Les réseaux transsahariens de la traite de l’or et des esclaves au haut Moyen Âge : VIIIe-XIe siècle

• Main Author: Roger Botte
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: CNRS Éditions 2011-11-01
• Series: L’Année du Maghreb
• Subjects: Berbers; slaves; Jews; Kharijites Ibadi; trans-Saharan
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/anneemaghreb/1106

The trans-Saharan gold and slave trade developed between the eighth and eleventh centuries, under the leadership of Ibadi Berbers. Berbers set up a large “schismatic screen” by creating large commercial cities: such as Zawîla, Wârgla, Tâhert, Sijilmâsa etc. They had a monopoly over the three main North-South trans-Saharan routes linking the Maghreb to Africa. Simultaneously, an unbroken chain of Jewish communities settled almost exactly along the Ibadi schismatic arch-shaped path. The organization of trade flows required the existence of States or market towns at the north and south ends of each trans-Saharan axis as well as irreplaceable mutual complementarity between products from the North and those from the South. Logistical problems may have compromised the trade if it hadn’t been for the existence of oases between Sudan and the Maghreb. Signs converge to reveal that a slave trade was already in place by the mid-eighth century, but sources are discrete as to the number of slaves deported and their use.