Article · Trade & connections
Gold, Salt and the Sahara
10 min read · Trade & Connections · Empires & Kingdoms
Long before Mali, communities in the Sahel traded with the desert and beyond. The spread of camel transport across North Africa in the first millennium CE made regular long-distance caravans possible, linking towns such as Sijilmasa in present-day Morocco with markets on the Niger.
What moved
Gold travelled north; salt, mined at Saharan sites such as Taghaza and later Taoudenni, travelled south. Copper, cloth, glass beads, horses, books and many other goods moved too.
So did enslaved people. Trans-Saharan trade included the forced movement of captives northward, a history that should be told alongside the more celebrated exchanges of gold and learning.
Before Mali: Ghana
The geographer al-Bakri, writing in Córdoba in 1068, described the kingdom of Ghana (Wagadu), its ruler, and its twin-town capital. Al-Bakri never visited; he compiled reports from merchants and earlier writers.
Ancient Ghana lay well to the north-west of modern Ghana, which took the name at independence in 1957.
Sources and further reading
Primary source
- Levtzion, N. and Hopkins, J. F. P., eds. and trans. Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. Cambridge University Press, 1981. (Includes al-Bakri, al-‘Umari, Ibn Battuta and Ibn Khaldun.)
Later scholarship
- Levtzion, N. Ancient Ghana and Mali. Methuen, 1973.
- Gomez, M. A. African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa. Princeton University Press, 2018.
Museum & heritage
- Berzock, K. B., ed. Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa. Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University / Princeton University Press, 2019.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre. “Old Towns of Djenné.” World Heritage List, no. 116. View source
By Lorma Editorial · Last reviewed: October 2026 · Editorial standards
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