On Trans-Saharan Trails
Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa

This study examines the history and organization of trans-Saharan trade in western Africa using original source material.

Ghislaine Lydon (Author)

9781107611788, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 August 2012

498 pages, 12 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.73 kg

'In this pioneering work, Lydon has given historians and legal scholars a window into the commercial complexities of trans-Saharan trade that reached across vast distances and multiple currency zones … On Trans-Saharan Trails makes an important contribution to African history and by extension to world history.' Law and History Review

This study is the first of its kind to examine the history and organization of trans-Saharan trade in western Africa using original source material. It documents the internal dynamics of a trade network system based on a case study of 'Berber' traders from the W?d N?n region, who specialized in outfitting camel caravans in the nineteenth century. Through an examination of contracts, correspondence, fatwas and interviews with retired caravaners, Professor Lydon shows how traders used their literacy skills in Arabic and how they had recourse to experts of Islamic law to regulate their long-distance transactions. The book also examines the strategies devised by women to participate in caravan trade. By embracing a continental approach, this study bridges the divide between West African and North African studies. The work will be of interest to historians of Africa, the Middle East, and the world and to scholars of long-distance trade, Muslim societies and Islamic law.

1. Making history across the African divide
2. Trans-Saharan trade in the longue durée
3. Markets and the movement of caravans: nineteenth-century developments
4. Guelm?m and the W?d N?n traders
5. The organization of caravan trade
6. Business practice and legal culture in a paper economy of faith
7. Trade networks and the limits of cooperative behavior
8. On trans-Saharan trails.

Subject Areas: Legal history [LAZ], Economic history [KCZ], Islam [HRH], African history [HBJH]