…all this, trans-Saharan trade along caravan routes linking oases has persisted from very early times. Updates? Gao and Timbuktu on the Niger River were also now attracting enough trade to be an end destination for caravans setting off from what is today Tunisia and southern Algeria. Stopping along the way at vital oases, the caravans were largely controlled by the Berbers who acted as middlemen in the exchange of such desired commodities as salt, gold, copper, hides, horses, slaves, and luxury goods. The first route seems to have been between Wadi Draa (southern Morocco) and the Ghana Empire (southern Mali) in the mid-8th century CE and passed through an area of the Sahara controlled by the Sanhaja Berbers. by Gallica Digital Library (Public Domain). If possible, it was arranged to stop at a caravansary, which usually consisted of a courtyard, surrounded on all sides by a number of small rooms on an elevation, with stables or storerooms underneath. Related Content Some of the Muslim pilgrim caravans continue, for example, because it is regarded as more meritorious to travel the hard traditional route. The really large camel caravans that travelled the minimum 1000 kilometres (620 miles) to cross the entire Sahara desert really took off from the 8th century CE with the rise of Islamic North African states and such empires as the Ghana Empire of the Sudan region (6th-13th century CE). More exotic loads could include jade from Khotan,[11] elk antlers prized in Chinese medicine, or even dead bodies of the Shanxi caravan men and traders, who happened to die while in Xinjiang. Camel trains were also used sparingly elsewhere around the globe. However, the rise of the Songhai Empire (1460 - c. 1591 CE) ensured that there was still a huge market and supply of goods for Saharan traders to exploit in the savannah region. Taking care of camels' health included the ability to find the best available grazing for them and keeping them away from poisonous plants; knowledge of when one should not allow a camel to drink too much water; how to park camels for the night, allowing them to obtain the best possible shelter from wind-blown snow in winter; how to properly distribute the load to prevent it from hurting the animal; and how to treat minor injuries of the camels, such as blisters or pack-sores. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE (Histories, Bk 4. The chief limit on a caravan, then, was how much water it could carry and how quickly it could get to the next water source along the route. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2020) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. As the Sudan region saw new and richer empires rise like the Mali Empire  (1240-1645 CE) and Songhai Empire, so a wealthy elite sought evermore exotic and expensive goods from North Africa and the wider Mediterranean. His special interests include pottery, architecture, world mythology and discovering the ideas that all civilizations share in common. The service ended when the train line was extended to Alice Springs in 1929; that train is called "the Ghan", a shortened version of "Afghan Express", and its logo is camel and rider, in honor of the "Afghan cameleers" who pioneered the route. Long before the great trans-Saharan caravans of the medieval period, there was a more localised trade between nomadic desert peoples and the tribes of the savannah region south of the Sahara, often called the Sudan region. A person needs a minimum of one litre of water a day in the desert under optimum conditions but this would barely achieve survival.

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