Page 34 - Empires of Medieval West Africa

t he Ghana Empire

Most of the population was Muslim traders from Ifriqiya (the
North African region between the Maghrib and Egypt). Al-Bakri said
the local farmers grew wheat, sorghum, date palms, fig trees, and henna
shrubs (the leaves of which produce a reddish brown dye). The vegeta-
ble gardens were watered using buckets, which was the usual method in
Sahel towns and Sahara oases.
Awdaghust sat on a trade route for gold that was shipped north-
ward to the city of Sijilmasa in southern Morocco. There the gold
was minted into coins. The caravan journey between Awdaghust and
Sijilmasa took two months. The Arab geographer Ibn Hawqal visited
Sijilmasa in 951 and reported seeing a steady stream of trade with the
lands south of the Sahara. He saw “abundant profits and the constant
coming and going of caravans” (quoted in Levtzion and Hopkins).
The main traders of Awdaghust were Berbers of the Zanata clan.
They were from the Atlas mountain region in Morocco. In the 10th
century, Zanata traders in the city began to dominate the trans-
Saharan trade between Awdaghust in the south and Sijilmasa in the
north.
But it was the Sanhaja nomads of the desert who really held power
over the markets. The Sanhaja are sometimes called “the people of the
veil” because the men covered their faces (not the women, as is the case
in many Muslim societies).
The Sanhaja avoided living in the city because they preferred liv-
ing in tents and wandering the open land on their camels. From out in
the desert, they asserted great authority over all the routes leading to
the cities. The Sanhaja got their income from controlling these trade
routes. They were the guides and protectors for some caravans, but
they demanded tolls from others. Sometimes, they simply raided and
robbed caravans.
The Sanhaja also profited from trade centered in Awdaghust by
sharing control of the city with the Zanata Berbers. But around the
middle of the 11th century the Soninke of Ghana took control of Awda-
ghust. The Zanata traders of the city accepted Soninke authority. This
caused the Sanhaja people of the desert to lose an important source of
income, so they continued to compete with the Soninke for control of
trade and had a great impact on 11th century Ghana
Eventually, many Sanhaja clans unified into a powerful Islamic
state that recaptured Awdaghust from the Soninke. The unified San-
haja groups came to be known as the Almoravids. The Almoravids were
strict Muslims who took control of Islamic Northwest Africa around

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