The history of Western Sahara can be traced back to the times of Carthaginian explorer Hanno the Navigator in the 5th century BC. Though few historical records are left from that period, Western Sahara's modern history has its roots linked to some nomadic groups such as the Sanhaja group, and the introduction of Islam and the Arabic language at the end of the 8th century AD.
Timbuktu is a city in Mali, situated 20 kilometres north of the Niger River. The town is the capital of the Tombouctou Region, one of the eight administrative regions of Mali, having a population of 54,453 in the 2009 census.
Cape Juby is a cape on the coast of southern Morocco, near the border with Western Sahara, directly east of the Canary Islands.
The Sahara is a desert spanning North Africa. With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.
Essaouira, known until the 1960s as Mogador, is a port city in the western Moroccan region of Marakesh-Safi, on the Atlantic coast. It has 77,966 inhabitants as of 2014.
The Songhai Empire was a state located in the western part of the Sahel during the 15th and 16th centuries. At its peak, it was one of the largest African empires in history. The state is known by its historiographical name, derived from its largest ethnic group and ruling elite, the Songhai people. Sonni Ali established Gao as the empire's capital, although a Songhai state had existed in and around Gao since the 11th century. Other important cities in the kingdom were Timbuktu and Djenné, where urban-centred trade flourished; they were conquered in 1468 and 1475, respectively. The Akan state of Bonoman was located to the south of the empire. Initially, the Songhai Empire was ruled by the Sonni dynasty, but it was later replaced by the Askia dynasty (1493–1901).
Auguste René Caillié was a French explorer and the first European to return alive from the town of Timbuktu. Caillié had been preceded at Timbuktu by a British officer, Major Gordon Laing, who was murdered in September 1826 on leaving the city. Caillié was therefore the first to return alive.
Sidi Ifni is a city located on the west coast of Morocco, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, with a population of 20,051 people. The economic base of the city is fishing. It is located in Guelmim-Oued Noun region and Sidi Ifni Province. Its inhabitants are the Shilha from the Ait Baamrane ethnic group. In 2000, an important fishing port was completed, which serves as a base for fish exports.
Major Alexander Gordon Laing was a Scottish explorer and the first European to reach Timbuktu, arriving there via the north-to-south route in August 1826. He was killed shortly after he departed Timbuktu, some five weeks later.
Taghaza is an abandoned salt-mining centre located in a salt pan in the desert region of northern Mali. It was an important source of rock salt for West Africa up to the end of the 16th century when it was abandoned and replaced by the salt-pan at Taoudenni which lies 150 km (93 mi) to the southeast. Salt from the Taghaza mines formed an important part of the long distance trans-Saharan trade. The salt pan is located 857 km (533 mi) south of Sijilmasa, 787 km (489 mi) north-northwest of Timbuktu and 731 km (454 mi) north-northeast of Oualata.
Trans-Saharan trade is trade between sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, it requires travel across the Sahara. While existing since prehistoric times, the peak of trade extended from the 8th century until the early 17th century. The Sahara once had a very different environment. In Libya and Algeria, from at least 7000 BC, there was pastoralism, the herding of sheep, goats, large settlements, and pottery. Cattle were introduced to the Central Sahara (Ahaggar) from 4000 to 3500 BC. Remarkable rock paintings in places that are currently very dry, portray flora and fauna that are not present in the modern desert environment.
Tarfaya is a coastal Moroccan town, located at the level of Cape Juby, in western Morocco, on the Atlantic coast. It is located about 890 km southwest of the capital Rabat, and around 100 km from Laayoune and Lanzarote, in the far east of the Canary Islands. During the colonial era, Tarfaya was a Spanish colony known as Villa Bens. It was unified with Morocco in 1958 after the Ifni War, which started one year after the independence of other regions of Morocco.
Araouane or Arawan is a small village in the Malian part of the Sahara Desert, lying 243 km (151 mi) north of Timbuktu on the caravan route to the salt-mining centre of Taoudenni. The village once served as an entrepôt in the trans-Saharan trade.
The Azalai is a semi-annual salt caravan route practiced by Tuareg traders in the Sahara desert between Timbuktu and the Taoudenni salt mine in Mali, or the act of traveling with a caravan along that route.
The Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, founded in London on 9 June 1788, was a British club dedicated to the exploration of West Africa, with the mission of discovering the origin and course of the Niger River and the location of Timbuktu, the "lost city" of gold. The formation of this group was effectively the "beginning of the age of African exploration".
Precolonial Mauritania, lying next to the Atlantic coast at the western edge of the Sahara Desert, received and assimilated into its complex society many waves of Saharan migrants and conquerors.
Between the first century BC and the fourth century AD, several expeditions and explorations to Lake Chad and western Africa were conducted by groups of military and commercial units of Romans who moved across the Sahara and into the interior of Africa and its coast. However, there was a huge Roman and Greek presence in modern-day Eritrea and Ethiopia. The primary motivation for the expeditions was to secure sources of gold and spices from Axumite piracies.
Paul Soleillet was a French explorer in West Africa and Ethiopia. He was a strong believer in opening up Africa to trade through peaceful means, and thus bringing the benefits of French civilization to the natives while gaining commercial profits for France.
Casamar, also known as Port Victoria and Mackenzie's factory, was a historical coastal fort built in 1882 in Cape Juby near the city of Tarfaya in Morocco, by the founder of the British North West Africa Company, Donald McKenzie, who positioned there early in 1879 in the goal of trading with commercial caravans coming from Timbuktu and heading to Wadi Noun. Following an attack on the fortress in 1888, the company gave up the building in 1895 to the Sultan of Morocco Moulay Abd al-Aziz, and withdrew from it after the Treaty of Cape Juby.
The Trans-Saharan slave trade, also known as the Arab slave trade, was a slave trade in which slaves were mainly transported across the Sahara. Most were moved from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations; a small percentage went the other direction. Estimates of the total number of black slaves moved from sub-Saharan Africa to the Arab world range from 6-10 million, and the trans-Saharan trade routes conveyed a significant number of this total, with one estimate tallying around 7.2 million slaves crossing the Sahara from the mid-7th century until the 20th century when it was abolished. The Arabs managed and operated the trans-Saharan slave trade, although Berbers were also actively involved. Alongside Black Africans, Turks, Iranians, Europeans and Berbers were among the people traded by the Arabs, with the trade being practised throughout the Arab world, primarily in Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa, and Europe.
