To share this little-known story, the Block Museum of Art has put together a new exhibition: Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa - a first-of-its-kind show that celebrates West Africa’s historic and under-recognized global significance and showcases the objects and ideas that were exchanged at the crossroads of Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. This was a world of globalization, where cultures and religions, including Islam and Christianity, met and circulated along Saharan trade routes. The massive scale of medieval caravans diminished after the 16th century, but fragments of the goods they traded remain - and they tell a story of the remarkable role that the kingdoms of West and North Africa played in expanding trade and driving the movement of people, culture and beliefs throughout the medieval world. Northward, they connected to the vast trade networks of the Mediterranean Sea. Southward, the routes connected with the Niger River, a major waterway to West Africa’s forest region. Major trade routes crossing the desert linked cities such as Timbuktu and Tadmekka on the southern fringes of the Sahara in present-day Mali and Sijilmasa on the desert’s northern side in present-day Morocco.
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Fueling this exchange was West African gold, prized for its purity and used for minting currencies and adorning luxury and religious objects.
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Through brutal heat, blinding sandstorms and the never-ending search for water, the caravans plodded thousands of miles across one of the most desolate regions in the world.ĭespite its harsh terrain, the Sahara became a thriving crossroads of exchange for Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia in the medieval period. Crossing the Sahara Desert from the 8th to the 16th centuries, caravans with hundreds of camels carried gold, textiles, salt, jewelry and other precious goods across the desert.