![]() The savanna region is naturally hospitable to both agriculture and livestock breeding and is ideally situated for trade. While extensive trading networks undoubtedly predated Arabic involvement, the development of trans-Saharan commerce in the seventh century by Arabs and Berbers intensified and expanded the trading networks that made the empires of the western Sudan possible. The importance that contact with the Islamic world held for these empires cannot be understated. Above all, the empires of the western Sudan were unified by strong leadership, kin-based societies, and the trade routes they sought to dominate. Instead, the empires may have had “floating” capitals that shifted between a number of urbanized centers or traveled with their ruling monarchs. Although each empire possessed important political and economic centers, such as Ghana’s Kumbi Saleh and Songhai’s Gao, it is not certain that these were permanent capitals. The medieval empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai that controlled the western Sudan had no fixed geopolitical boundaries or singular ethnic or national identities. The period prior to Islamic contact is still largely unknown. In spite of tantalizing archaeological remains, our understanding of the great medieval kingdoms of the western Sudan remains dependent upon and limited by these early written sources. ![]() Its name comes from bilad-al-sudan, or “Land of Blacks,” the term used by the Arabic travelers, geographers, and historians who first wrote of the region’s history. The area known as the western Sudan encompasses the broad expanse of savanna that stretches between the vast Sahara Desert to the north and the tropical rainforests of the Guinea coast to the south.
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