A Companion to Mediterranean History

the mediterranean and afriCa 439

the sixth Nile cataract, 1000 kilometers to the south, and extended several hundred

kilometers west of the Nile valley into the lands of Kordofan and Darfur. Torsello

must have been aware of this.

Conclusion

The present study has sought provisionally to identify ways to consider the

Mediterraneanness of African societies across time and space by exploring the histori-

cal contours and interconnections of regional and sub-regional systems in the central

sahara, the middle Niger basin, and the middle Nile valley. The study raised a number

of questions—conceptual, methodological, and empirical—in order to encourage

new orientations and perspectives. Where conventional scholarship tends to treat

Africa south of the Mediterranean shore as isolated, static, and backward, dominated

by a barren sahara, this study has sought to describe historical dynamics, structures,

events, and relationships in material and geographical contexts—in particular, the

greater Mediterranean world.

References

Braudel, F. (1972–3) The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II,

London: Collins.

Burstein, s.M. (2008) When Greek was an African language: The role of Greek culture in

ancient and medieval Nubia. Journal of World History, 19 (1): 41–61.

Levtzion, N. and Hopkins, J.F.P. (eds) (2000) Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African

History, Princeton: Markus Wiener.

Mattingly, D.J. (ed.) (2003) The Archaeology of Fazzan, vol. 1: Synthesis, London: society for

Libyan studies.

Zurawski, B. (2007) Madonna of Banganarti. Focus on Archaeology, 1 (13): 28–31.

Further Reading

Austen, R. (2010) Trans-Saharan Africa in World History, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Presents an introductory overview of trans-saharan Africa from ancient times to the twenti-

eth century.

Devisse, J. (1988) Trade and trade routes in west Africa, in General History of Africa III: Africa

from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century (eds M. El Fasi and I. Hrbek), Berkeley: University

of California Press, pp. 367–435.

Original and innovative, this study raises questions that scholars are still addressing. It exam-

ines in precise detail west Africa’s internal linkages and their interconnections with the

saharan world and the western Mediterranean littoral.

Horden, P. (2012) situations both alike? Connectivity, the Mediterranean, the sahara, in

Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa (eds J. McDougall and J. scheele),

Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indian University Press, pp. 25–35.

A comparative study of the Mediterranean and sahara as historical spatialities and as sites of

interconnections, it calls for a historiography perspective that integrates local, regional,

and trans-regional levels of activity and engagement.

Lydon, G. (2009) On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural

Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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