Summarize the contributions

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Summarize the contributions of the Trans-Saharan trade and religion to the rise and development of the Sudanese Kingdoms of West Africa.

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Summarize the contributions of rulers (Kings) to the rise, development, decline, and collapse of one of the Sudanese Kingdoms of West Africa.

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The Great Empires of Medieval Sudan Robert W. July organization among people whose survival its the same period of time. Land occupation and utilization was the ultimate objective of political depended upon control of a territory and products. Nonetheless there were no such things as national boundaries; even the kingdom had no name, and visitors from the Arab and European worlds typically misused the name and title of the states that be Sahel and long been sometimes Possessing were not a one anoth trans-Saha example, regular f more get symbiosi from pe warfare rains w product only for the Atl mounta conduc valley. failed mover somet somet occur I vast to th some of st sava wea area The great empires of the medieval Sudan have sometimes been regarded as ephemeral political entities without great intrinsic unity and lacking even frontiers to delineate the extent of their authority. In a purely temporal sense it seems unreasonable to impute weakness to states that lasted as long as Ghana's minimum four centuries, Mali's effective existence from the advent of Sundiata in 1230 A.D. until the capture of Jenne by Sunni Ali over two hundred years later, the unbroken thousand-year reign of the ruling mais of Kanem-Bornu, or the long-lived stability of the Mossi states. Furthermore, the test of political vitality in these African kingdoms must be in terms of Africa's own traditional social institutions which made for an administration and political structure rather different from modern concepts of national entity. por “Ghana, the golden land,” remarks the Arab astronomer, al-Fazari, saying little but suggesting much in wealth, and by implication, in power. This first external notice of the state of Ghana dates from the late eighth century; what came before the rise of Ghana can be reconstructed only indirectly from archaeology, linguistic analysis, and surviving bits of tradition. It seems reasonable to suppose that African peoples moving generally southward from the encroaching desert lived simply in small groups- herders whose social and political organization centered family-owned cattle, farmers inhabiting village communities made up of lineage groups related by blood to a common ancestor. Supplementary ties, no doubt, emerged to neutralize lineage competition, in some cases a central structure of government culminating in a ruler and his council drawn from heads of lineages; in others, age groupings made of successive generations, or hierarchies of titles, that cut clearly across lineage loyalties. On occasion quasi-religious secret societies imposed a further check on the governance of a ruler who in any case probably based his own authority on a supernatural sanction as magician and priest. Government was simple among these modest populations of farmers and pastoralists, for they were content to invent devices sufficient to their needs and no more. What characterized them all, however, was their firm basis, not so much in law as in a web of personal relationships like the feudal societies that emerged in Europe over much Cor uni seti ruler to identify his domain. The large kingdoms of the savanna seem to have developed naturally from these smaller, simpler states, in effect a petty kingdom writ large. In time communities grew complex, developing clans that divided along social or economic lines. A vigorous head of a warrior or royal clan, or perhaps the leader of an age set might have succeeded in imposing his fiat on a growing number of neighboring villages, partly relying on interconnecting loyalties but also utilizing military force. Such authority varied inversely with distance, but communication was relatively easy across the open savanna, and after the introduction of North African horses, an energetic conqueror like the Songhai ruler Sunni Ali could and did maintain his hegemony, though it necessitated an almost ceaseless regimen of military conquest. Such activity eventually posed problems of administration and of succession. Remote districts, difficult to control, were often left in the hands of tribute-paying local chieftains. Alternatively, rulers assigned members of the royal clan to positions as regional viceroys, a dangerous device that invited revolt and led to the alternative institution of non-royal provincial governors, especially chosen because they had no legitimate claim to princely succession. After the rise of Islam, the arrival of Arab and Berber merchants from North Africa introduced a new element that greatly strengthened the large savanna states. Along with their commerce the literacy, both of which helped consolidate imperial administration. Muslim scribes and advisors were widely employed while the religion of the Prophet , slowly adopted by the savanna nobility, introduced administrative standards for such activities of scale as the policing of markets or the levying and collecting of taxes. It was, however, the trans-Saharan trade and wa an po on tre A са w t northern traders brought their religion and their the wasteland it traversed that were the main engines responsible for the emergence of the great 42 July/The Great Empires of Medieval Sudan 43 Sahel and savanna, both north and south, had states that bordered the desert. The peoples of the long been in contact with the desert dwellers, sometimes peacefully, sometimes in contention. Possessing the camel, the nomads of the desert were not always content to confine their raids to one another's herds or to prey only upon passing trans-Saharan caravans. Tuareg and Teda, for example, recruited their domestic slaves through protection, the trade moved elsewhere as their strength atrophied; thus it was with the eventual demise of Ghana or the desert march of the Moroccans that later settled the fate of Songhai. more from peaceful seasonal migration to large-scale symbiosis with the more settled areas, varying warfare and conquest. During cycles when the rains were normal and water holes remained productive, the pastoralists abandoned the desert only for the dry months, the Bedouins moving into The Kingdom of Ghana The earliest known kingdom of the Sudan was regular forays upon savanna farming villages ; Ghana, and its history well exemplified the generally, the desert people maintained a ancient conflict between the Sahara and the savanna, involving both the religious asceticism of the desert and the desire for gold that has infected time it had all peoples. Its origins have been lost, but by the come to the notice of Arab commentators in the eighth century, Ghana was already a thriving state headed by black African Soninke kings and renowned for its wealth in gold. Traditions speak of various founding dynasties, including nonblack northerners, the southern nomads doubtless a reflection both of Ghana's close contact with neighboring Berbers and of later attempts by West African Muslims to associate Sudanic states with Islamic and Arabic armed invasion, antecedents. By the ninth century Ghana was approaching the fullest extent of its power and influence with territory extending to the south as far as the upper reaches of the Niger and Senegal, to the north into the desert and eastward to the mountain movements to were savanna or the Atlas highlands to graze their flocks on the pasture, conducting a similar infiltration of the Niger River valley. In difficult times, however, when the rains failed and the wells ran dry, these pacific converted sometimes in the form of hit-and-run raids and sometimes as more permanent conquest and occupation. Indeed, the desert nomads were bound up in a. vast rhythm of history with the peoples who lived to the north and to the south of them. At moments of stress when conditions became severe and the Mediterranean regions weakened, the desert encroached on the settled areas and the desert people predominated. Conversely, when the savanna organized and unified itself under a strong central regime, the settled area extended farther into the desert, and it was the nomadic peoples who were forced back and obliged to pay allegiance to the more powerful authority. More important still was the impact of the trans-Saharan trade. The great value of the West African gold mines was easily recognized; more generally, it was apparent that those who controlled the trade to the north commanded great wealth, but control implied political organization to insure the peaceful passage of caravans and the orderly conduct of business in the marketplace. Niger bend. Control over the gold commerce assured the prosperity of Ghana's kings, but Ghana suffered from the competition of Awdaghost lying to the west, which was held by Sanhaja Berbers and which was pressing its own claim to become the major terminus for the commerce across the western Sahara. The vexation of the Awdaghost competition was temporarily laid to rest in 990 A.D., however, when the Soninke of Ghana captured the rival city during a period of internal dissension among the Sanhaja. This was the peak moment of glory. The market city of Kumbi Saleh became the chief mercantile and intellectual center in the Sudan and its king was renowned for his wealth and the splendor of his court. When he held audience, he appeared resplendent in garments of fine cloth and ornaments of gold, while his retainers and even the royal animals were similarly bedecked. His tariffs filled the royal treasury, his armies kept the peace across his vast domain, and his fame spread far to the north While the sovereigns of the savanna states failed in their attempts to seize the mines of Wangara, they did succeed in taxing the trade both through the appropriation of all gold nuggets and with tariffs levied on caravans arriving at the major savanna entrepôts. In return they provided their where people spoke of “the king of Ghana ... the richest monarch in the world.”. Such prosperity was difficult to maintain. During the eleventh century, the Sanhaja experienced a profound religious revival led by a particularly puritanical Muslim sect, the Almoravids, and the white heat of religious fervor converted into a jihad with repercussions as far as Morocco and the states of celebrated "pax savanna" which, at its best, insured honest dealings in the markets and enabled strangers and local people alike to travel throughout the realm without fear of molestation. soon was When the savanna states could no longer provide 44 Section Two: The Formation of Early African Societies copper, and it was pro prc kingdom dec the as an Andalusia. In the Sahel, this holy war took the shape of a campaign against Ghana. Authorities Taghaza as well as Saharan differ over the consequences. Some say Kumbi fell to the Almoravid jihad as Ghana was forcibly converted to Islam. Others contend that the development within the new conversion was voluntary. In either case the Almoravids extended their control of the desert entrepôt for desert caravans. frade at Ghana's expense, and the Soninke kingdom, though subsequently cooperating with the Almoravids, gradually declined in power and wealth. The ensuing power vacuum was soon occupied by the Soso chieftaincy of Kaniaga, a former vassal state which had already revolted successfully, and now moved to capture Ghana under the leadership of Sumaguru Kante. In 1203 Kumbi was sacked and the independent kingdom of Ghana ceased to exist. The merchants of Kumbi, no longer able to pursue their affairs at the old site, moved north toward the desert to the rising commercial center of Walata. south, Mali reached out to control the salt trade of during the period of Mali's growth during the thirteenth century that Timbuktu began its The precise extent of the empire under Sundiata is not known, but after his death in 1255 by Sakura, a freed slave of the royal household additional conquests were made by Mansa Uli and who seized power during a period of weakness first brought Songhai under Mali suzerainty and within the ruling dynasty. Either Sundiata or Uli Sakura was apparently responsible for campaigns against Tekrur in the west as well as for the capture of Gao in the east. Nevertheless, until recently many of these conquests had been of 1 late dyt intc out the ear wa Sur сар late of to but Gra sny cer of yea to up attributed to Mansa Musa (1312–1337), partly because Musa's devotion to Islam attracted the praise of Muslim historians and partly because of the fame of his glittering pilgrimage to Mecca. The progress of Musa's caravan has been recorded and savored by historians—the five hundred slaves bearing golden staffs, the hundred camels each loaded with three hundred pounds of gold, the spending spree in the bazaars of Cairo, and the scattering of bounty with such a lavish hand as to force a serious depreciation of gold on the Cairo exchange. So too has his sponsorship of as-Sahili, a poet and architect from Andalusia, who returned from Mecca with Musa's entourage to introduce an Arabian style to the religious and secular architecture of the Sudan. These events, along with the number of Muslim scholars he brought back from the Middle East, emphasized Musa's Islamic persuasion and doubtless pleased Muslim historians who thereby may have tended to underestimate the accomplishments of Musa's royal predecessors. Moreover, they may have The Rise and Fall of Mali The exploits of Sumaguru seemed to be the beginning of a new power centering on the Soso, but in fact the heir to Ghana's authority lay in another quarter. South of Kaniaga along the upper reaches of the Niger, were Mandinka blacks occupying fertile farm land near the source of West Africa's gold supply, and these people were subdued by Sumaguru after his victory over Ghana. According to one tradition, Sumaguru put all the sons of the Mandinka ruler to death save one who was spared as an inconsequential cripple. This sole survivor, Sundiata, overcame his weakness, rallied local support, and fashioning a guerrilla army, eventually defeated and killed. Sumaguru in 1235. The Soso were quickly absorbed, whereupon Sundiata advanced northward, sacked and annexed the remnants of Ghana in 1240, at the same time taking control of the gold trade routes and the port cities of the Saharan commerce. This was the genesis of the empire of Mali which, in a few short years, had established itself, extending its hegemony to include all of the former sphere of influence of im its ang we the thi mc see Rix on pre wa asc Ku lik att fro integrity of local chieftaincies was scrupulously overlooked the degree to which the king, for all his devotion to Islamic religion and civilization, continued to rely upon traditional institutions for the administration of his realm. For example, when the propagation of the true faith threatened was quickly abandoned. Moreover, despite the gold production in pagan Wangara, proselytizing might and glory of Mali's great rulers, the observed, and no attempt was made to eliminate traditional ritual at the royal court. Describing audiences of the mansa a few years after Musa's death, Ibn Battuta approvingly commented on evidence of Islamic practice, but he was also obliged to observe the importance of customary traditional articles symbolic of royal authority, elaborate ceremony with its liberal reliance on ritual magic, the rigid demands on time-honored foy int op Ghana. Although the early Mandinka princes were said to be Muslims, it seems likely that Sundiata was a pagan, and it was on the traditional relationships within clans and lineage groups that he built his administration. Securing these relationships by force and persuasion before confronting the Soso, Sundiata established his capital, possibly at his ancestral village of Niani, from where he and his successors ruled their extensive empire. Mali. was an agricultural community, but this by no means meant a neglect of the commercial possibilities of the trans-desert traffic. In addition to the gold supplies in the the the usage—the mansa seated amid the many the fro en its WE wi July/The Great Empires of Medieval Sudan 45 protocol tendering homage to the ruler through prostration and dusting, and the royal Mandinka the form of trousers of exceptional width. decorations for distinguished service which took of Musa continued for several decades, but by the late years of the fourteenth century the problem of into the government. Palace quarrels encouraged dynastic succession had intruded a fatal weakness outside attack. As the fifteenth century opened, earlier sacked Timbuktu. This luckless entrepôt was occupied by Tuareg in 1433–1434, and in 1468 Sunni Ali of the growing power of Songhai captured the city with great loss of life, five years the Mossi were raiding the middle Niger having bend. Songhai astride the east-west route of the Niger a strategic position that offered the possibility of a thrust westward toward Timbuktu and beyond. It was Gao, moreover, that moved the Songhai into close contact with Islamic civilization, bringing at least a measure of conversion to the royal house if not to the general population In the days of Mansa Musa, Songhai had been subject to Mali; now during the fifteenth century an independent Songhai began to acquire territory at the expense of its former master, at first pushing westward into Mema and adjacent Sahelian provinces beyond the Niger bend. The main imperial expansion came, however, with the long reign of Sunni Ali which began in 1464. With furious energy he overran the whole Niger country, capturing Jenne after his occupation of Timbuktu, pushing back the Tuareg to the north and punishing the Mossi states on his south after upper Niger. later reducing the supposedly impregnable town of Jenne. The rise of Songhai put an effective end to Mali's hegemony in the eastern Niger region, but its power lingered on fitfully in the west. Gradually deteriorating, however, it was finally century with the appearance of the Bambara states Snuffed out in the middle of the seventeenth they had sacked Timbuktu and besieged Walata. of Kaarta and Segu. Thus, after four hundred During twenty-eight years of almost incessant years, the great Mali empire had finally returned campaigning, Ali created, then protected, an to the original status of a small chieftaincy on the empire along the Niger that dominated the trade routes and the great grain-producing region of the Niger's inland delta. Under Ali, the administration of the Songhai The Empire of Songhai state seems to have been delegated largely to By the time of Mali's final demise, Songhai, its military commanders backed by Ali's own imperial successor in the Sudan, had experienced mobility and martial energy. He maintained a fleet its own brief moment of ascendancy-a century on the river, controlled the overland route through and a half that saw a rapid expansion across the the Hombori Mountains south of the Niger bend, western Savanna, a short period of stability, and established several “capitals” the better to control then an equally rapid decline into extinction. All his domains, and placed distant provinces in the this came as a climax to a long era of much more hands of local rulers responsible to him for modest development maintaining order and collecting taxes. His armies The point of origin for the Songhai people apparently consisted of a core unit of troops under seems to have been those reaches of the Niger his personal command along with special levees River downstream from the great bend, centering raised for particular campaigns.ee on the town of Kukiya. Here the Za dynasty Much of the information concerning Sunni Ali and his activities comes from Muslim accounts presided over an agricultural community, giving which have pictured him ruthless, way to the Sunni line at a time when Mali was still bloodthirsty conqueror, as well as an unbeliever, a ascendant throughout the Niger country. North of reaction to his savage persecution of Timbuktu Kukiya lay Gao, a market town on the Sahel edge, Muslims, particularly those associated with the like Timbuktu under Malian control, and Sankore mosque. Ali argued that his persecution of the Sankore adherents was purely political, occasioned by their support for his Tuareg foes. After his occupation of Timbuktu, Ali did not molest other Muslims in the town and in general maintained good relations with the Islamic community throughout his lands. It is true that Ali bore his Islamic faith lightly, and local tradition emphasizes his position as a great magician who followed many indigenous practices, for example, worshipping idols and consulting diviners and sorcerers. It would seem that Sunni Ali's actions were indeed largely political and economic. The as a attracting traders from south and west, as well as from North African points. Toward the end of the fourteenth century, as Mali began to suffer internal decay, the Sunnis of Kukiya sensed their opportunity to share in the lucrative trade of the ,probably occupying the river port about Gao area, the time Timbuktu fell to the Tuareg. It was a step that initiated the trans-formation from insignificant principality to major Sudanic empire. First, Songhai began to enjoy the riches of its improved trading position, an expanding widening authority. Next, control of Gao placed wealth that meant growing influence and that sons. Songhai state was created through conquest and sustained primarily through force, but there was necessarily an element of persuasion. At least nominally Muslim, Ali could command the loyalty of most true believers, while concurrently he remained an African priest-king sensitive to the spiritual interest of his pagan people, Sunni Ali died in a drowning accident in 1492, and the following year the throne was usurped by Muhammad Toure, governor of the Hombori region and founder of the succeeding Askia dynasty. Sunni Ali had established the basis for the Songhai empire. Under Askia Muhammad it was greatly expanded and institutionalized. coups that ective administration orderly succession. After a long reign the Askia eluded Askia Muhammad was the matter of had declined in health and energy when in 1528 This was the first of a series of ensued over a sixty-year period, undermining the state, almost invariably bringing disunity and weakness, and leading to its final disintegration which came abruptly at the end of the sixteenth century. Over this period no less than eight askias reigned in Songhai. One of these, Daud (1549- 1582), was an able and successful ruler, but his success only underscored the shortcomings of the During the second half of the sixteenth century, Songhai came under increasing pressure Else Son Der wh. In I farr the der others. fam sen coh mo the Rai con sm uni eig commerce from the As with Sunni Ali, Askia Muhammad's objectives were strategic and economic , although his tactics were far different, at once more comprehensive and more subtle. Concerned that Ali's war making had disrupted the Saharan gold trade, Muhammad moved to stabilize the western empire, campaigning against the Mossi in 1498– 1499, and soon thereafter probing westward to Diara in ancient Ghana. His conquest of Air in 1501-1502 secured the trade routes to Tripoli and Egypt while his absorption of the Taghaza mines brought control of the salt and gold trade of the western Sudan. Military action, however, was balanced with diplomacy. Only three years after taking power, Muhammad undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca, the was also purpose certainly involving religious piety, but it move to çement relations with important Muslim commercial circles. in both North and South Africa. Again, Askia Muhammad placated the Muslims of Timbuktu and cultivated Seg pol me traf vig civ the from the Sadian kingdom of Morocco, intent gaining access to the rich trans-Saharan trafic particularly through control over the salt mines of Taghaza. The move may have been occasioned by the new sea routes around Africa that diverted European away Mediterranean; in any event Morocco saw opportunity to the south. Taghaza and other desert oases were periodically attacked and plans were made for an advance on Songhai in the hopes of gaining control of its gold supply. Although these Moroccan threats were well known in Songhai, its rulers felt secure in the protection of the desert; indeed, for all its belligerency, Morocco had not been able to hold Taghaza, let alone march the Niger Nevertheless, in 1591 a column of four thousand soldiers led by an Andalusian, Judar Pasha , succeeded in crossing the desert and appeared at Tondibi on the Niger above Gao. It was a much smaller force than the Songhai army but it contained a large pro addition to superior discipline, grc end wa up Suc a on tion of European Muslim ecc hac wit He and sol sar sec ari were decisive tra Su the celebrated North African cleric, al-Maghili, achieving the double objective of gaining Muslim support, at the same time obtaining al-Maghili's verdict that Sunni Ali had been a pagan and therefore an appropriate objective for legitimate military takeover. Muhammad also effected basic admini- strative reforms. He created a professional army of slave soldiers, ruling over his domains, partly through tribute-paying local chieftains. partly through hereditary royal title holders, and partly with the help of Muslim advisers and officials, relying often on Islamic sanctions regarding such matters as taxation and trade. Nonetheless these changes were less than fundamental. Askia Muhammad conducted no jihads against infidel neighbors, retained numerous traditional customs court, and acknowledged indigenous authorities at the village level. Staunch Muslim though he was, he realized like Sunni Ali that much of his authority stemmed from Songhai. tradition from which he could stray too far only at against the invaders. gained small political collapse. Morocco converts equipped with muskets, which, in against the bows and spears of the ill-organized enemy. Songhai, already weakened by civil war, was easily defeated, its army put into full retreat, and the Niger country rendered defenseless Military defeat was quickly followed by recompense from its adventure, for it found little of the wealth it sought and was unable to occupy and exploit Songhai. Nevertheless the invasion spelled the end of the Songhai empire. Gao and Timbuktu were occupied, the latter permanently, the Niger bend ruling the region first as a for the Moroccan soldiers eventually settled along absorbed into the local population, establishing an protectorate, and then as they gradually became independent, albeit politically feeble, state. stir cor Fir inf we alle ext at the COL the his peril. lar the July/The Great Empires of Medieval Sudan 47 Elsewhere Songhai split into its components. The Songhai themselves retreated down river to the Dendi home whence they had originally come and where they succeeded in eluding the Moroccans. In Masina and Dirma, the Fulani raided the local farming people, the Jenne region was attacked by the Bambara, while Tuareg visited their usual followed by famine, and famine by plague. When some semblance of stability finally returned, political cohesion had been reduced to a much more modest scale than that which had characterized an the east belonged to the quite different Saharan branch of the Nilo-Saharan grouping, while south of the lake were Benue-Congo speakers of the Niger-Congo family. These migrations very likely involved a variety of folk filtering into an devastation all along the Niger bend. indigenous population, a process that gave rise Political disintegration was during the first millennium after Christ to a heterogeneous mixture of herders, farmers, and fisherfolk. Traders visiting the region introduced their own names and these eventually became permanent-Zagawa to identify the people and the apogee of the great Sudanic kingdoms. bordering the lake. Kanem for the loose collection of local states Raiding by nomadic and warrior groups Kanuri tradition credits an Arab leader, Saif combined with internecine struggles to keep states ibn Dhi Yazan, with unifying these diverse small, weakened, and defensive; hence, larger peoples and establishing the ruling Saifawa units did not reappear until the emergence in the dynasty of the Kanuri mais or kings, a probable eighteenth century of the Bambara kingdoms of .myth designed to gain legitimacy for the Kanem Segu and Kaarta. Trade, too, suffered from the rulers by linking them with the name of a great political fragmentation, although in general Arab hero. In any event, the Saifawa dynasty, merchants managed to keep the trans-Saharan probably founded in the ninth century, was to survive for a thousand years, unusual traffic moving at its former levels despite the vigorous interference of desert raiders. As for the longevity during which the state of Kanem emerged and endured, developing other qualities civilization that Islam had introduced by way of that added an idiomatic flavor to its basic vitality. the northern trade routes, these were not years of To begin with, the mai was regarded as divine, growth, and the indifference that the true faith and as a god remained aloof from the profane encountered both at court and in the countryside gaze of his people, speaking from behind a screen was to build frustrations leading to the religious and always taking his meals in solitude. The upheavals that engulfed the western and central institution of a divine, ritually secluded monarch, Sudan during the early nineteenth century. widely practiced among traditional African societies, was joined by characteristics more Kanem-Bornu and the Hausa States typically Kanuric-an elaborate, highly The pattern of population movements, centralized palace hierarchy, royal descent in the economic growth, and political centralization that male line combined with important and powerful had characterized the western Sudan was repeated positions for the queen mother or Magire and with variations in Kanem-Bornu and Hausaland. other female members of the mai's household, and Here, too, the drying out of the Sahara forced a minutely regulated provincial administration and military organization based upon feudal ancient negroid hunting and fishing societies south_into the more congenial latitudes of the rights and obligations. There is repeated evidence of the continuing savanna, where they turned gradually to a influence on state affairs by the women of the sedentary farming life, leaving the increasingly royal household, influence apparently arid desert to nomadic herders. In its time, the originating in pre-Islamic times—that is, before trans-Saharan commerce arose to bind the central royal conversion in the eleventh century—but Sudan to the markets of North Africa, and to nevertheless continuing in spite of Islamic stimulate the appearance of Sudanic states injunctions concerning the position of women. One chronicle reports a Magira as actual ruler; another testifies to the imprisonment of a ruling mai by his mother because of an alleged mismanagement of royal justice. Still another eulogizes a queen mother as the holder o extensive fiefs as well as "owner of a thousand thrones and five hundred gunmen.' It was trade that stimulated the centralizin efforts of the Saifawas, responding to the growir number of merchants from North Africa wh sought to organize and control the Sahara an the market cities. 11 concerned in part to protect that commerce. Finally, Islamic theology and culture spread its influence in the central Sudan, as it had in the west, coming across the desert to gain the allegiance of royalty, but failing by and large to extend its sway beyond the limited populations of Judging from the present-day linguistic configuration, those migrants who descended into the regions directly west of Lake Chad spoke languages comprising the Chadic subdivision of the Afro-Asiatic linguistic classification, those to
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Introduction
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Conclusion
References


Running head: TRANS-SAHARAN TRADE

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Trans-Saharan Trade in Ancient Sudan
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TRANS-SAHARAN TRADE

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Trans-Saharan trade

The ancient Sudan empires had been viewed as mere political entities that not only lacked
intrinsic unity but as well-established administrative units. The lives of the inhabitants seemed to
be desert life and lived in small groups of blood alienation. There were neither national
boundaries nor an identifiable name for the kingdoms. However, during this period, the transSaharan commerce became a significant engine in the transformation of the native states into
great political empires. While a vast memoir still covered these desert nomads the regions began
to suffer ...


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