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Social Relations in the Trans-Saharan and Western Sudanese Trade: an Overview

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

B. Marie Perinbam
B. Marie Perinbam
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Extract

In summarizing, the evidence suggests that during the greater part of the second millenium A.D., the trans-Saharan and western Sudanese trade was embedded in societal frameworks and integrated into existing social structures. It was a socio-economic function which benefited the entire community. Although no fixed national boundaries existed, there were created semi-permanent trading blocks or market networks, which corresponded to the area under de facto ownership or control of a dominant ethnic group or state.

Type
Social Context of Trade
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 1973 , pp. 416 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1973

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References

The research for this article was done with the assistance of a grant from the American Philosophical Society.

1 ‘Market networks’ here refers exclusively to those market towns—for example Timbuktu, Jenne, and Gao which were Niger ports; and Bobo-Dioulasso, Salaga, Kong, Bouna, and Kumasi which were stages on the southern route towards the forest—whose trading relations, according to their respective regional groupings, were in the hands of the same dealers and their representatives who managed the trade at all important levels. It does not refer to the market system which implies the integration of market economies, the use of all-purpose money, price fluctuations which were usually determined by market-production decisions, self-regulating prices, etc.

2 Khaldun, Ibn, Histoire des Berbères, de Slane, Baron (trans.), 3 vols. (Paris, 1925).Google Scholar

3 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 69 ff.

4 This was of course the ancient Songhay Empire made famous in some European literary circles by the writings of Leo Africanus (c. 1515). The most commonly repeated dates for the Songhay Empire are c. 1490-c. 1591. One of its most innovative rulers who, incidentally, came to power by means of an army coup was Askia Mohammed (1493–1528).

5 The Ibāḍites are a most interesting Islamic sect who played a major role in medieval Saharan commerce. An off-shoot of the Kharijīte heretical sect, many seemed to have been Zanāta Berbers. Persecuted by the orthodox Sunni, they fled into the Tunisian and Algerian desert where they founded settlements in Gabal Nafūsa, Gabès, Gabal Dammar, Hāmma Matmāta, etc. They also founded city-states of which Tāhert, Tiṭṭāwin (today Tatahouine) and Talālat in Tunisia, and Wargla and Ghardaia in Algeria are among the best known. One of the earliest references to Ibāḍite commercial contacts with Sudanese blacks is found in an early Ibāḍite chronicle, Chronique d’Abou Zakaria, Masquery, E. (ed.), (Algeria, 1878), p. 263Google Scholar. Little scholarly work has been done on this interesting sect. Some of the most authoritative sources include: Lewicki, Tadeuse, Les Ibāḍites en Tunisie au Moyen Age (Rome, 1959)Google Scholar; Études Ibadites Nord-Africaines (Warsaw, 1955)Google Scholar; ‘La Répartition Geographique des Groupements Ibadites dans l'Afrique du Nord au Moyen-Age’, Rocnik Orientalistyezny, t. XXI, pp. 307–14Google Scholar; ‘Une Chronique Ibāḍite: “Kitab As-Siyar” d'Abu 'l- 'Ahbbās Amad As-Sammahi’, Revue des Eludes Islamiques (1934), cahier I, p. 74Google Scholar. For an overview see ‘Traits d’ Histoire du Commerce Transsaharien: Marchands et Missionaires Ibadites au Soudan Occidental et Central au Cours des viiie–xxe Siècles, Etnografia Polska, Vol. VIII (1964), pp. 291–311Google Scholar. Summary in Africana Bull. (Warsaw, 1965), pp. 140–1.Google Scholar

6 Ibn Khaldūn is still of course the classic source for a discussion of the rise of post-Islamic North African dynasties. He illustrated the thrust and parry of Berber politics within his theoretical framework of the role of asabiya, or group solidarity among nomadic peoples. For a scholarly and more traditional approach see Ch. Julien, André, Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord de la Conquete Arabe a 1830 (Paris, 1966).Google Scholar

7 For a detailed study and excellent references to sources on trading relations between North African and western Sudanese merchants see Mauny, Raymond, Tableau Géographique de l'Ouest Africain en Moyen Age (Dakar, 1961).Google Scholar

8 Ibn Baṭṭuṭa, who makes one of the earliest references (fourteenth century) to cowries, states that prior to the Portuguese arrival, cowries were imported from the Mediterranean ports via Sijilmāsa, and although they were unacceptable as currency in Saharan marts, they were used in sub-Saharan markets as far south as Songhay. However, cowries were not established currency in Senegal, Gambia, Portuguese Guinea, Sierre Leone, Liberia, southern Guinea, or the southern Ivory Coast. They did not spread to Kaarta and Nioro until the nineṭeenth century, and by the twentieth century, they had disappeared from the area north of Kayes-Nioro-Mopti-Dori-Sansanne-Hausa except Timbuktu. Marion Johnson has done some very useful studies on cowrie currency. See ‘The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa’, pts. 1 and 2, Journal of African History, XI (1970), 17–49, 331–53Google Scholar; and Hiskett, M., ‘Materials Relating to the Cowrie Currency of the Western Sudan’, pt. 2, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XXIX (1966), 339–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 The mithqāl was valuedat approximately 4.72 grams of gold. It wasa widely used Saharan currency. An early reference comes from al-Bakri (eleventh century) who found that at the Awdaghost market even cattle and sheep were priced in mithqāls. Presumably mithqals were used for purchases of a more prestigious nature; or they might simply have been units of account, Abou-Obeid-El-Bekri, Description de VAfrique Septentrionale, de Slane, M. (trans.), ed., rev. and corrected (Paris, 1965), p. 350Google Scholar. Dinars were also used in the Saharan trade and were on a par with mithqals. Al-Bakri also makes one of the earliest references to them when he informs us that inhabitants of Tademekka (a sub-Saharan town southeast of Timbuktu and probably identified as Es-Souk) traded in gold dinars called sola, ibid., p. 339. Mithqāls, dinars and gold dust were widely used in the Sahara, where they survived as currencies or units of account well into the nineteenth century. Marion Johnson deals extensively with this subject in ‘The Nineteenth-century Gold “Mithqal”, in West and North Africa’, Journal of African History, IX (1968), 547.Google Scholar

10 Marion Johnson suggests that between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, cowrie values fluctuated between 3,000 to 4,000 cowries to the Niger bend mithqāl; and that throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century, despite the increase in the value of gold and decline in cowrie values, the exchange rate was still about 3,500 cowries, not only in Timbuktu which was still an important sub-Saharan port, but throughout most Niger bend markets. Johnson, Marion, ‘The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa’, pt. 2, p. 331Google Scholar. It might, however, be interesting to note that whereas exchange rates average out to a fairly stable level, intermittent fluctuations, especially during famine periods, were considerable. Hence merchants who had to deal with seasonal fluctuations during the course of one year might not have been impressed with Mrs. Johnson's averages, which span approximately three hundred years. These fluctuating exchange rates may well have played a role in limiting the development of integrated markets. An examination of some specific exchange rates for the period between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries may throw some light on the problem. (1) The only figure which we have for the fourteenth century comes from Ibn Batjuta who gives the exchange rate in Gao and the Mali Empire at 1,150 cowries to the mithqal. He actually uses the term ‘dinar’ but we know that dinars and mithqals were roughly on par both in the western Sahara and in the Niger bend towns. A glance at the overall figures below suggests that during the time of Ibn Battuta's visit, the cowrie was reasonably strong in relation to gold. (Ibn Baṭṭuṭa, Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah, Defremery, C. (trans.), Vol. IV (Paris, 1922), pp. 122, 435Google Scholar). (2) We have two figures for the sixteenth century. The first comes from Leo Africanus: 400 cowries to the Timbuktu mithqal, which suggests a famine year. By the end of the century, however, the rate had shot up to a fairly stable rate of about 3,000 cowries to the Timbuktu and Jenné mithqāl. Unfortunately we are not told why this increase occurred, but it may have been related to the fact that Portuguese cowrie shipments via the coast had decreased cowrie values (l'Africain, Jean-Léon, Description de l'Afrique, new edition translated from the Italian by Epaulard, A., and annotated by Epaulard, A., Th. Monod, , Lhote, H. and Mauny, R., 2 vols. (Paris, 1956), Vol. II, p. 469Google Scholar; Kati, Mahmud, Tarikhet-Fettach, Houdas, O. (trans.) (Paris, 1913), p. 319)Google Scholar. (3) We have only one figure for the seventeenth century, the year 1619 when, apparently during a famine year, the exchange rate dropped to 500 cowries (Abderrahman, Es-Sadi, Tarikh Es-Soudan, Houdas, O. (trans.) (Paris, 1900), p. 338)Google Scholar. There is no explanation for this rate, but we know from the Tarikh that years of ‘disaster’ followed the Moroccan invasion of the Songhay Empire in 1591; that law and order broke down; that leading commercial houses and trade were hard hit, and that market towns such as Timbuktu and Gao felt the pinch. Moreover this temporary urban decline was marked by a revival of some rural areas whose non-Muslim populations were less experienced in the trade. While this phenomenon in no way explains the famine rate of 1619, it suggests, at least, a general observation of the state of trade immediately after 1591. (4) We have five figures for the first part of the eighteenth century, four of them appear to be famine years: (a) 1711–16 when the rate was 700 cowries (Es-Soudan, Molouk, Tedzkireten-Nisian, Houdas, O. (trans.) (Akhbar, 1901), p. 63Google Scholar; (b) 1721–2, another famine period when the rate was still 700 cowries (ibid.); (c) 1735 was apparently not a famine year. The rate was 2,000 cowries (ibid., p. 101) which was not very high for a supposedly normal year; (d) We have two figures for 1738: July when the rate was 3,000 cowries, and November when it had sunk to 2,000 cowries. On first appearance, these two figures bear no resemblance to famine quantities. But as the author of the Tedzkireten-Nisian points out, the citizens of Timbuktu had three large tributes to pay within the space of no more than two years, which diminished the supply of gold. Hence the price of cowries was kept up. In fact the November tribute of 1,500 mithqals was paid in cowries because gold was in short supply (ibid., pp. 190,107). These references to tribute allude to troubled years, when the Niger bend towns were subject to frequent raids and intermittent control, especially at the hands of the Wulliminden and Tadmekki Tuareg who, between about 1680 and 1770, ravaged large areas of the middle Niger. The period also coincides with the Bambara attacks by Mamari Kulibali (1712–55) on Niger bend trading towns. Other factors may have intervened; but it is clear, nonetheless, that the political situation during the first part of the eighteenth century was hardly congenial for long-distance trade. However, commerce probably began to revive sometime after 1770 when the Tadmekki and Wulliminden Tuareg, who were traders as well as raiders, made a permanent settlement at Gao. We have no figures for the latter part of the eighteenth century, but by the first half of the nineteenth century, the western Sudanese cowrie was again holding its own at 3,500–4,000 cowries to the mithqal (Barth, H., Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa (London, 1890), Vol. II, p. 351).Google Scholar

11 Numerous currencies were used in the Saharan and western Sudanese trade. (1) Copper rings, fragments, and thin and thick bars were used in the Saharan markets from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries. They appeared to be special purpose money, at least during the time of Ibn Baṭṭuṭa (El-Bekri, , Description de I'Afrique Septentrionale, p. 300Google Scholar; Al-Omari, , Masalik al-Absar fi Mamalik al-Amsar, Gaudefroy-Demombynes, (trans.); L'Afrique Moins l'Egypt (Paris, 1927), p. 44Google Scholar; Baṭṭuṭa, Ibn, Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325–1354, Gibb, H. A. R. (trans.) (London, 1929), p. 336)Google Scholar. (2) Iron bars were also used, and during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when they were acceptable in. Saharan markets, they were an important currency in the western Sudan (Mauny, Raymond, Tableau Geographique, p. 420)Google Scholar. (3) From as early as the eleventh century, salt was widely used for important transactions, especially in relation to gold, not only in the Sahara, but also throughout the western Sudan (El-Bekri, , Description de VAfrique Septentrionale, pp. 325, 343Google Scholar; Baṭṭuṭa, Ibn, Voyages d'lbn Batoutah, IV, pp. 394, 432)Google Scholar. (4) Cloth of varying lengths was also widely used as currency, from at least the fourteenth century, but apparently not in Saharan markets (Al-Omari, , Masalik al-Absarfi Mamalik al-Amsar, p. 44). (5) With European contact, Spanish and Austrian dollars came into circulation; and at the turn of the nineteenth century, large cowries (cypraea annulus) were introduced into the interior by the Europeans. None of these currencies, not even the cypreaea moneta, gained the status of all-purpose money.Google Scholar

12 Wilks, Ivor, ‘Abü Bakr Al-Ṣiddiq of Timbuktu’, in Curtin, P. (ed.), Africa Remembered (University of Wisconsin, 1967), Chap. V.Google Scholar

13 Cohen, Abner, ‘Cultural Strategies in the Organization of Trading Diasporas’, in Meillassoux, Claude (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (Oxford, 1971), p. 277.Google Scholar

14 de Somogyi, Joseph, ‘Trade in the Qur'ān and Hadīth’, The Muslim World, Vol. LII, No. 2 (1962), pp. 110–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rodinson, Maxime, Islam et Capitalism (Paris, 1966), p. 31.Google Scholar

15 El-Bekri, , Description de l'Afrique Septentrionale, p. 331.Google Scholar

16 Femandes, Valentim, Description de la Cote d'Afrique de Ceuta au Sénégal, De Cenival, P. and Th. Monod, (trans.) (Paris, 1938), pp. 51, 87.Google Scholar

17 l'Africain, Jean-Léon, Description de l'Afrique, Vol. 11, p. 567.Google Scholar

18 Meredith, H., An Account of the Gold Coast (London, 1812), pp. 157–8Google Scholar; Wilks, Ivor, ‘The Position of Muslims in Metropolitan Ashanti in the Early Nineteenth Century’, in Lewis, I. M. (ed.), Islam in Tropical Africa (Oxford, 1966), pp. 322, 332.Google Scholar

19 For references to early dyula trading networks and dyula relationships to the Diakhanké see Curtin, P., ‘Pre-Colonial Trading Networks and Traders: The Diakhanké’, The Development of Indigenous Trade, Chap. X.Google Scholar For dyula migrations and trading activities see Wilks, Ivor, ‘Medieval Trade-Routes from the Niger to the Gulf of Guinea’, Journal of African History, III (1962), 337–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The Northern Factor in Ashanti History’, Journal of African History, II (1961), 28–9Google Scholar. Finally Ivor Wilks writes of the late seventeenth-century dyula immigration to Dagomba (N.E. Ghana) from the upper Niger (prior to the nineteenth century spread of Islamic Hausa learning and trade into the area), and suggests that by their presence, the dyula had created a receptivity to Islam, which modifies the view that until the nineteenth- century migrations, Dagmoba was ‘a bulwark against Islam’. ‘A Note on the Early Spread of Islam in Dagmoba’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, VIII (1965), 87–98.Google Scholar

20 The above analysis in no way suggests that long-distance trade was the exclusive monopoly of the upper classes. There are many examples to the contrary. The dyula in particular maintained an open-ended policy from the bottom up.

21 Nadel, S. F., A Black Byzantium, The Kingdom of Nupé in Nigeria (Oxford, 1942), pp. 320, 330.Google Scholar

22 Carrère, Frédèric and Holle, Paul, La Sénégambie Française (Paris, 1855), p. 187.Google Scholar

23 On the other hand, for the neighboring Hausa markets, Polly Hill has shown that cattle dillahi (brokers) abounded (Studies in Rural Capitalism in West Africa (C.U.P., 1970), p. 113, note 2Google Scholar). Abner Cohen also found Hausa brokers in forest-zone cattle markets (Custom and Politics in Urban Africa (London, 1969), Intro., and Chap. III passim.). Since more than one hundred years separate their inquiry from that of Barth's, no real comparison can be drawn. But it is possible that among the Hausa cattle traders more use was made of the brokerage institution than in Bornu.Google Scholar

24 Fernandes, Valentim, Description de la Cote, pp. 63, 115Google Scholar. Skinner also points out that similar punishments were administered further south in Dahomean markets (Skinner, Elliot P., ‘West African Economic Systems’, in Herskovits, M. J. and Harwitz, M. (eds.), Economic Transition in Africa (London, 1964), p. 87).Google Scholar

25 Barth, H., Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, 3 vols., Centenary Ed. (New York, 1965), Vol. III, pp. 345–6; Vol. II, p. 58.Google Scholar

26 Ethnic and social configurations at Timbuktu illustrate some of the technical problems involved in inter-class/ethnic communications. Timbuktu was not really an industrial town in the sense in which Hausa towns were, especially Katsina. It was primarily a major entrepot, a clearing house for merchandise destined for western Sudanese and forest-zone markets. Production in Timbuktu was, however, complicated by the fact that whereas most merchants were either Arab or armas (descendants of the Moroccan army which conquered Timbuktu in 1591), most producers, such as leather workers, basket weavers, etc., were beta or black slaves of the Kel Iner Kunder Taureg. Their paths seldom crossed, and for example it would have been difficult for Arab dealers from Fez or Sijilmāsa to try to increase production among the bela in Timbuktu. Moreover most of the ground provisions on sale in Timbuktu were produced in the farms around Jenne, which were subject to other regional controls. See Miner, Horace, The Primitive City of Timbuktu (New York, 1965), pp. 61–2Google Scholar; Skinner, Elliot, ‘West African Economic Systems’, pp. 81–2.Google Scholar

27 Femandes, Valentim, Description de la Cote, p. 187.Google Scholar

28 Barth, H., Travels and Discoveries, Vol. III, p. 375.Google Scholar

29 l'Africain, Jean-Léon, Description de l'Afrique, Vol. II, p. 469.Google Scholar

30 El-Bekri, , Description de l'Afrique Septentrionale, p. 300.Google Scholar

31 Mage, Eugene, Voyage dans le Soudan Occidental 1863–1866 (Paris, 1868), p. 187Google Scholar; Du Sénégal au Niger (Paris, 1867), p. 203.Google Scholar

32 Izard, Michel, ‘Les Yarse et le Commerce dans le Yatěnga Pré-Colonial’, in The Development of Indigenous Trade, p. 225Google Scholar; Wilks, Ivor, ‘Asante Policy Towards the Hausa Trade in the Nineteenth Century’Google Scholar, ibid., p. 129; Johnson, Marion, ‘Cowrie Currencies’, 40.Google Scholar

33 Lenz, Oscar, Timbouctou: Voyage au Maroc, au Sahara et au Soudan, 2 vols. (Paris, 1887), Vol. II, p. 222.Google Scholar