Trans-Saharan Trade and West African Gold

Trans-Saharan trade connected the gold- and kola-nut-producing forest and savanna zones of West Africa to the Mediterranean coast of North Africa across roughly 1,500 kilometers of desert, a traffic made possible, as with the Arabian incense trade, by the introduction of the camel to North Africa in the early centuries CE, probably via Roman-controlled Egypt and Roman North Africa. Regular, large-scale caravan trade is attested from around the 4th century CE onward and expanded dramatically after the Arab conquest of North Africa in the late 7th and early 8th centuries CE brought the region into a single Islamic commercial and monetary zone stretching from Morocco to the Middle East, giving West African gold direct access to a vast new demand for currency-grade bullion. Caravans of up to several thousand camels crossed via a handful of fixed routes through oasis relay points such as Sijilmasa in southern Morocco, Ouargla, and Ghadames, timed to the availability of water and pasture and guided by Berber, and later Tuareg, camel drivers who possessed the specialized desert-navigation knowledge the trade depended on.