SC - Columbus' chilies

[david friedman]

At 1:11 PM -0500 6/20/00, Decker, Terry D. wrote:

>  > Could be--but you don't need conquest for trade. Gold was coming up
>  > long before that.
>  >
>  > David Friedman
>
>
>Do you have any dates on the trade?  A lot of things came from the
>Trans-Sahara in Antiquity, when the Sahara was still a grassland and travel
>was relatively easy.  After it turned to desert, the trade route between
>Mali and the Mediterranean became one of the deadliest in the world and it
>was essentially abandoned.  IIRC, it became a major slave trading route only
>in the 17th and 18th Centuries as the supply of slaves from Europe was cut
>off.

E. W. Bovill, _The Golden Trade of the Moors_, provides a pretty 
extensive history of trade between the Maghreb and subsaharan Africa. 
He quotes Ibn Haukal in the 10th century as describing Sijilmasa, in 
an Oasis just south of the Atlas mountains, and connecting it to the 
gold trade. He does say that the way to the mines is "dangerous and 
troublesome." The author comments that "Early writers are unanimous 
in attributing the city's wealth to the gold trade with Ghana, ... 
." He also describes salt as coming from Taghaza, twenty days' march 
south towards Ghana.

The author writes:

"The gold trade with Ghana was probably well established before the 
coming of the Arabas. ... Some time between A.D. 734 and 750 ... they 
sent an expedition down the Sijilmasa-Taghaza raod to attack Ghana. 
...  it reached the Sudan and obtained a lot of gold, but it failed 
in its purpose."

He mentions that Masudi, tenth century, describes the "silent trade" 
in gold in the Sudan.

The general impression I get from him is that cross Saharan trade, 
mostly under Tuareg control, continued pretty much from Roman times 
on.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/