Trans-Saharan Trade

Lessons

Senior 1 · History and Citizenship

Trans-Saharan Trade

5 lessons

Lesson 3 of 5

Gold, salt and empires: Ghana, Mali and Songhai

25 min

The king on the map

Look again at the crowned king from the Catalan Atlas of about 1375. The mapmaker wrote a caption beside him in Catalan. Here it is, translated into English:

"This Black lord is called Musse Melly, lord of the Black people of Gineua. This king is the richest and noblest lord of all this region, because of the abundance of gold that is gathered in his land."
Caption on the Catalan Atlas (Majorca, about 1375), translated from the Catalan by Ganzaa. Public domain.

Gineua is the mapmaker's spelling of the name Europeans used for West Africa. "Musse Melly" means Musa of Mali: Mansa Musa, who ruled the Mali Empire from about 1312 to about 1337. The mapmaker in Majorca had never met him and wrote about fifty years after his famous journey. So how did his name reach a map in Europe? The answer lies in the gold that crossed the Sahara, and in one journey he made in 1324.

Definition

Empire: a large state in which one ruler or people controls many other peoples and territories, often won by conquest. Example: the Mali Empire, which at its height stretched from the Atlantic coast to beyond the Niger bend.

Definition

Tribute: payments of goods, money or labour that a conquered or weaker people must give regularly to a stronger ruler. Example: towns along the Niger paying gold, grain or cloth to the ruler of Songhai.

Definition

Mansa: the title of the rulers of the Mali Empire, meaning "king" or "emperor" in the Mande languages. Example: Mansa Musa; Mansa Sulayman, whom Ibn Battuta met in 1352.

Definition

Hajj: the pilgrimage to Mecca, in Arabia, that every Muslim who is able should make at least once in their life. A person who has made it is called hajji. Example: Mansa Musa's hajj of 1324–1325.

Three empires, one trade

Three great states rose one after another at the southern end of the desert routes. Figure 3 shows how long each lasted and when the key events of this unit took place.

Figure 3. The trading empires of West Africa, drawn to scale. Each empire grew rich by controlling the southern end of the trans-Saharan routes. Drawn by Ganzaa.

	Ghana (Wagadu)	Mali	Songhai
When	by the 700s CE, perhaps much earlier, to the 1200s	about 1235 to the 1600s; greatest in the 1300s	1464 to 1591
People and capital	Soninke; capital probably at Koumbi Saleh	Mandinka (Malinke); capital's site still debated	Songhai; capital at Gao on the Niger
Famous rulers	kings called Kaya Maghan, "king of gold"	Sundiata Keita (founder); Mansa Musa (about 1312–1337)	Sonni Ali (1464–1492); Askia Muhammad (1493–1528)
How trade made it rich	taxed salt and other goods entering and leaving; controlled gold from Bambuk	controlled the Bambuk and Bure gold fields and the trade towns of Walata, Timbuktu and Gao	controlled the whole Niger trade from Djenné to Gao, and the salt mines of Taghaza
Why it declined	attacks by the Almoravids from the north in the 1000s; conquest by the Susu, then absorption into Mali in the 1200s	quarrels over who should rule; Tuareg took Timbuktu in 1433; Songhai broke away	civil war among the Askias; Moroccan invasion of 1591 (lesson 5)

How trade built empires

The kings did not usually mine gold or dig salt themselves. They grew rich because they controlled the meeting point of the two trades.

Taxes on goods. The geographer al-Bakri, writing in Spain in about 1068 from merchants' reports, said that the king of Ghana took one gold dinar on every donkey-load of salt that entered his country and two dinars on every load that left it.
Control of the gold supply. Al-Bakri also reported that every gold nugget found in Ghana belonged to the king, while ordinary people could keep only gold dust. This kept the price of gold high.
Buying power. The wealth paid for horses from North Africa, iron weapons and large armies, which let the kings conquer neighbours and collect tribute.
Towns and officials. Muslim merchants settled in the trading towns. Al-Bakri says the capital of Ghana had two towns about 10 km apart: one for the king, and one for Muslim merchants with twelve mosques. Literate Muslims served the kings as treasurers, interpreters and advisers.

Worked example: did Mansa Musa really change the price of gold in Cairo?

The evidence. In July 1324 Mansa Musa reached Cairo, in Egypt, on his way to Mecca, with a huge following and a great deal of gold, which he gave away and spent freely. Al-Umari, an official of the Egyptian government in Cairo who wrote about twelve years later, reported that before the visit a mithqal of gold was worth 25 silver dirhams, but afterwards it fell below 22 dirhams and had still not recovered twelve years on.

Calculate the fall. The value fell by at least $25 - 22 = 3$ dirhams. As a percentage: $\frac{25 - 22}{25} \times 100 = 12\%$
Explain it. When a lot more gold comes into a market while the amount of silver stays the same, each piece of gold buys less silver. That is what al-Umari described.
Ask who, when and how. Al-Umari was not in Cairo in 1324, but he lived there later and spoke to officials who had met the Mansa, such as the governor Ibn Amir Hajib. He was a careful government writer, and the price of gold was something Cairo's merchants would remember.
Look for exaggeration. Later Arabic writers gave very large numbers for Musa's followers and gold, and the numbers disagree with each other. Historians treat these as signs of how impressed people were, not as exact counts.
Conclude. The fall in the gold price is fairly reliable, because it comes from a well-placed writer and matches what Cairo remembered. The exact size of Musa's caravan is not.

Warning

Be careful with "the richest person who ever lived". Many websites and videos say that Mansa Musa was the richest person in history. No source from his time measured his wealth, and the Catalan Atlas called him the richest lord only "of all this region". Mansa Musa was certainly very rich and very generous, but the "richest ever" claim is a modern guess, not a historical fact.

Case study: Mansa Musa's pilgrimage of 1324

Mansa Musa was a devout Muslim. In 1324 he set out from Mali for Mecca, leaving his son to rule in his absence. The journey of more than 4,000 km each way took many months.

In Cairo he camped for three days near the pyramids, then entered the city on 19 July 1324 and met the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, al-Nasir Muhammad. He gave gold to officials, scholars and the poor, and his followers spent freely in the markets.
In Mecca he completed the hajj. On the way back he had spent so much that he had to borrow money from Cairo merchants.
On his return he brought scholars and craftsmen with him, among them the poet Abu Ishaq al-Sahili from Spain. According to the Tarikh al-Sudan, a history written in Timbuktu in the 1650s, the cities of Gao and Timbuktu came under his rule at about this time.
The result: the pilgrimage told the whole Muslim world, and then Europe, that a rich and powerful Muslim kingdom lay south of the Sahara. Fifty years later, a mapmaker in Majorca painted Mansa Musa holding his gold (Source A).

Important

Ghana, Mali and Songhai grew rich by taxing and controlling the gold and salt trade, not only by owning mines.
Mansa Musa (ruled about 1312–1337) made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324; al-Umari reports that the gold he spent lowered the value of gold in Cairo for more than a decade.
Songhai (1464–1591) was the largest of the three and controlled the Niger from Djenné to Gao.

Tip

Memory hook: the empires came in alphabetical order, Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and each one moved further east along the Niger: Ghana near the Senegal, Mali on the upper Niger, Songhai at Gao.

TED-Ed: "Mansa Musa, one of the wealthiest people who ever lived". An animated account of the 1324 pilgrimage. As you watch, test the title against the warning above: does the video give evidence for the claim in its title?

Discussion

Debate in pairs: Was Mansa Musa's pilgrimage good or bad for Mali? One of you argues "good" (fame, scholars, new trade partners); the other argues "bad" (huge spending, debts, the risk of leaving the empire for over a year). Then decide together which side has the stronger evidence.

✦

Practice

Put these empires in the order in which they rose: Songhai, Ghana, Mali.
What was the capital of the Songhai Empire?
What did the title Kaya Maghan mean, and what does it tell you about the kings of Ghana?
A trader brings 30 donkey-loads of salt into Ghana and later sends 20 loads out of the country. Using al-Bakri's rates, how many dinars of tax does he pay?
Give two ways in which the gold and salt trade made the kings of Mali powerful.
Before 1324 a mithqal of gold was worth 25 dirhams in Cairo; afterwards it was worth 22. By what percentage did its value fall?
Why do historians trust al-Umari's report on the price of gold more than the later numbers given for Mansa Musa's followers?
The Catalan Atlas shows Mansa Musa wearing a European crown. What does this tell you about using pictures as historical sources?

Show answersHide answers

Ghana, Mali, Songhai.
Gao, on the River Niger.
"King of gold"; it shows that their power and fame came from gold and the gold trade.
$30 \times 1 + 20 \times 2 = 30 + 40 = 70$ dinars.
Any two: taxes on goods; control of the gold fields; money to buy horses and weapons for the army; tribute from conquered towns; educated Muslim officials and trade contacts.
$\frac{25-22}{25} \times 100 = 12\%$ .
Al-Umari lived in Cairo, spoke to officials who had met the Mansa, and reported a price that merchants would remember; the numbers of followers vary widely between later writers and look exaggerated.
An artist may draw what he imagines or what is familiar to him, not what was really there; a picture shows what its maker believed, so it must be checked against other sources.

Sources and credits

Image: Catalan Atlas BNF Sheet 6, Mansa Musa (cropped), attributed to Cresques Abraham (about 1375), Bibliothèque nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
The Catalan Atlas caption was translated into English by Ganzaa from the original (public domain). Al-Bakri's and al-Umari's reports are summarised, not quoted, from their standard modern translations.
Background facts checked against Mansa Musa, Wikipedia contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, adapted by Ganzaa.
Background facts checked against Ghana Empire, Wikipedia contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, adapted by Ganzaa.
Background facts checked against Songhai Empire, Wikipedia contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, adapted by Ganzaa.
Video: "Mansa Musa, one of the wealthiest people who ever lived", TED-Ed, embedded from YouTube.

The rest of this lesson, its diagrams, tables, worked examples and practice items, and the unit exercises were written by Ganzaa.

This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1The king on the map

2Three empires, one trade

3How trade built empires

4Case study: Mansa Musa's pilgrimage of 1324

5Discussion

The king on the map

Three empires, one trade

How trade built empires

Case study: Mansa Musa's pilgrimage of 1324

Discussion