| Original Message: Re: Re: "..., similar to Mopti...." ? |
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Your hypothesis is very interesting and very logical to which I adhere completely.
The trips of Henry the Navigator and Christopher Columbus in the fifteenth century show that there was already a rich Africa, organized and structured.
Could it not be possible that nomadic Fulani pastoral peoples, Sorko fishermen, traders, had contact with the peoples around the Mediterranean and as such could have used pre-Islamic beads in their trade? Research shows that contacts would be larger than previously thought between north and south. Would it be too much to think that beads from around the Mediterranean could have already found themselves in the region of Timbuktu before the establishment of Islam?
The kingdom of Ghana that was founded according to medieval sources, around the 7th century BC was very prosperous. This kingdom extended from Middle Senegal to the region of Timbuktu and was based on the export of gold, copper, salt and slaves with the Maghreb. Can we not think that the exchanges, the commerce, the mobility of these peoples were more important than we think? The occupation of the Maghreb by the Arabs promotes the trafficking of gold and slaves and facilitates the expansion of the kingdom of Ghana which reached its peak around the Xth XIth century.
Of course there was then the kingdom of Mali in the ninth century and the Songhai empire from the fifteenth century who continued trade, trade.
I think of all this because the African merchants have a long history of homelessness, and I knew a Houassa, a formidable merchant, an outstanding trader, for whom the world was his garden and who traveled the world with disconcerting ease, as if his ancestors had been doing this forever . A pristine boubou for supplying the West African markets with beads, and he phoned me everywhere, sometimes from Hong Kong, Baghdad, Istanbul or Berlin and came to bring me ancient Mesopotamian beads that he knew perfectly well. I tell myself that he must have very old genes to travel and trade with such ease !! He impressed me a lot !!
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