Kanem-Bornu and the trans-saharan trade

GRAPHICS:

The map is designed in color because it is the best way to bring the imagination into the local landscape, which is the main actor behind the trans-saharan trade dynamics.

Indeed, it is the landscape, together with historical events, that generates, shapes and modifies the routes of the caravans. Therefore the colors of the base map indicate the ecoregions which are present in the area: tropical forest, savannah, desert expanses, sand dunes, mountains and the Mediterranean coast

The routes are represented by dotted lines to make it clear that they are not physical infrastructures, but trajectories formed by the progress of caravans from point A to point B. In this they are not unlike the naval routes on nautical charts, with the difference that the Sahara is a sea of ​​rock and sand.

As in medieval maps, icons are more than a symbol and try to graphically represent what they indicate. Aesthetics, line thicknesses, font sizes are optimized for printing.

In general, there is a loss of clarity and hierarchy of information compared to Eric Ross’ map. Looking at the map as a whole, the routes are harder to see on a colored background than they would be if the background were white. This density of information intends to hinder the overall vision, where graphic elements can conflict, questioning the possibility of understanding the network in its entirety.

The intent is to push the user of the map towards a closer look, to invite him to follow a single caravan with his gaze, to track a single dotted line that winds through prairies and sand seas up to an oasis, where the route crosses another trajectory, another caravan heading to another corner of the desert.

CONTENT:

‘Every map is a joke’ we said together with the geographer Luca Paolo Cirillo in Wimbe and this map is no different from the others. It shows things while it hides others, it suggests, it implies, it produces images, it tells, it cheats.

In this case the joke consists in the fact that, even if it doesn’t seem so, this is a diachronic map, that is, it shows in the same space things that belong to different times. It covers a very long period, from 500 B.C. to 1900 A.D. , and the representation may suggest that this network of commercial and cultural exchanges has had this structure for more than two millennia, but in reality at no time has the commercial network existed completely as it is represented.

Not all north-south routes were active at the same time. The Darb El Arba’īn (the Forty Days Road) from Kobbei to Asyut is perhaps the only route used during all this period. The Garamantes routes were active up to two millennia ago, after that they partially fell into disuse and came back into use  from the Middle Ages onwards, above all thanks to the impulse of the Kanem-Bornu empire. Further west, the north-south routes have changed continuously following the shifts of power in the area between Wadan and Gao, the activity of the salt mines of Taghaza and Taodeni and the evolution of the caliphates and kingdoms of North Africa .

The west-east links have been much more intermittent and changeable over the centuries. On a local level they allowed trade between neighboring kingdoms, while on a continental scale they owe much to Muslim expansionism and the need for routes that would allow pilgrimages to Mecca. In some cases, these connections only developed in modern times, such as the road that leads from Lake Chad to the Red Sea.

In this tangle of camel caravans, a constellation of trade nodes has exploded over time. Wells, small oases, caravan cities in the middle of the desert, gold and salt mines and capitals of empires formed the reference points for a group of human beings in continuous movement between the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Guinea, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea.

Some of these nodes were sufficiently grafted into the surrounding environment to resist throughout the millennia and transform themselves into modern cities. Others were so dependent on trade caravans that when the traffic of goods dried up and the camels moved to another route, the cities fell inexorably into decline and ended up being abandoned. Awdaghost, Tadmekka and Sijilmassa were all abandoned during the 15th century and the streets once filled with merchants, gold, slaves, salt and camels ended up being submerged in desert sand.

If the routes have changed over time, what appears to have been continuous over the centuries, and which justifies the diachronic representation of this commercial network, is a flow of gold, salt, slaves and goods between the two shores of the Sahara. An immense circulation of goods and culture which has generated the rise and collapse of empires, caliphates, kingdoms over the course of more than two millennia and which continues, in very different ways, to define the economy and politics of contemporary states, as in the case of migratory routes and the smuggling of exotic animals.

In order to try to represent the evolution of the trans-Saharan commercial network in a more intuitive way, an interactive and geo-referenced version of this map is under construction, a work still in the drafting phase which we should publish in 2023.

PHOTO:

The cover photo is by Michael Benanav and is taken from Men of Salt, a book where the author recounts the 750km journey on the salt caravan between Timbuktu and Taoudenni, one of the few camel caravans still in use in the world.

SOURCES:

The commercial network is traced from the map by Eric Ross, professor of geography at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. You can take a look at it here.

KanemBornu’s area of ​​influence is the one identified by the historian Yves Urvoy and you can observe it in an article by Carlos Magnavita, Zakinet Dangbet and Tchago Bouimon, together with possible expansions proposed by the three researchers.

Shorelines and hydrography are taken from Natural Earth.