The Trans-Saharan Caravan Routes
The principal caravan routes across the Sahara linking the Mediterranean coast with the Sahel, drawn from nineteenth-century survey.
Crossing the Sahara meant stringing together wells, and whoever held the wells held the trade. Gold and enslaved people moved north, salt and textiles south, and the towns that grew on the desert edge — Sijilmasa, Timbuktu, Gao — owed their wealth to being the point where a camel caravan met a river. A disruption anywhere along the chain was felt at both ends. Read the full story in our article on The 12th-Century Sahara Salt Trade Crisis: A Turning Point in Trans-Saharan Political Power.
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