Environmental Adaptations
To survive the trek, traders organized into these large groups, sometimes numbering over 5,000 animals, traveling in a "seasonal" fashion.
What are caravans?
This West African empire used its wealth from trade to build the University of Sankore, making it a center of Islamic scholarship.
What is the Mali Empire?
This religion spread across the Sahara via merchants, not conquest, eventually becoming the official religion of West African ruling elites.
What is Islam?
The Trans-Saharan trade connected West Africa to this wider "hemispheric" trade network dominated by Muslim merchants.
What is the Dar al-Islam?
This group of West African storytellers and oral historians was responsible for preserving the history of the trade and the deeds of kings like Sundiata Keita.
Who are Griots?
The introduction of this "ship of the desert" from Arabia around the 3rd century C.E. was the technological catalyst for the Trans-Saharan trade.
What is the camel?
West African monarchs maintained power by claiming a monopoly on this specific form of gold, while allowing "gold dust" to be traded freely.
What are gold nuggets?
This "blended" style of architecture, famously seen in the Great Mosque of Djenné, combined Islamic styles with West African sun-dried mud bricks.
What is Sudano-Sahelian architecture?
Gold from West Africa eventually became the basis for the coinage of this European historical period that began in the 14th century.
What is the Renaissance?
As Timbuktu became an intellectual hub, this "commodity"—often brought from North Africa—was said to be sold for more than its weight in gold.
What are books (or manuscripts)?
Unlike the Silk Roads which traded mostly manufactured luxury goods, the Trans-Saharan route was defined by the exchange of these two "bulk" raw materials.
What are salt and gold?
This 14th-century ruler’s Hajj was so extravagant that it showcased Mali’s wealth to the Mediterranean world and appeared on the Catalan Atlas.
Who is Mansa Musa?
The arrival of Islam introduced this system of writing to West Africa, which was used for administration, law, and trade records.
What is Arabic script?
This city’s fall to the Moroccans in 1591, using gunpowder weapons, signaled the end of the great West African "Trading Empires."$600: This city’s fall to the Moroccans in 1591, using gunpowder weapons, signaled the end of the great West African "Trading Empires."
what is Gao (or the Songhai Empire)?
Unlike the later Atlantic system, this Trans-Saharan trade in people usually involved individuals being used as domestic servants, soldiers, or officials in North Africa and the Middle East.
What is the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade?
$400: This specific innovation allowed Berbers to carry heavier loads and provided a stable platform for combat, increasing the security of caravans.
What is the camel saddle?
Control over these "source" regions for gold, such as Bambuk and Wangara, was the primary goal of the Ghana and Mali empires.
What are goldfields?
While kings adopted Islam to strengthen ties with North African traders, most commoners practiced this "blend" of Islam and traditional local beliefs.
What is religious syncretism?
In exchange for gold, North African merchants brought this essential mineral, which West Africans needed to replace electrolytes lost in the heat.
What is salt?
Ibn Battuta was famously "shocked" by the high degree of freedom and influence granted to this group in West African society compared to other parts of the Islamic world.
Who are women?
This geographic feature acted as a "barrier" until the 7th century, but became a "bridge" once Islamic merchants integrated West Africa into the Afro-Eurasian economy.
What is the Sahara Desert?
The expansion of empires like Mali facilitated trade because they provided these two essential "S" factors for merchants: Security and _______.
What is Standardization (of currency or weights)?
This Moroccan traveler’s journals provide historians with the most detailed primary source accounts of the social and religious life in 14th-century Mali.
Who is Ibn Battuta?
This "maritime" shift in the late 1400s led to the decline of the Trans-Saharan route as European ships began trading directly on the "Gold Coast."
What is the Age of Discovery (or the rise of Atlantic Trade)?
This famous center of learning in Timbuktu housed one of the largest libraries in the world, containing hundreds of thousands of African manuscripts on science, law, and astronomy.
What is the University of Sankore?