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From Trading Post to Commercial Empire
Around 1100 C.E., a Tuareg
woman called Buktu the settled Timbuktu as a seasonal camp. Grazing
her herds and flocks during the dry season not far from the Niger
River, she discovered an oasis and decided to set up a tented
camp and dig a well there. Very soon, the little seasonal camp,
called Timbuktu (literally Buktu's well) became an important stop
for other nomads as well as the caravans travelling along the
trans-Saharan route.
Although the Tuaregs founded Timbuktu, it was merchants who set
up markets and built fixed dwellings in the town to establish
the site as a meeting place for people travelling by camel. The
caravan
trade had existed long before the founding of Timbuktu. Most likely
by around 400 B.C., Berber middlemen
had already established early trans-Saharan trade routes between
West and North Africa. Three hundred years later the trade expanded
with the growing use of camels in place of horses and donkeys.
Towards the end of the first millennium C.E., the West African
kingdom of Ghana, the region's first great empire, had organized
and taken control of the long-distance trade of gold and salt,
along with slaves and valuable goods such as kola nuts. From the
north, thousands of camels in caravans carried salt from deposits
to the city where merchants would transport it down the Niger
to other parts of Africa. At the same time, goods—the most
important being gold—came along the river from the south.
In ancient Africa, salt was sometimes worth more than gold!
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Although
the Tuaregs founded Timbuktu in the early twelfth century, they
were nomads who kept only loose control over the city. As the
town became increasingly important to the gold and salt trades,
it was captured from the Tuaregs and brought under the reign of
the Mali Empire, the second great West African kingdom, and the
first great Muslim
kingdom, in the Sudan.
Timbuktu, which began as a modest Tuareg trading post, eventually
developed into a major trading center that connected North Africa
with West Africa.
Trade routes on the African continent transported more than just
goods like salt and gold. With the commercial trade came the exchange
of religious ideas. Islam
was introduced to West Africa by Arab merchants travelling along
the Saharan caravan routes in the early ninth century and gradually
influenced West Africa through the migration of Muslim merchants,
scholars, and settlers.
By trading with North Africa, the states of West Africa became
important players in the activities of the region, since it was
they who provided the gold on which so many countries depended.
Without losing their own African character, these states eventually
became part of the Islamic world.
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