About medieval west african kingdoms

essential question: how do communities use their skills and resources to build empires?

They came together and formed a plan, got the things they needed and eventually formed an empire

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Growing Inequalities in the Mali Empire Another important feature of the Mali Empire that we learn from Ibn Battuta is how much social inequality existed. One of the consequences of the expansion of empire through trade and military means was the capture of prisoners of war, who then became sources of male soldiers and female slaves. The Sahelian and Saharan towns of the Mali Empire were organized as both staging posts in the long-distance caravan trade and trading centers for the various West African products. At Taghaza, for example, salt was exchanged; at Takedda, copper. Ibn Battuta observed the employment of slave labor in both towns. During most of his journey, Ibn Battuta traveled with a retinue that included slaves, most of whom carried goods for trade but would also be traded as slaves. On the return from Takedda to Morocco, his caravan transported 600 female slaves, suggesting that slavery was a substantial part of the commercial activity of the empire’s fringes. Gender Divisions There were many more female slaves than male slaves traded in the empire, a fact that points out the inequality that existed between the genders. The variation in women’s social positions increased with the growth of the empire’s towns. Women, usually slaves, were valued porters in the trans- Used by permission for Bridging World History, 6 The Annenberg Foundation copyright © 2004 Saharan caravan trade. They sometimes served as concubines. Additionally, female labor produced salt, cloth for export, and most of the local foodstuffs essential to the provisions required by urban centers. Men were hunters, farmers, merchants, and specialists, in addition to frequently being conscripted as soldiers. A general feature of empires is the increased exploitation of social inequality. Imperial growth everywhere depended in part on women, the appropriation of female labor as well as the mechanisms for the exclusion of women from the sources of political and economic power. An empire’s expansion ultimately relied on its increasing the supplies of food for its armies and other sources of wealth for trade. In addition to their reproductive role, women produced goods. Not surprisingly, women had not played a prominent role in the preimperial male-dominated elite authority of West African society, either. Women are rarely mentioned in the oral historical record, which was controlled by male griots and their male descendants. In the epic of Sunjata they do appear as potential power sources—mothers, sisters, and sorceresses—despite their unequal access to true political power.

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