are, however, extremely rare: only twocoins has been found in southern Mauritania, although they are not necessarilyended up there during the Antiquity, for Roman coins were circulating inNorthern Africa still in the Islamic period. Yet some new and interestingobjects have recently came into daylight. In Jenne-Jenó, "the oldJenne", archaeologists have found foreign beads which are dated to the secondcentury AD. Furthermore, a Hellenistic statuette depicting a feminine Janus,which was made in Cyrenaica in the second century AD, was found in 1976 in theRepublic of Niger. It is quite probable that more such discoveries will appearin the future, since the excavations in the Niger valley are only at thebeginning: the large man-madetumuli around the Niger bend, for example,are still untouched.
The discovery of Graeco-Roman objects does not, of course, prove that any Greekor Roman merchant had ever visited Jenne-Jenó or any other urbansettlement in the Niger valley. Contrariwise, it is most likely that theseobjects had ended up to the south of Sahara through many intermediators thelast of whom have hardly had any idea of the origins of the objects. But whowere these intermediators?
In spite of the fearless Garamantes with their galloping horses, the realinitiators of trans-Saharan trade were the Berber nomads who frequently crossedthe desert with their camel flocks. The nomads, who resided at southern edge ofSahara, left to the north in the beginning of the rainy season, returning backby the eve of the dry season. While staying in their pastures in southernMorocco and the Atlas mountains, these nomads have certainly met people who, intheir turn, had contacts beyond the Roman limes. As the nomads learned to knowthe great value of gold in Roman world, they perhaps started bartering it fromthe peoples of West Africa for salt and copper. The gold was carried to thenorth, where it was probably used for payment of dates, corn and suchhandycrafts which the nomads could not produce themselves. The nomads may havebought also some luxury objects made in the Roman world, which they barteredfor gold in the south. This trade could have started only after the adoption ofdromedary by the Saharan peoples, for horses do not survive in the harshconditions of the desert. The camels were important not so much as mounts thanbeasts of burden, for they enabled to transport efficiently both themerchandizes and the food and water which were needed during the crossing ofthe desert; the traders usually walked all the way. Customarily the adoption ofthe dromedary in Northern Africa is dated to the beginning of our era, and onthe grounds of classical literature its introduction is attributed to theRomans. However, some camel bones have been found recently in the Senegalvalley, and they are dated to the third century AD, suggesting that thedromedary was domesticated by Saharan inhabitants at least by that time, sincethere never lived any wild camels in Africa.
What were the consequences of these sporadic contacts? First, it seems thatthey did not increase at all the knowledge of sub-Saharan African among theMediterranean peoples. According to the survived classical sources, ancientgeographers believed that after the fertile North African littoral begannothing but a vast, arid, hot and uninhabited desert. The same can be said ofWest Africans who were presumably not aware of the existence of Mediterraneanpeoples either. Secondly, the volume of the trade must have been humble, forthe Roman empire made no effective efforts to expand her political dominancebeyond thelimes. Neither had the Romans any economic reason to developecloser commercial contacts with the unknown lands in the south, because theyobtained all the merchandize the West Africans could offer them, namely gold,ivory, exotic beasts and slaves, more easily within her own borders or from thenearby frontier areas in Europe and the Middle East. Similarly, the Roman worldhad very few products which could have encouraged the West Africans to increasethe volume of trade.
Finally, no significant cultural influences did spread through these earlycontacts, but urbanisation and state-formation started in Western Africaindependently without any impulses from the Mediterranean civilisations. Therewas a radical interruption in the pottery used in the Niger valley during thethird century AD, correlating thus with the adoption of dromedary, whichsuggests that fundamental changes in social organisation took place by thattime. However, there are no signs of any alien conquest of the area and it wascertainly the accumulation of wealth produced by the internal trade, ratherthan the vague extenal trade, which gave birth to the first West African states.
In fact, it seems that regular and intensive trade across the desert wasorganized quite soon after the Arabs had consolided their power in NorthernAfrica: both the major northern terminals of the trans-Saharan routes,Sijilmasa and Tahert, were founded in mid-8th century AD. However, the tradecould succeed only because it managed to join up with the internal West Africancommercial network. By the arrival of first North African traders, perhaps inthe early 8th century, the peoples of the savanna had already established largestates, like Ghana and Gao, and cities, like Jenne which had some twentythousand inhabitants. But new cities were also born at the desert edge, likeAwdaghust, Kumbi Saleh and Tadamakka, and their destiny was tied closely withthe continuity of the long distance trade: when the caravan routes laterchanged and the volume of trade declined, these towns, too, were soonabandoned. There were three basic routes across the Sahara: the "western",leading from Sijilmasa to Awdaghust; the "central", and the most important,leading from Ifriqiya to the Niger bend; and the "Egyptian", leading from Egyptto the Niger bend via Siwa and Kufra, which was, however, abandoned in the 10thcentury as it was too dangerous.
Very little is known about the volume of the trans-Saharan trade during thefirst Islamic centuries. According to the contemporary Arabic sources, thecaravans brought to the north annually huge amounts of gold, but modernestimates range from 2,000 to 3,000 kg per year. Nevertheless, a real boom inthe trade began in the 10th century, with the establishment of the Fatimidcaliphate in Northern Africa in 910. The reason was that the Fatimids, who werein rivalry both with the Umayyads of Spain and the Abbasids of Baghdad, neededconstantly lots of gold to finance their continuous wars and extensivereligious propaganda. The rise of Fatimids also meant that the western routebecame the most important, since their access to the central route was blockedby the Ibadites who still held Wargla. Yet the transfer of the Fatimid capitalfrom Ifriqiya to Egypt in 971 caused a brief period of stagnation in the trade.Residing in Cairo, the Fatimid caliphs were no more interested in North Africanaffairs, since they could obtain gold more easily from Nubian mines.
A second boom took place in the late 11th century, as the Almoravids unitedwestern Sahara, Morocco and Islamic Spain into a single empire. Like theFatimids, the Almoravids needed also lot of gold to finance their wars againstthe Christians in Spain and the rebelling Almohads in Maghrib. During theAlmoravid period, gold seems to have flowed to the north with great amounts,for the Almoravid golden dinars became the most common and esteemed currency inthe Mediterranean area, including the Christian world. A brief period ofstagnation was followed after the downfall of Almoravids in 1147, but the tradecontinued steadily again from the mid-13th century until the Moroccan invasionin Timbuktu in 1591.
The encounter of Islamic and West African cultures was peaceful, and it can betermed "controlled relationship". This concept is usually applied to theEuropean encounter with China, where foreign traders were forced to obey therules set by the Chinese government which decided unilaterally on the locationof trade, the number of traders, as well as type and character of the goods. Ifthe Europeans were not willing to accept these rules, they were not permittedto continue their trade. Before the outbreak of First Opium War in 1839, theChinese empire was powerful enough to reject all military threats from the partof European naval powers.
In Western Africa, the contact zone was limited to the desert edge cities,where North African traders were isolated for their own quarters, lying usuallyoutside the local dwelling. Yet there was no racial discrimination. In fact,many of the traders took local concubines, as no women of their own societywere available. This behaviour is understandable, for the traders had often tospend several years in the south, and there lived also permanent agents ofNorth African trading companies. Afterwards twin cities, with separate quartersfor the Muslim and non-Muslim population, became a common structure for urbansettlements throughout Western Africa.
On the other hand, the isolation of North African traders was partly voluntaryfor two reasons. First, the West African interior was as unhealthy for Arabs asthe coastal area was for Europeans, and thus the traders were not willing toleave the desert edge cities where the conditions were healthier. Secondly, byisolating themselves, the traders were able to maintain their own culture andpractice their own religion. Otherwise the traders had to follow local laws andcustoms, regardless whether they were against the Quranic law. But the culturaldifference was recognized, and the traders were not intentionally forced to dosuch things which they felt offending. In China, the Europeans were obliged toperform the kowtow in front of the high mandarins, which they regardedextremely humiliating; in Western Africa, the Arab traders were exempted fromperforming the common gesture of submission in front of the kings, which was tosprinkle dust over one's head.
The principal reason why the North African traders were willing to accommodatein the local conditions in Western Africa, was the same as in the case ofEuropeans in China: it was the only way to continue the profitable trade.Before the European discovery of America, West African mines were the mostimportant single source of gold both for Northern Africa and Europe; it isestimated that two-thirds of all the gold circulating in the Mediterranean areain the Middle Ages was imported across the Sahara. This made the uninterruptedcontinuity of trade more important for North African rulers than their WestAfrican counterparts. The demand for salt, for which the Arabs bartered thegold in Western Africa, is usually overemphasized in the historiography.Contrariwise, the Saharan rock salt was an expensive luxury product andavailable to the wealthy people only. Furthermore, it could be quite easilysubstituted by locally produced salt from plants and soil, whereas the NorthAfrican rulers could not obtain gold for their coins elsewhere.
However, the position of the powerful states of the West African savanna wasnot based on the possession of the gold reserves, but on the control over theprincipal trade routes leading from the desert edge terminals to the goldfields in the south. In this way, the rulers of northern savanna couldmonopolize the trade, and they strictly prevented the Arabs to establish anydirect contacts with the actual producers of gold. Inside Western Africa, thetrade was carried on by local brokers, or the Dyula.
The other reason was that the Arab traders were without the protection providedby their own civilization, while staying in sub-Saharan Africa. Before thewider introduction of firearms in the 16th century, the Arab rulers of NorthernAfrica had no real possibilities to threaten their West African counterpartswith war, as there were no such differences between the military technologywhich guaranteed them any absolute superiority. Furthermore, the West Africanarmies were very large, although the claims in Arabic sources, such as theruler of Ghana having an army of 200,000 warriors, are certainly exaggerating.Yet, in any case, we can speak of tens of thousands. To send an army of anequal size across the Sahara was extremely hazardous, and the success of theMoroccan invasion in Timbuktu in 1591 is rather an exception which reinforcesthe general rule: the ruler of Songhay empire considered it unnecessary topoison the wells in the desert or to organize any effective counter-attack,because he was convinced that the Moroccans would perish in the desert anyway.In fact, Judar Pasha did lose a great deal of his men during the deathly marchacross the western Sahara. Besides the desert, another natural advantage whichprotected the West Africans, was the unhealthy environment. Most parts of thesavanna are infected by trypanosomiasis, which is lethal especially forquadrupeds, thus preventing the large scale use of cavalry forces in thisarea.
An illustrative example of the military encounter between North and WestAfrican states is the dispute on the possession of the important salt mines ofTaghaza in central Sahara. At first Taghaza had been controlled by the Saharannomads, but in the early 14th century the rulers of Mali managed to maintainsome control over the routes leading these mines from the south. By the end ofthe following century, theaskias of Songhay, which had supercededsuperceded Mali as the dominant power in Western Africa, extended their ruleeven further in the desert and appointed a governor in Taghaza. However, in1544, Sultan Muhammad al-Mahdi, the founder of Sa'did power in Morocco,demanded the ruler of Songhay,askia Ishaq I, to give him the mines.Askia Ishaq naturally refused to do it, and a war broke out. TheMoroccans sent an army to occupy Taghaza, but the army was destroyed in thedesert. As response to this, a Songhay army consisting of Tuaregs, attackednorthwards and sacked the southern parts of Morocco, forcing Sultan Muhammad toflee from Marrakesh. Similarly, the rulers of Bornu, lying around Lake Chad,were able to expand their political dominance deep into Fezzan, occupying theoases until the 16th century.
With the increased volume of trans-Saharan trade in the Islamic period, newcultural influences began to spread in Western Africa. The most important ofthem was a new religion, Islam, which was adopted in the states belonging tothe sphere of the caravan trade by the end of the eleventh century. Theconversion was peaceful and it had been preceded by a long period ofcoexistence in the cities of the trade route terminues. Motives for theconversion were many: we should not underestimate the charm of novelty andhuman curiosity, nor the advantages the new religion could offer forindividuals, like healing and social prestige. In Western Africa, Muslims arevisibly distinguished from other people with their dressing and eating habits,and they do not hesitate to perform their religious ceremonies in public. Forthe rulers, the conversion offered several political advantages. First, theybecame, at least in theory but often in reality too, equals to North Africanrulers, which made the maintenance of diplomatic relations easier. Yet theconversion did not include any recognition of the political supremacy of NorthAfrican rulers. Secondly, Islam provided them effective means to increase theirpower. Literacy enabled the goverment of large empires, and Islam could be usedas unifying cult within the multiethnic and multireligious states.
In Western Africa, Islam remained for a long time as a cult of the courts andcommercial centres: Mali, Songhay and Bornu were no Muslim states, althoughmedieval Arabic writers depicted them as such. Actually, the rulers were notanxious to spread the new religion among their subjects, since it hadendangered their position. Contrariwise, the West African rulers had to playall the time a double role: in relation to Arab traders and rulers they actedas pious Muslims, but in relation to their own subjects they carefullyfulfilled their duties as divine kings. In this way, Islam caused an internaltension in West Africa societies which occasionally broke out as civil wars, ifthe ruler could not maintain the balancy between the Muslim and traditionalistcliques. However, the adoption of Islam had not only political consequences butit also linked Western Africa culturally to the Islamic world and gave WestAfricans a concrete reason to cross the Sahara for the first time in theirhistory.
It was not until the Islamic period, when the West Africans began to arrive inthe Mediterranean world. The great majority of them were slaves. There are norecords concerning the volume of trans-Saharan slave trade, but it is estimatedthat during the thousand years, which followed its beginning in the 8th centuryAD, about 9.3 million black slaves were imported to the north, including thosewho died during the painful crossing of the desert. In fact, the total quantityof trans-Saharan slave trade was equal to the Atlantic trade, though its annualvolume was much lower. However, no great black communities were born inNorthern Africa in the same sense as those in the American colonies, for mostof the slaves were women whose fertility in slavery was low. The offsprings ofblack concubines with their Arab masters were free and merged gradually intothe North African population, although is some areas they were also killed.Therefore, mortality of slaves had to be replaced by importing new ones, andthe overall amount of black slaves who were actually present in Northern Africaremained thus restrained.
The voluntary traffic of West Africans to the north began with the adoption ofIslamic faith. Pilgrimage to Mecca is one the five pillars of Islam, and inprinciple an obligation for all Muslims. The first West African Muslims visitedMecca already in the early 12th century. They were mainly notables and rulerswho had the economic possibilities to perform the long journey. Especially therulers of Mali became famous of their sumptous pilgrimages, the first of whichis said to have taken place in the 1260s. Yet the most famous was themagnificent pilgrimage of Mansa Musa in 1324, whose visit was remembered inCairo for centuries afterwards. It was certainly witnessed by Italian traders,too: the picture of king Musse Melly appeared in European maps already in 1339.Another equally sensational event was the pilgrimage ofaskia Muhammadof Songhay. Pilgrimages by common people became general only later, from the15th century onwards, as Islam gradually turned from the cult of courts to apopular belief.
The royal pilgrimages had also an important role in maintaining diplomaticrelations with North African rulers. Yet official state visits were performedmuch earlier. Already in the first half of the 12th century, the Muslim rulerof a West African state called Diafunu visited Marrakesh where he met thereigning Almoravid amir Ali b. Yusuf (1106-43). Even before this visit, theRustamidimam of Tahert had sent in early 9th century a delegation withprecious gifts to the court of the "King of Blacks", referring most likely tothe ruler of Gao, definitely pagan by that time. In the 14th century,delegations were exchanged regularly between the West and North Africancapitals. Diplomatic relations were looked after also by correspondence.Unfortunately, no letters have survived, and there are only some references totheir contents in the Arabic sources, but presumably they dealt mostly withbusiness affairs. In the early 13th century, the governor of Sijilmasa, whichwas the most important terminus of the trans-Saharan caravan routes in southernMorocco, sent a following letter to the king of Ghana who was by then the mostpowerful ruler in Western Africa:
We are neighbours in benevolence even if we differ in religion;we agree on right conduct and are one in leniency towards our subjects. It goeswithout saying that justice is an essential quality of kings in conductingsound policy; tyranny is the preoccupation of ignorant and evil minds. We haveheard about the imprisonment of poor traders and their being prevented fromgoing freely about their business. The coming to and fro of merchants to acountry is of benefit to its inhabitants and a help to keeping it populous. Ifwe wished we would imprison the people of that region who happen to be in ourterritory but we do not think it right to do that. We ought not to "forbidimmorality while practising it ourselves". Peace be uponyou.Considering the contents of this letter, there is no doubtwho had the actual control over the trade in the south.
The increased direct contacts to the north meant that the West Africans learntto know the outside world. Already before the adoption of Islam, those WestAfricans who were dealing closely with the caravan trade had certainly someidea of the Mediterranean area, which was based on the news heard from thetraders. Afterwards, the knowledge was increased by the news delivered bypilgrims. The most popular route to Mecca went through Cairo, which was thegreatest and most important city in the eastern Mediterranean. However, some ofthe pilgrims presumably visited also other cities in the Middle East. At leastin the early 19th century, European explorers met many West African pilgrimswho had visited not only Cairo and Mecca but also Jerusalem, Baghdad, Damascusand even Istanbul. In these large cosmopolitan cities, the West Africans wereable to meet people from many other countries, including Europeans who hadobtained the right to establish their first permanent trading settlements,called thefunduqs, in North African ports already in the mid-12thcentury. Neither should we forget the numerous West African mercenaries whofought in the North African and Spanish armies, and were able to meetrepresentants many other cultures, like Europeans, Turks, and Slavic peoples ofthe Balkans.
The outside world became familiar to West Africans also through books.Alongside Islam, the West African Muslims learned Arabic language and writing,which gave them access to the entire Arabic scientific literature. In theMiddle Ages, the Arab geography was far more developed compared to that ofEuropean, for the Arabs had close commercial contacts not only with sub-SaharanAfrica, but also with India, China, Russia and Central Europe: the 12th-centuryArab geographers knew even some Finnish toponyms. Books became an importantitem in the trans-Saharan trade, and eventually West Africans began to study inthe famous Islamic universities. Already in the 12th century West Africanstudents arrived in Spain and Morocco. In the following century, a hostel forWest African students was opened at the al-Azhar university in Cairo, and itwas maintained by the rulers of Bornu. The first West African university,called Sankore, was established in Timbuktu by the Mansa Musa, the ruler ofMali, in the 1330s, and it was built by an Andalusian architect. It is saidthat the Sankore library had contained all the important works of Islamiclearning until it was burnt in the 19th century. In any case, the wealth andfame of the West African rulers attracted also North African scholars to moveinto their capitals.
Summarizing all the effects of the intellectual contacts to the Islamicculture, we may claim that the 14th-century West Africans may have hadconsiderable detailed knowledge of their contemporary world - perhaps moredetailed than most of their contemporary Europeans who still regardedsub-Saharan Africa as a land of monsters and miracles.
The situation was perhaps similar to that in the early 19th century, whenEuropean explorers, who had penetrated the African interior in order to unveilher secrets, were amazed at how well the West Africans knew what was going onin the outside world. When Mungo Park arrived in Segu on the Niger in July1796, being the first European in this city, he was told that the British andFrench were fighting in the Mediterranean. The news probably concerned thebattles that took place after the treaty of Basle which was made in April 1795,when Park was in his way to Gambia. In 1824, Hugh Clapperton visited Kano,being again the first European in this city, and he was surprised by MuhammadBello, the ruler of Sokoto caliphate, who asked him detailed questionsconcerning the British policy in India and the religious situation in Europe.In early 1871, Gustav Nachtigal, the famous German traveller who had leftTripoli in 1869 in order to explore Central Africa, was told in Bornu that awar had broke out betweenfranse andnimse, meaning Frenchmen andGermans. Considering that the Franco-Prussian war began in July 1870, the newshad reached Bornu very quickly.
Perhaps news of the great events in the medieval Mediterranean, like the fallof Acre in 1291 or the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453, were heardin the capital of Mali as quickly. However, there are only few mentions in thecontemporary Arabic sources concerning the transmission of news across theSahara. We know, for example, that Mansa Musa of Mali sent a delagation tocongratulate the Marinid Sultan Abu 'l-Hasan for the conquest of Tlemcen. SinceTlemcen had fallen to Marinids in April 1337, the news most probably arrived inMali with the traders who had left Morocco in autumn, which was the usualseason of departure for the caravans to the south. The Malian delegation wassent to Fez probably in the following summer, when the caravans returned to thenorth. Similarly, another Malian delegation was sent to congratulate Sultan Abu'l-Hasan for the conquest of Constantine in 1349. The prompt action on part ofthe Malian rulers proves that they knew well the political geography ofNorthern Africa, being fully aware of the consequenses of the Marinid expansionto central Maghrib.
Yet we must undertand that the knowledge concerning the outside world amongWest Africans was restricted to a very narrow group only, consisting of fewrulers, scholars, noblemen, and wealthy merchants. It is curious that there arehardly any remembrance of the medieval contacts in the local oral tradition:Mansa Musa, for example, whose deeds are so well documented in Arabic sources,is remembered mainly as a great magician who brought powerful fetishes fromMecca. On the other hand, the West African tradition has incorporated manyelements from Arabic literature, which were certainly transmitted by thepilgrims who were listening the story-tellers and entertainers in North Africanand Middle Eastern cities.
The golden age of the trans-Saharan trade ended with the collapse of Songhayempire after the Moroccan attack in 1591. The disintegration of West Africanpolitical structures, the contemporary economic decline of Northern Africa, andthe European competition on the Guinea coast made the caravan trade lessprofitable. Neverthless, the trade continued, until the railroads gave it thefinal death blow in the beginning of our century. The shift in favour of theAtlantic trade began with the arrival of the first Portuguese ships on theMauritanian coast in 1443. For West Africans, who had already had contacts withother peoples for centuries, the coming of Europeans was no cultural shock.Although the merchants and merchandizes were different, the fundamental patternof economic and cultural exchange was the same in the Atlantic trade as it hadbeen in the caravan trade. Similarly, it was another channel for West Africansto the outside world: in 1594 a Portuguese navigator reported that he had inSenegal met many blacks who were not only capable of speaking French but haveeven visited France. In was only during the age of imperialism that theencounter of West Africans with other civilisations turned definitely fromcontrolled relationship to collision.
© The author and Nordic Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Archived 18.8.95