Trade in Songhai
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Trade
By 1469 CE the Songhai had control of the important trade ‘port’ of Timbuktu on the Niger River. In 1471 CE the Mossi territories south of the Niger River bend were attacked, and by 1473 CE the other major trade centre of the region, Djenne, also on the Niger, had been conquered. Unfortunately for Sunni Ali though, all this new territory did not give him access to the gold fields of the southern coast of West Africa that both the Ghana and Mali rulers had grown rich on. This was because a Portuguese fleet, sponsored by the Lisbon merchant Fenão Gomes, had, in 1471 CE, sailed around the Atlantic coast of Africa and established a trading presence near these gold fields (in modern Ghana).
The opening up of the sea route to the Mediterranean would also mean the trans-Saharan camel caravans now faced serious competition as the best way to get trade goods to North Africa and Europe. However, the Portuguese were not quite so successful as they had hoped in exploiting Africa's resources. Certainly, the Songhai in any case managed to monopolise the Saharan caravan trade which brought rock salt and luxury goods like fine cloth, glassware, sugar, and horses to the Sudan region in exchange for gold, ivory, spices, kola nuts, hides, and slaves. Timbuktu, with a population of around 100,000 in the mid-15th century CE, continued to thrive as a trade ‘port’ and as a centre of learning into the 16th and 17th centuries CE when the city boasted many mosques and 150-180 schools where students learned the Quaran.
Trade centres, in particular, became sophisticated urban centres with housing built in stone and many having a large public square for regular markets and at least one mosque. Around this core was a floating suburban population living in mud and reed houses or tents. Rural communities, meanwhile, continued to be wholly dependent on agriculture, but the presence of rural markets indicates there was usually a food surplus. Certainly, famine was a rare event during the first half of the Songhai Empire's reign, and there are no records of any peasant revolts.
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