the mediterranean and africa 435
Niger Delta. The cultural space of Kharijite knowledge production and frames of
communication, for example, the distribution of books, were spatially consonant with
a political economy of mercantile accumulation among merchants engaged in the gold
and salt trade. The communicative dimension of a shared commercial organization and
ethos among Muslims and non-Muslims fostered a sense of “multi-belongingness”
based on networks of interconnectedness. Social life in the middle Niger basin was
fluid. Was Kharijism an expression of cultural revival and political sovereignty among
Saharan and middle Niger merchant classes? Or was it something else altogether? Are
there contemporary parallels in the Christian–Mediterranean world?
A second metaphorical route was the Almoravid movement and its imperial project
of state building and the internationalization of the Almoravid monetary system in the
Mediterranean world. The west African origin of the Almoravids can be seen by high-
lighting the movement’s strategic alliances with ruling dynasties in Takrur, Ghana,
and Kawkaw/Gao, where economies of scale were being achieved in mining, agricul-
ture, and metallurgical activities from the second half of the first millennium ce. It can
be argued that Almoravid hegemony represented a complementary social-political
development by achieving an economy of scale at the level of administrative and mili-
tary technology. The Almoravid state system represents the only historical experience
of political integration ever achieved between the middle Niger basin, the Senegal
basin, North Africa, and the Iberian peninsula (1091–1147). It required the human
and material resources of the Senegal and middle Niger cities and polities. The mil-
lenarian dream of the original adherents of the movement was abandoned. Was “Islam
of the princes” (state-centric Almoravidism) a political rebuttal of “Islam of the mer-
chants” (urban-centric Kharijism)? Is this simply a phenomenon relevant only to
Islamic history or are there wider connections?
The matter can be pursued further. Saharan trade was a vector of culture as well as
a vector of material wealth. Gold, iron, salt, and other products were exchanged for a
wide range of goods, including the circulation of manuscripts, especially jurispru-
dence manuals and works on theology, between al-Andalus, North Africa and the
middle Niger and Senegal basins. Under the Almoravids the philosophical rationalism
of Kharijism was subsumed under a militant Sunni Malikism whose guardians, as
politically-appointed jurists (fuqaha’), represented a legitimizing authority. There
were other developments. The commercial revolution of the Mediterranean world
gained momentum (see also Valerian, this volume). In the middle Niger basin the
urban cluster system came to an end, and double cities and cities with plantations
worked by enslaved labor, and hinterlands worked by indebted peasants, rose in
importance.
The Almoravid route had profound economic and commercial effects on the medi-
eval world economy. In the first half of the twelfth century Almoravid mints received
between one and four tons of gold a year and the Almoravid monetary system was a
bulwark of the Mediterranean bullion market. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
Niger basin gold assured the economic primacy of the Almoravid and Almohad shores
of the Mediterranean over Iraq, Iran, or Byzantium and it fueled the cultural and
material accomplishments of Muslim dynasties in al-Andalus, Sicily, and North Africa.
After 1200, Niger basin gold helped the economic success of the Christian shores of
the Mediterranean Sea. The Almoravid route contributed to the economic prosperity
of the middle Niger basin. In his account of the middle Niger floodplain, geographer