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Trans-Saharan Trade Routes

By Bennett Sherry

From 1200 to 1450, a huge trading network stretched across the Sahara
Desert. This network linked wealthy empires of West Africa and the
Mediterranean region.

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Bennett Sherry

A dry sea
The largest desert in the world is the Sahara—3.5 million square miles stretching from the Nile River to the Atlantic
Ocean. The United States would fit inside of it.

This expanse is inhospitable, with only a few islands where people can permanently settle. It seems more like a
barrier. Describing the Sahara Desert is like describing an ocean. In fact, the desert’s name comes from the Arabic
word sāhil, meaning “shores.” How does our understanding of the Sahara change when we imagine it as a sea,
linking people through the exchange of goods and ideas?

A sea of sand. A satellite image of the Sahara Desert. © Getty Images.

From 1200 to 1450, an extensive trans-Saharan trading system reached its peak. Huge caravans of camels and
merchants transported goods across the desert. Trade across the Sahara linked the great kingdoms of West Africa
to the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds.

Why would someone try and cross the Sahara? The same factors that would motivate someone to hop on a wooden
boat and head out across the oceans. The development of extensive trans-Saharan trade routes required valuable
trade goods. Additionally, merchants needed a cost-effective way to move those goods across the desert.

The ship of the desert

Like merchants at sea, caravans in the Sahara also faced storms and wrecks that could endanger the caravan. Any
successful caravan required experienced guides, and the best were Berbers. Some Berbers were pastoralists who
lived on the edges of the desert and traveled with their livestock. Like pastoralists in Eurasia, the Berbers were
essential to the growth of the trade. They captained the “ship of the desert”—the camel.
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Bennett Sherry

Developments in travel technologies

enabled new long-distance trade routes
across the Sahara. The introduction of the
camel was by far the most important of
these. Camels are superior to horses for
desert travel because they are more
suited to desert conditions. The Berbers
improved the camel saddle, allowing them
to carry larger loads over greater
distances. A single camel could carry
around 400 pounds of trade goods. Over
shorter distances, they could carry up to
1,200 pounds.

When you think of the Sahara, you

probably picture camels, but the camels
native to the region went extinct during
the Stone Age. Around 300 BCE, the Nineteenth-century watercolor painting of Bedouin encampment. © Getty Images.
camel was reintroduced to North Africa.
Once camels arrived, the Berbers began
using them to cross the desert.

Saharan caravans1 were impressive feats

of organization. Usually, the merchants
making their way north or south across
the desert rented camels from
pastoralists. Caravans set out during the
cooler months, traveling at the coolest
times of day. A caravan traveled around
20 miles a day, and the main routes
followed water sources.

Pastoralists were essential for the trans-

Saharan trade, but they also posed a
threat. Some might attack caravans for
wealth. States and merchants paid tribute
to pastoralists in exchange for safe
passage. By the 1200s, it was common
for caravans crossing the Sahara to travel
with 5,000 to 10,000 camels. Timbuktu in Painting of a nineteenth-century caravan approaching Timbuktu.© Getty Images.
the Mali Empire started out as a stop for
caravans and grew into a major city.

1 A caravan is a group of people travelling together for protection, often for religious pilgrimage or trade. Caravans were common on the overland
trade routes of Afro-Eurasia.
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Bennett Sherry

A land of gold: The Mali and Songhai Empires

Many goods traveled along these trade networks, but it was gold and salt that drove the trade. Salt is necessary for
human life, but it was in short supply in West Africa. Berber tribes controlled several salt mines, which allowed
them to buy high-value goods like gold from West African cities. They could also purchase enslaved people in these
cities. Goods and enslaved people were taken to the Mediterranean and on to Egypt. The trans-Saharan routes
reached their peak from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.

The region of West Africa south of the Sahara was home to powerful empires and large cities. Agricultural societies
like the Mali (1235–1670) and Songhai (1430–1591) empires thrived. These empires depended on trade across the
desert, and emperors controlled the movement of merchants. They wanted to guard the secret locations of gold
mines to the south. Their control of the trade routes enriched and expanded these empires.

Map of communities in West Africa c. 1450. By WHP, CC BY-SA 4.0. Explore full map here.

Waves of change: The arrival of Islam

Powerful Islamic empires and Muslim merchants in the north united much of Afro-Eurasia into one trading system.
West Africans converted to Islam, and trade grew.

Arab merchants traveled to trade goods in exchange for gold in West Africa. West Africans also traveled north.
Many of them were enslaved.2 Yet plenty of West Africans made the journey voluntarily, many making a religious
pilgrimage to Mecca.

2 Slavery in this era had little to do with race or skin color. West African slaves were usually prisoners captured in war. White people from the
Caucasus joined people from East and West Africa in enslavement in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean markets.
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Bennett Sherry

Caravans and merchants carried wealth, goods, and people across the Sahara. But perhaps the most important
thing they carried weighed nothing at all: Islam. Islam was the most important factor in the expansion of trans-
Saharan trade. After the Arab conquests of the 600s CE, the Berbers converted to Islam. Many West African
merchants converted as well. Arabic provided a common language and value system, making it easier for traders to
communicate and record their trades.

In West Africa, Islam spread first to cities. Most converts lived in cities and were merchants or members of the ruling
class. Since most of the population was not urban, local religions remained important long after the arrival of Islam.

A map of trans-Saharan trade routes. By WHP, CC BY-SA 4.0. Explore full map here.

New routes
The combination of increased trade, cross-cultural exchange, and Islam created a golden age for the empires of
West Africa. Trade allowed travelers and scholars to move around the world. Mansa Musa, the ruler of Mali, traveled
to Mecca in the 1320s. He traveled with tens of thousands of camels and servants, carrying a fortune in gold. He
spent so lavishly that he destabilized the Egyptian economy. His displays of wealth helped create myths that West
Africa was a land where gold grew like plants.

Europeans began exploring the West African coast partly due to such myths. During the 1400s, Portuguese sailors
looked for a route around Africa to the Indian Ocean trade. They established new sea routes, allowing traders to
bypass the Sahara. But large caravans continued to cross the desert right up until the early 1900s.

A detail from the fourteenth-century Catalan Atlas, depicting caravan trade routes across the Sahara and the Mali emperor,
Mansa Musa, holding a gold coin. © PHAS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.
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Sources
Abu-Lughod, Janet. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Austen, Ralph. “Regional Study: Trans-Saharan Trade.” In The Cambridge World History, edited by Craig Benjamin, 662-86.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Austen, Ralph A. Trans-Saharan Africa in World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Bulliet, Richard. The Camel and the Wheel. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
Krä and Ghislaine Lydon. Trans-Saharan Book Trade: Manuscript Culture, Arabic Literacy and Intellectual History in Muslim Africa.
Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Masonen, Pekka. “Trans-Saharan Trade and the West African Discovery of the Mediterranean.” In Ethnic Encounter and Culture
Change, edited by M’hammed Sabour and Knut S. Vikør, 116-42. London: Hurst, 1997.
Northrup, Cynthia Clark, Jerry H. Bentley, and Alfred E. Eckes, Jr. Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the
Present. Florence: Routledge, 2004.

Bennett Sherry
Bennett Sherry holds a PhD in history from the University of Pittsburgh and has undergraduate teaching experience in world
history, human rights, and the Middle East at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Maine at Augusta. Additionally,
he is a research associate at Pitt’s World History Center. Bennett writes about refugees and international organizations in the
twentieth century.

Image credits
Cover image: oil on canvas. © DeAgostini / Getty Images.
A sea of sand. A satellite image of the Sahara Desert. © Getty Images.
Nineteenth-century watercolor painting of Bedouin encampment. © Getty Images.
Painting of a nineteenth-century caravan approaching Timbuktu. © Getty images.
Map of communities in West Africa c. 1450. By WHP, CC BY-SA 4.0. Explore full map here: https://www.oerproject.com/OER-
Materials/OER-Media/Images/WHP-Maps/1450-layer-2
A map of trans-Saharan trade routes. By WHP, CC BY-SA 4.0. Explore full map here: https://www.oerproject.com/OER-
Materials/OER-Media/Images/WHP-Maps/1450-layer-3
A selection from the fourteenth-century Catalan Atlas, depicting caravan trade routes across the Sahara and the Mali emperor,
Mansa Musa, holding a gold coin. © PHAS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

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Bennett Sherry

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