World History › Section O · Asian and African trade worlds › Topic O.4
The roots of African trade
By 1400, caravan routes across the Sahara joined the gold country of West Africa to the Mediterranean, Egypt and beyond. This topic looks at how that trade worked: its goods, towns and merchants, the part Islam played in building trust, and why the great empire of Mali lost its grip on it.
In this topic
- A web, not a highway
- What the caravans carried
- Worked example: was trade older than Islam?
- The towns that made the trade
- How a caravan worked
- Islam and the business of trust
- Merchants of the south
- Mali under strain
- Worked example: why did Mali lose the trade?
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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