The Sogdians Who Ran the Middle of the Road
Between China and Persia, a people with no empire controlled the richest stretch of the Silk Road for five centuries. Selin reads their letters, found in a watchtower, to find out how.
Salt Going South, Gold Coming North
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Show notes
The salt road to Timbuktu
At Taghaza and later Taoudenni, salt was cut from the desert floor in slabs and carried south for three weeks by camel to markets where it was once traded weight for weight with gold. This episode follows the Azalai caravan from the mines to the Niger bend, from the medieval accounts of Ibn Battuta to the trucks and camels that still make the trip.
- Why salt was worth so much in the Sahel and gold so little in the desert
- Ibn Battuta's 1352 crossing and the salt-brick houses of Taghaza
- The Tuareg guides, the wells and the week without water
- What remains of the trade today
With field recordings from the Timbuktu salt market, courtesy of a listener in Mali.
Transcript
Welcome back to Silk, Salt and Saddlebags, I am Selin Aydin. This episode is about the second word in the title. In the middle of the Sahara, at places called Taghaza and Taoudenni, men cut salt from the desert floor in slabs the size of a door and loaded them onto camels for a three-week walk south to Timbuktu. There, in the great years, a slab of salt could be traded for its weight in gold. Ibn Battuta walked the route in 1352 and complained about everything, which makes him a wonderful witness. We follow the caravan from the mines to the Niger bend, we talk about the Tuareg guides and the wells that decided who lived, and we hear from the salt market in Timbuktu today, where the camels have mostly become trucks. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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