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They were. Among those who sought them, books were among their most prized possessions and were considered a major part of their wealth.
Merchants preparing to head south across the desert were also in the market to buy books. They were relatively easy to transport and would bring a good price in gold in the Islamic cities south of the Sahara.
A particularly colorful and curious stall was that of the merchant. The local craftsmen made beautiful necklaces of pearl, glass, amber, and other semi-precious stones. These were exported to Mali where they were in great demand and where it was said that the coral was used as a form of currency.
The jewelers of Sijilmasa even refashioned some of the precious metals that were imported from near and far, including silver bracelets and amulets with. The traders bought up an ample stock of food staples but did not neglect the more sensitive parts of the palate.
They bought locally produced wheat in bulk quantities. The dates produced in the area around Sijilmasa were the very best in the northern Sahara. As soon as a prospective buyer entered the market area, peddlers would elbow him closer to their stalls as they shouted enticing descriptions of their merchandise and gave assurances that theirs were the very best values to be found in the market that day.
The bargaining and the bartering would be intense. But in the end, these experienced traders knew exactly what they were looking for and how much they were obliged, or at least willing, to pay for it. When the shouting and bickering were done, the buyer would tap the palm of the seller with his purse to indicate their mutual satisfac- tion with the deal. Thus the market ended each day at around dusk, except on Fridays. On this holy day of the week, business halted shortly after mid-day, and the men, local residents and the many visitors, prepared for the public Friday afternoon prayer.
There were three other mosques in town, but the Friday mosque was the famous one.
It was well known as a center of learning and the seat of justice for the region. It was also the only mosque that was large enough to accommodate the large number of the faithful wanting to pray together on Friday afternoon. Those who could not enter the mosque itself prayed in the open square outside.
city in Egypt. In more languages. Spanish. El-Mahalla El-Kubra. ciudad de la gobernación Occidental, Egipto. El Mahalla El-Kubra; El Mahalla. El Mahalla El Kubra commonly shortened to El Maḥalla – is the largest city of the Gharbia.
The new mosque was larger and more richly decorated, with sculpted plaster and a new prayer niche which faced, like most other mosques in the far western Maghrib as it turns out , incorrectly toward Mecca. Why incorrectly? No one knows for sure. But it had been done that way since the very beginning. There was a long tradition of religious dissent among the people of Sijilmasa.
They, like most Berbers of the Maghrib, had converted in the very early years of Islam to the Kharijite sect. The Kharijite attitude toward the caliphate, the central authority in Islam, was perfectly suited to these Berbers because of their general resistance to any form of centralized authority, especially if it was imposed by foreigners. They rejected the idea of dynastic legitimacy. The same rigor that characterizes Kharijism in its conception of the state is found in its ethical principles. It demands purity of conscience and body for acts of worship to be valid.
Kharijites push their moral strictness to the point of refusing the title of believer to anyone who has committed heresy. The Sufriya branch of the sect which had been dominant in Sijilmasa since the beginning was more lenient on this particular point. It gets every good that it earns and it suffers every ill that it earns. For the last three generations, the people of Sijilmasa were following the orthodoxy of Sunni Islam. The Maghrawa Berbers had imposed orthodoxy on the inhabitants when they conquered Sijilmasa. The local Muslims complained bitterly of the impiety of the Maghrawa rulers.
It is precisely those complaints that eventually brought the wrath of the Almoravids down upon the rulers of the city.
It was a delegation of. This fragment of wall plaster contains three words from the Koran II:. The Almoravids came ostensibly as religious reformers. The religion of the new rulers was now the strict Malikite doctrine of the Dar al-Murabitin. It banned musical instruments and alcohol. It promised, the reformers said, a religious law that was much closer to that preached by the prophet Muhammad himself. The people of Sijilmasa expected a lot from the new rulers.
They sought protection against tyranny; they welcomed tax reduction; they expected prosperity. Beyond that, they went about their daily lives as usual. For many, that included gathering in the mosque to pray on Friday afternoon. Those who had not the opportu- nity to perform the ritual ablutions in one of the local baths would quickly wash their hands in symbolic fashion. They would pray for health and well being. They would pray for peace. They would pray for the governor of the city and his sovereign, who was now the Almoravid Amir.
And the travelers of the caravan would pray for a safe journey home. Caravans would leave Sijilmasa very early in the morning, long before sunrise. On each of the 40 days in its march back to Awdaghust, it would travel for about three hours until the sun rose above the horizon. Then the camels were relieved of their burdens. Their front legs were tied together, allowing the camels to graze but not to wander very far. Once the sun began to fall in the late afternoon, camp was broken, the camels were loaded once again, and the march continued for another four hours or so, until the time after dusk when the sky was slightly purple, when there was still just enough light to set up camp before the fall of darkness.
At this rate the caravan could travel about 18 to 22 miles a day. But within that variance the caravan moved steadily in the most direct route possible from one watering spot to the next. As they approached, the pace quickened. The tribes who controlled the wells, the watering agents, were well paid in kind for their service from the manufactured goods brought from Sijilmasa, goods that were as scarce and precious in the Sahara as was the water they sold.
The camels appeared grateful as they crowded shoulder to shoulder around the mud troughs and drank their seven gallons of water each. The caravan also sold some of its goods in the desert to pay for protection, the right to cross the territory of the particular tribe that controlled each segment of the route.
Others, particularly in the eighteenth century, came out of a strict monastic upbringing and were bold in reasserting clerical authority. Summation Following the Mamluk period, Egypts Copts were few in number, scattered throughout the country, and generally insular in their relations with outsiders. At its core are seven sacraments, a rich liturgical heritage, and the strict, nearly vegan fasts that believers are obligated to follow. But in addition to that, offer him rich gifts, tunics of honor and other precious gifts from the Maghrib. I am interested here in the range of worldviews that emerged within the Coptic community, from high to low, as evidenced by their own writings. This is not unlike the many qusur sing.
The protection was a service indispensable for the caravan and provided income and industrial products that were otherwise unavailable to the desert nomads. It lay within the territory of the Bani Massufa, one of the tribes of the Sanhaja confederation. Until then, much of the salt exported to the Sudan came from Awlil on the Atlantic coast, within the sphere of the Bani Gudala.
When that tribe revolted against the Almoravids, the salt route that they controlled became more isolated from the hegemony that was developing in the central Sahara under Almoravid protection. The traders described Taghaza as the most impressive source of salt in the Sahara. The mines were like quarries of marble. If the stories of the traders were true, then all of the buildings, the qsar , the walls, the dwellings, were made of salt.
The traders sold more than half of their manufactured goods from the north at Taghaza in exchange for this salt, which was very much in demand south of the desert. The merchants exaggerated only slightly when they said that the traders sold the salt for an equal weight of gold. The traders were good storytellers, but the fact of the matter is, salt was very expensive in the south. Soon, the cycle in the trade triangle—manufactured goods for salt for gold—would start again, and the caravan would return to Sijilmasa, which was, after all, on the receiving end of most of the gold that made its way across.
From Sijilmasa, much of the gold was reexported to ports all over the Mediterranean, but much of it, too, was destined for the mint at Sijilmasa, which had been striking gold coins for many generations for one regime after another. His rule in Sijilmasa was the beginning of a period of great prosperity for the city, such prosperity that it attracted many rivals.
It became a source of conten- tion between two powerful Muslim caliphates, the Fatimids of Ifriqiya modern Tunisia and the Umayyads of Andalusia. The lucrative gold trade of Sijilmasa was very much a part of that plan. The Fatimid governor levied taxes on caravans going to the Land of the Blacks, in addition to the zakat , the land tax, and the customary duties imposed on the buying and selling of camels, sheep, and cattle, as well as customs on all the merchandise destined to or coming from Ifriqiya, Fez, Spain, the Sus, and Aghmat.
The name of the Umayyad caliph stamped on the gold coins minted in Sijilmasa showed that they were ultimately in control, but only until C. The Maghrawa reached out and colonized the region all around Sijilmasa. They occupied the valley of the Draa to the west as well as the valley of the upper Moulouya to the north, the key to the route to Fez. They put the name of their own ruler on the coinage struck in the mint, continued to collect all of the taxes that previous rulers had collected,.
The people detested the Muslim orthodoxy that the Maghrawa had brought with them. Foremost among their grievances was the oppres- sive taxation that was lining the pockets of foreign rulers. The local leadership of the city appealed to the Almoravid imam , who had a reputation as a warlord, but a just and holy one.
The wealth of the city would give the Almoravids the will to carry their mission northward still farther.
It would also provide the resources that would make it possible. The new regime took over the dar al-sikka , the mint. The new coins also bear an inscription that clearly states:. They would command a favorable exchange in markets both near and far. From Aghmat to Marrakech. Abu Bakr led a force of The city itself, almost three-quarters of a mile by three-quarters of a mile square, was surrounded by a circuit wall made of adobe.