Trans-Saharan+Gold+and+Salt+Trade

=**The Trans-Saharan Gold and Salt trade**=
 * ====From the 7th to the 11th century trans-saharan trade linked the mediteranean economies that demanded gold and salt trade. The use of Saharan salt was promoted for trade purposes. The demand for gold in North Islamic states increased. Ghana was strong enough to assume control of the Islamic Berber town.. However Ghana had lost the domination of the Western Sudan gold trade.
 * ====The trade and exchange were based on differences in the valuation of scarce goods**.** There are many variations in the relative supply of goods or, in the demand of both. More commonly excahanges are faciliated through the use of some form of money, which might be coins, or paper notes, but in africa was different. In Africa were cowries (shells), iron bars, brass rods, spear tips, fish hooks, hoe heads, cloth, gold dust, measures of grain, or anything that was a durable store of valve and easy to exchange for other goods.
 * ====Routes across the Sahara that trade caravans followed to bring goods from sellers to potential buyers. The major trans-Saharan caravans in the ninth through the 12th centuries started from Kumbi Saleh, in ancient Ghana, from Timbuktu and Gao, in Mali, and further east, from the Hausa States and Kanem-Bornu. Goods from Kumbi Saleh were carried north across the desert to Sijilmasa, in Morocco. Goods from Timbuktu often went by way of the salt mines at Taghaza to Tlemcen, near the border of present-day Algeria and Morocco. A second route from Timbuktu brought goods to Fez, in present-day Morocco, by way of Walata and Wadan.
 * Gold, salt , copper, and captives were among the most profitable items exchanged along the trans-Saharan trade routes, although there was also commerce in ivory, fabrics, animal skins, ostrich feathers, and other local goods. The West African gold fields at Bambuk, Bure, and Galam were so important to the fortunes of the rulers of ancient Ghana that they banned Berber trade rs from entering them. [[image:housedenali/scourgeofslavery02.jpg width="275" height="231" align="left"]]
 * ====== The kingdoms in West Africa made very good trading partners. They each had something the other wanted. The north had salt. The south had gold. Ghana was in the middle. Ghana handled the trades. ====== ||