166 /. B. KakeThose caravans going to Timbuktu, took twelve days to reach Tichitt, and
another twenty days marching eastwards, to get to Araouan, whence they made
their way to Timbuktu. In 1591, it took Pjouder's troops fifty days to go from
Wad Noun to Timbuktu.
In the sixteenth century and throughout the period of the Gaoan Empire,
the flow of caravan traffic from the West was considerable. It helped to increase
the circulation of gold in North Africa and thereby indirectly aided the devel-
opment of the Barber towns. But by the eighteenth century it had declined
considerably.
The central route started from an area extending roughly from Lake
Chad to Hausa territory. The slaves were taken northwards via Zinder and
Agades. It was a twenty-five-day journey on foot to Ghat.
The caravans, including those bringing slaves from Darfur, would
converge on the Fezzan. They were then taken over by the Tuaregs and were
either taken off to Tripolitania via Marzuq, or to Ghudamis via Ghat.
At Ghudamis, another staging point, the caravans split up, some bound
for Morocco and others for Tunisia. From Kano to Tunis, changing masters
at each main halt, the black slaves would cover a distance of 3,000 kilometres
on foot, and in what a climate! That hundreds survived the journey at all is
to be wondered. For some the adventure was not yet over. From Tunis, or
from Tripoli, they were dispatched to the Levant and sold for the fourth or
fifth time.
In the East the main centres were Zanzibar and Kilwa, which in the
nineteenth century were the principal suppliers of slaves to the Middle East.
In March 1826, Ali Khûrshîd Aghâ was appointed Governor of the province
of Sennar by the Egyptian authorities ; in his ' reign ', slave trading became a
seasonal and well-organized government activity. Using the thin pretext of
military manœuvres, his troops raided the Dinka, Ingassawa and Shilluk tribes
and marched them off down river.
Subsequently, in 1870, Zobeir, a notorious slave trader, was appointed
Governor of the province of Bahr-el-Ghazâl and devastated both Darfur and
Kordofan.
The volume and magnitude of the slave trade greatly increased after
1840 when Sa'id (Ibn Sultan), ruler of Muscat, moved permanently to Zanzibar.
He introduced the clove to Zanzibar, and large plantations were developed
which demanded a substantial labour force. A third reason for the increase
in the slave trade was the instability of the hinterland, which made it easy for
the Arabs to side with one or other faction against another and to use the pris-
oners taken during these internecine conflicts to augment their trade.
The decisive factor in the Arab slave raids was their ample supply of
fire-arms, which enabled men like Tippoo Tib to muster well-trained raiding
parties against which the bows and arrows of the hinterland tribes were powerless.