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Trans-Saharan Africa in World History
During the heyday of camel caravan traffic--from the eighth century CE arrival of Islam in North Africa to the early twentieth-century building of European colonial railroads that linked the Sudan with the Atlantic--the Sahara was one of the world's great commercial highways, bringing gold, slaves, and other commodities northward and sending both manufactured goods and Mediterranean culture southward into the Sudan. Historian Ralph A. Austen here tells the remarkable story of an African world that grew out of more than one thousand years of trans-Saharan trading. Perhaps the most enduring impact of this trade and the common cultural reference point of trans-Saharan Africa was Islam. Austen traces this faith in its various forms--as a legal system for regulating trade, an inspiration for reformist movements, and a vehicle of literacy and cosmopolitan knowledge. He also analyzes the impact of European overseas expansion, which marginalized trans-Saharan commerce in global terms
but stimulated its local growth. Indeed, trans-Saharan culture not only adapted to colonial changes, but often thrived upon them, remaining a potent force into the twenty-first century.
but stimulated its local growth. Indeed, trans-Saharan culture not only adapted to colonial changes, but often thrived upon them, remaining a potent force into the twenty-first century.
- GenresHistoryAfricaNonfiction
157 pages, Paperback
First published April 14, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 6, 2021
The history of the Sahara Desert is a long and complex story, beginning (for humans) with the Paleolithic, when climate fluctuations brought on by the advance and retreat of the ice sheets alternately watered and dried out the land between the Atlantic and the Red Sea. After about 5000 BCE was inaugurated millennia of growing aridity (interrupted by occasional periods of milder climate) that terminated in the hyperarid desert of today. The change in climate drove changes in human relations with the Sahara; it was hardly depopulated, but the groups who lived there retreated to oases and mountains like the Ahaggar or Tibesti, and took up long-distance trade using first donkeys and then the camel.
Ralph Austen's "Trans-Saharan Africa in World History" does not pretend to cover this enormous sweep of time. After an initial chapter that treats the pre-Islamic Saharan world, he moves swiftly to the Sahara after the Islamic conquest, which began in 642 CE with the invasion of North Africa. The movement of Islam south was a lengthy process, connected in part with caravan trade, in part with the emergence and spread of various Sunni, Shia, and Sufi brotherhoods, in part with political and cultural calculations of Islamic kingdoms and the many states that rose and fell in the Sahel, the quasi-desert region south of the actual desert. ("Sahel" comes from the Arabic wold meaning "shore;" French colonialists originally applied it to the northern rim of Africa.)
It's a real challenge to compress a history of the centuries between 642 and now into a brief, introductory book. Austen does a pretty good job, even if some events and personalities come and go with some breathlessness. He has chosen as the structuring elements of the book Islam and trade. His chapters on Islam and "Islamicate" culture are very good. But one consequence of this decision, which is somewhat ironic, is that rather than the Saharan region itself, the kingdoms and caliphates north and south of the desert receive the bulk of his attention. The Tuareg, quintessential desert folks, are treated only briefly, here and there; the Tubi are never mentioned at all. The economic and social features of oases, like irrigation, investment, their role as trade nexuses, agricultural slavery, are passed by. The Sanusiyya, a strict Islamic brotherhood whose headquarters were in the Kufra and Siwa oases, and who established a long-distance network in the desert in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, get only 4 pages.
In a sense, this neglect (if that is the right word) of the Sahara in favor of its fringes is a consequence of the series Austen's written for. The focus is on "world history," and so the interconnections rather than the local and regional come to the fore. But this leaves us with an impression that the desert itself is less deserving of direct focus. Archaeological work, much published after Austen wrote, has vastly expanded our picture of the people who lived in the Sahara, both during the pre-Islamic centuries (the Garamantes especially) and later (as excavations at Essouk-Tadmekka and at many sites in Mali).
But for a neophyte looking for a way in "Trans-Saharan Africa" is a good place to start. Austen knows the sources and quotes some striking passages, and really has done a tremendous amount of work compressing centuries of history into a short book. He has a good starting bibliography for those who want to go further and a useful chronological appendix.
Ralph Austen's "Trans-Saharan Africa in World History" does not pretend to cover this enormous sweep of time. After an initial chapter that treats the pre-Islamic Saharan world, he moves swiftly to the Sahara after the Islamic conquest, which began in 642 CE with the invasion of North Africa. The movement of Islam south was a lengthy process, connected in part with caravan trade, in part with the emergence and spread of various Sunni, Shia, and Sufi brotherhoods, in part with political and cultural calculations of Islamic kingdoms and the many states that rose and fell in the Sahel, the quasi-desert region south of the actual desert. ("Sahel" comes from the Arabic wold meaning "shore;" French colonialists originally applied it to the northern rim of Africa.)
It's a real challenge to compress a history of the centuries between 642 and now into a brief, introductory book. Austen does a pretty good job, even if some events and personalities come and go with some breathlessness. He has chosen as the structuring elements of the book Islam and trade. His chapters on Islam and "Islamicate" culture are very good. But one consequence of this decision, which is somewhat ironic, is that rather than the Saharan region itself, the kingdoms and caliphates north and south of the desert receive the bulk of his attention. The Tuareg, quintessential desert folks, are treated only briefly, here and there; the Tubi are never mentioned at all. The economic and social features of oases, like irrigation, investment, their role as trade nexuses, agricultural slavery, are passed by. The Sanusiyya, a strict Islamic brotherhood whose headquarters were in the Kufra and Siwa oases, and who established a long-distance network in the desert in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, get only 4 pages.
In a sense, this neglect (if that is the right word) of the Sahara in favor of its fringes is a consequence of the series Austen's written for. The focus is on "world history," and so the interconnections rather than the local and regional come to the fore. But this leaves us with an impression that the desert itself is less deserving of direct focus. Archaeological work, much published after Austen wrote, has vastly expanded our picture of the people who lived in the Sahara, both during the pre-Islamic centuries (the Garamantes especially) and later (as excavations at Essouk-Tadmekka and at many sites in Mali).
But for a neophyte looking for a way in "Trans-Saharan Africa" is a good place to start. Austen knows the sources and quotes some striking passages, and really has done a tremendous amount of work compressing centuries of history into a short book. He has a good starting bibliography for those who want to go further and a useful chronological appendix.
January 19, 2020
Well written, good for teaching!
February 9, 2014
Thoroughly enjoyable as an introduction to the Sub-Saharan region.
June 14, 2014
Austen sheds a whole new light on the development of Africa, successfully challenging the idea that the continent hardly developed before Arab or European influence.
October 26, 2012
A good book with a serious-sounding title. Rather more folklore than you’d imagine.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews