a pattern of commerce that was closely associated with ecological regions and localized niches of production. Commodities included agricultural products, livestock, minerals, and manufactured goods. Many towns and cities of the interior grew with the development of extensive regional markets. Trade across ecological zones from the desert through the Sahel and the savanna to the forested regions of the coast fostered economic exchange. For example, livestock and salt were produced in the desert and the Sahel, whereas agricultural products, such as grain, root and tree crops, cotton, and indigo, were prominent in the region, depending on local conditions. Moreover, such manufactured goods as cotton textiles and leather products were centered in the many towns and cities in the agricultural zones. In addition to kola nuts, various types of salt were also widely distributed that were used not only for culinary purposes but for various medicinal purposes for both people and animals and for industrial needs in textile dyeing, the tanning of leather, and soap production. Some salts were also mixed with tobacco for use as snuff or for chewing, stashed already prepared for ingestion in leather pouches. Kola nuts and gold were key commodities from the forested regions inland from the Sierra Leone River, the region south of Wagadugu, and the Akan forests.45
The Muslim commercial networks across West Africa comprised socially determined communities based on common origins. Merchants of these commercial networks were recognized as Hausa, Maraka, Yarse, Jakhanke, or Wangara or employed self-identifying names, such as Saghanughu, Kabā, and Ture, that associated individuals with particular towns and regions of origin.46 Curtin actually studied one of these networks, the Jakhanke, on the basis of which he first developed the concept of commercial diaspora. His work was reinforced by the excellent study of the Jakhanke by Lamin Sanneh.47 The recognition of Islam as the religion of community, the use of common commercial languages, either Hausa or Manding and its dialects, such as Juula, and the maintenance of social relationships and kinship over great distances formed the basis of layered and overlapping commercial diasporas that facilitated the operation of trading networks. The communities of the diaspora provided the infrastructure for the commercial networks and for the religious, marital, kin, and intellectual networks that constituted the diaspora and tied it to the homeland or a central town or city. Although the focus here is on the commercial and legal dimensions of the Muslim diasporas in West Africa, it should be recognized that these diasporas not only serviced trading networks but also, like other commercial diasporas, accommodated other kinds of networks that were religious, kinship based, educational, marital, and commercial. Diasporas operated across space over long distances and were based on communities that served as outposts for commercial and culturally specific interactions. The population associated with diasporas was used to traveling, often involving marriage to partners in towns along the trade routes. The constituents of commercial diasporas were instructed to travel for business, for an education, or to visit relatives and to engage in apprenticeship in trade and craft production. Mobility in the operation of long-distance trade was reinforced as a way of life through parallel migrations for other reasons.
The centrality of learning and hence basic education was a feature of the jihād movement. It was through teaching and the dissemination of historic texts that Islam was consolidated as the dominant religion in the interior of West Africa. The centrality of literacy was not new but had characterized the religious and political elite for generations and had predominated during the era of the Songhay Empire. By the end of the eighteenth century the importance of literacy lay in the means of focusing on the cause and course of jihād. The literary flowering of the jihād movement can be likened to the European Enlightenment’s role in inspiring and directing the age of revolutions. In this sense the age of jihād finds a parallel with revolution elsewhere and was indeed linked with Muslims throughout West Africa, in the Maghreb, and elsewhere in the Islamic world.
Lamine Kabā, who was born in Fuuta Jalon about 1780 and arrived in the United States around 1807, provided a detailed account of education in the jihād states. According to his biographer, Theodore Dwight Jr.,
Lamen Kebe . . . was born in the kingdom of Futa Jalloo [Fuuta Jalon], and travelled sufficiently during his youth to give much interest to the accounts he communicates. He performed two journeys, when quite young, to the Jaliba or Niger River, in one instance in company with an army of Mahomedans, in a successful war upon an idolatrous nation, to convert them to Islamism. His education, which commenced at fourteen, and was finished at twenty-one, was obtained chiefly at Bunder, the city in which a late and expensive English expedition of discovery met a fatal defeat from the natives. He was a school-master five years in the city of Kebe [Kangaba], which he left to travel to the coast, to obtain paper for the use of his pupils, when he was taken and sold as a slave.48
His father was “Serecule,” that is, Sarakole; his mother was of the “Manenca” nation. He had originally lived north of Fuuta Jalon at Diafun or Jafunu and subsequently at Jaga (Diaga), but a plague of locusts drove the family to eastern Fuuta Jalon. According to what Dwight was told, teachers “devoted years to study and instruction,” including women who “rivalled some of the most celebrated of the other sex in success and reputation for talent and extraordinary acquisition.”49 Dwight’s report emphasized the importance of education:
Schools in several countries of interior Nigritia are supported by the government, on such a liberal and judicious system, that all the children have the means of instruction in reading and writing at least, on low terms; while the poor are taught at the public expense, taxes being laid to pay the master or mistress. Private schools are also very numerous, particularly in the larger towns of some of the most learned nations. In some schools, boys and girls are under the care of the same master; but they are placed in separate rooms. Our informant had from fifty-five to fifty-seven pupils in his native town, after he had completed his education, among whom were four or five girls. His scholars, according to the plan pursued in his education, were seated on the floor, each upon a sheepskin, and with small boards held upon one knee, rubbed over with a whitish chalk or powder, on which they were made to write with pens made of reeds, and ink which they form with care, of various ingredients. The copy is set by the master by tracing the first words of the Koran with a dry reed, which removes the chalk where it touches. The young pupil follows these marks with ink, which is afterwards rubbed over with more chalk. They are called up three at a time to recite to the master, who takes the boards from them, makes them turn their backs to him, and repeat what they were to do the previous day, which they have a decided interest in doing to the best of their recollection; because it is the custom to mark every mistake with the stroke of a stick upon the shoulders.50
Dwight thought that “the mind of our informant shows some of the traits of a professional school-master, and his opinions on pedagogy, claim some attention, as they are founded on experience, and independent of those current in other countries.” Lamine told Dwight that
children should not be allowed to change school. In our country, no such thing is known or permitted, except when absolutely necessary. It is indeed permitted to a boy who has learnt all his master has to teach, to seek other teachers during the recess of his own school, if he does not neglect his own; and it is not an uncommon thing for an intelligent youth to attend the instructions of two or three teachers at different hours of the day.51
Moreover, education was closely associated with trade. Wherever Muslim merchants were found, there were schools.
The region in which Muslim merchants were operating between the Sahara and the West African coast encompassed several currency zones, including cloth strips, gold, cowrie shells, and silver, by the end of the eighteenth century. Merchants and their employees had to be adept at dealing with the various currencies, as well as the changing political circumstances. They used gold (based on the gold-dust measurement of the mithqāl, a unit of weight usually equivalent to 4.25 grams) of the western Sahel and Sahara, cowries in a wide zone in the savanna and the forest, and silver coins more extensively, beginning in the late eighteenth century. Concurrently, in some places various commodity currencies prevailed, such as strips of cloth and iron objects that resembled small hoes.52 The landlord-brokers who were resident in the various
