The Sahara (14 page)

When not mining, levying taxes on those crossing the Sahara, traders and non-commercial travellers alike, was an effortless means of guaranteeing a considerable income for the king. Commenting on the gold wealth of the empire, the eleventh-century Andalusian historian and geographer al-Bakri writes in his
Book of Highways and of Kingdoms of North Africa
that “The King adorns himself like a woman wearing necklaces round his neck and bracelets on his forearms and he puts on a high cap decorated with gold and wrapped in a turban of fine cotton.” Al-Bakri illustrates just how much gold the king had at his disposal by writing of the royal dogs: “Round their necks they wear collars of gold and silver, studded with a number of balls of the same metals.”

The Ghana Empire was most fortunate to emerge from a region where conditions allowed both horses and camels to prosper. Over time, the empire’s rulers developed a strong cavalry, which consolidated their power and imposed authority over weaker neighbouring states.

Although it has been traditional, after Ibn Khaldun, to ascribe the decline of Ghana to an Almoravid invasion, more probably it was due to the discovery of new, equally rich sources of gold elsewhere in the region. Once these were exploited, new kingdoms sprouted and new routes across the desert were opened, leading to Ghana’s decline and fall.

The Mali Empire was the most successful post-Ghanaian empire in the region. Emerging as a regional power around 1230, it remained a force until the first half of the seventeenth century and in its heyday was far wealthier than Ghana had ever been. However, like Ghana, the most important reason for both its rise and drawn out collapse was the trans-Saharan trade in gold and other goods.

Timbuktu

The Malian kings managed to exploit their gold seams for generations, in the process creating a legendary reputation for affluence. The legend outlasted the reality by many centuries. As well as being noted as a land of unfettered wealth, the empire became a byword for remoteness, with one far-flung oasis town in particular coming to symbolize the otherworldliness of Mali for Europeans, a place that to this day conjures up the romantic image of mysterious city built on gold: Timbuktu. The mythology of Timbuktu, with its almost talismanic name, was the subject of a 1970 article by the traveller and writer Bruce Chatwin in which he asks

Timbuctoo, Tumbuto, Tombouctou, Tumbyktu, Tumbuktu or Tembuch? It doesn’t matter how you spell it. The word is a slogan, a ritual formula, once heard never forgotten. At 11 I knew of Timbuctoo as a mysterious city in the heart of Africa where they ate mice-and served them to visitors. A blurred photograph, in a traveller’s account of Timbuctoo, of a bowl of muddy broth with little pink feet rising to the surface excited me greatly. Naturally, I wrote an unprintable limerick about it. The words “mice in the stew” rhymed with Timbuctoo and for me both are still inextricably associated.

Founded in the eleventh century by Tuareg nomads, the oasis grew into a city and medieval centre of scholarship. Timbuktu’s university, which was established in 1327, was by the sixteenth century peerless in the Islamic world, attracting aspiring scholars and established men of learning alike to the three mosque complexes that together made up the university: Djinguereber; Sidi Yahya; and Sankore. Many of the recognized academics who came to Timbuktu brought their personal collections of texts with them, which were added to works commissioned there, thus building up the library until it was one of the largest anywhere in the world. The university’s reputation was captured in an Islamic proverb from West Africa that states, “Salt comes from the North, gold from the South, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom come from Timbuktu.” Today, although scholars do not gather in the numbers they once did, the city still boasts a unique collection of more than 700,000 manuscripts, mostly in Arabic or Fulani, some of which predate the birth of Islam.

Mansa Musa

It was the
hajj
performed in 1324 by the tenth Malian emperor, Kankou Musa or Musa I, better known as Mansa Musa, King of Kings, that really brought the Mali Empire to the attention of the wider world beyond its immediate trading partners, and inspired the idea of Timbuktu as the mythical city in the Sahara whose wealth was greater than that of King Midas. By royal decree, all gold in the empire belonged exclusively to Mansa Musa, and trading gold within the empire was illegal, which protected the king’s wealth most effectively. This also meant that when the king travelled, he was never short of spending money. The best account of Mansa Musa’s
hajj
is by the historian Chihab Addine Abul-Abbas Ahmad ben Fadhlal-Umari, although Ibn Battuta and others also noted Musa’s journey.

Born in Damascus in 1301, Chihab al-Umari was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps and spend his professional life occupied with a post in the Mameluke civil service in his home city. Yet he was not suited to office life, twice being dismissed from his government position and imprisoned. When he was eventually at liberty to travel, al- Umari made his way to Cairo, arriving a few years after Mansa Musa had been in the city. Writing down stories he heard from Cairo’s citizens, he wrote of Mansa Musa:

This man flooded Cairo with his benefactions. He left no court emir nor holder of a royal office without the gift of a load of gold. The Cairenes made incalculable profits out of him and his suite in buying and selling and giving and taking. They exchanged gold until they depressed its value in Egypt and caused its price to fall.

The fact that the price of gold in Cairo had still failed to recover to its pre-Mansa value twelve years after his visit gives us some idea of the king’s profligacy. Al-Umari adds to his account the rather forlorn portrait of Mansa Musa on his return journey, explaining that the king spent so much gold on his way to Mecca - eighty camel-loads according to one source - that by the time he returned to Cairo he was forced to borrow money to complete his journey.

Inevitably the best account to have survived regarding the Mali Empire in its heyday is that of the fourteenth-century Tangerine Ibn Battuta, whose Arabic patronymic intriguingly means “son of a duckling”. Ibn Battuta’s account of his global travels,
A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling,
or simply
Travels
, includes a fascinating and lengthy account of the empire, which left him deeply unimpressed. Nevertheless, he stayed for eight months in 1352-3. Of the Malian ruler, Mansa Suleiman, Ibn Battuta concluded that “He is a miserly king and a big gift is not to be expected of him.” Possibly drawn to Mali in part because of the legendary wealth and generosity of Suleiman’s brother and predecessor Mansa Musa, Ibn Battuta found it impossible to hide his disappointment.

Ibn Battuta was, like many travellers, unfortunate enough to get sick while in the empire’s capital city. Unfamiliar food seems to have been the cause, and he writes after eating some local porridge, ‘‘All six of us were taken ill and one of us died.” Taking medicine given to him by an Egyptian there, Ibn Battuta adds, “I drank it and vomited what I had eaten together with much bile. God spared me from death but I was ill for two months.” It is hardly surprising that Ibn Battuta’s account of his time in Mali is less than laudatory.

Although sick, Ibn Battuta did manage to rouse himself when a messenger from the
qadi
, the king’s representative, arrived with news of gifts from the sultan: “I stood up, supposing them to be robes of honour and money, but there were three rounds of bread, a piece of beef fried in gharti, and a calabash with curdled milk. When I saw it I laughed and was greatly surprised at their feeble intelligence and exaggerated opinion of something contemptible.” Two months later, Ibn Battuta notes almost begrudgingly that the king, “gave me a hundred mithqals of gold.” He fails to say whether or not he is grateful for this gift of approximately 425 grams of gold, or if his subsequent impression of Mansa Suleiman is any more favourable. In contrast, he writes very favourably about the local black population and even includes their king in this. Ibn Battuta describes them as having “admirable qualities. They are seldom unjust, and have a greater abhorrence of injustice than any other people. Their sultan shows no mercy to any one guilty of the least act of it.” He adds that the people take their religion seriously, and “are careful to observe the hours of prayer.”

None of this is to say that Ibn Battuta could not find fault. He is most disconcerted that “the women servants, slave-girls and young girls go about in front of everyone naked, without a stitch of clothing on them.” Nor does he think much of their dietary habits, which include “the eating of carrion, dogs, and asses”. Given the near fatal consequences of eating porridge, it is not surprising that he was so sceptical about these more than out-of-the-ordinary foodstuffs, which would all in any case have been forbidden to an observant Muslim.

Twenty years before Ibn Battuta’s visit to Mali, the author of one of the world’s greatest books was born in Tunis. Abu Zaid ‘Abdul Rahman Ibn Khaldun, or simply Ibn Khaldun, was born in 1332 and died in his mid-seventies in Cairo in 1406. He was the author of the aforementioned
Muqaddimah
, which not only gives an invaluable view of early Muslim universal history, but is also the first book to tackle the philosophy of history and the social sciences - including sociology, demography, historiography and cultural history - not to mention being a medieval forerunner to the study of economics, as we now understand the subject.

If all that is not impressive enough, Ibn Khaldun also expounds on Islamic theology, biology and chemistry. In the introduction to his magnum opus, written in 1377, he explains that the book was to be just the first, introductory volume to a proposed history of the world. Sadly for the world, no further volumes appeared, which is why it is called the
Muqaddimah
, or in Greek the Prolegomena, a critical introduction to a larger work. That said, the
Muqaddimah
is a complete work, with few loose ends.

Like others before him, Ibn Khaldun confuses the Nile with the Niger, writing that certain towns “and Ghana are situated along this Nile”. He also notes the fact that “Moroccan merchants travel to their country,” before going on to describe the local slave trade, in which his attitude is in step with his era:

The people of Ghana and Takrur invade their country (to the South), capture them, and sell them to merchants who transport them to the Maghreb. There they constitute the ordinary mass of slaves. Beyond them to the South, there is no civilisation in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings.

Slavery for Ibn Khaldun is simply a part of the natural order of societies.

A great deal of the work is more generally an explanation of what he sees as the natural order of things in the world, of which slavery is just one aspect. He is especially keen to point out the differences between those who live in the desert and the softer town-dwellers. Writing specifically about the Sahara’s inhabitants, Ibn Khaldun explains that

in other parts, the land is strewn with rocks, and no seeds or herbs grow at all. There, the locals have a very hard time. Instances of such people are the... veiled Sinhaja who live in the desert of the Maghreb on the fringes of the sandy deserts which lie between the Berbers and the Sudanese Negroes. All of them lack all grain and seasonings. Their nourishment and food is milk and meat... In spite of this, the desert people who lack grain and seasonings are found to be healthier in body and better in character than the hill people who have plenty of everything. Their complexions are clearer, their bodies cleaner, their figures more perfect and better, their characters less intemperate, and their minds keener as far as knowledge and perception are concerned... Consequently, the bodies of the urban population are found to be more delicate than those of the inhabitants of the desert who live a hard life.

While Ibn Khaldun was creating his survey, the Mali Empire was entering a period of decline, while the Songhai Empire was becoming a power of its own. One of the greatest West African states of all time, the Songhai Empire flourished from the early fifteenth until the late sixteenth centuries, emerging from its riverside capital at Gao, within the confines of the Mali Empire, in about 1000 CE.