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"They went to the Sudan with salt, pine wood, copper jewelry and glassbeads, called nazm, that they exchange against gold." Kiffa Beads Of Mauritania A Fall from Grace 56 ORNAMENT 36.2.2012 B etween the eighth and fifteenth centuries three powerful Sudanese empires emerged in the Sahel—a savannabelt between the Sahara and the southern forest zone— where in southern Mauritania the town of Kiffa now exists. The trade networks of Gana, Mali and Songhai extended as far as India, the Middle East, Morocco, the Iberian peninsula, all of the Mediterranean basin, and Europe. Wealth was based on the export of gold, slaves and ivory. The early presence of Islam in West Africa was limited to secluded Muslim communities, which linked commerce with North Africa. Trade between West Africa and the Mediterranean predated the arrival of Islam, but it had been Moroccan Berber Muslims in conjunction with immigrated Arabs from the East, who intensified the Trans-Saharan trade and were the major distributors of a new faith into animistic West Africa. Waves of immigration won the Arabs a considerable influence in the region, after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century. Several factors led to the growth of the Muslim merchantscholar class in the yet non-Muslim kingdoms of the South. Islam facilitated long distance trade, by offering useful tools for merchants like bookkeeping, credit, contract law, and Jürgen Busch information networks, as well as playing an important role as advisors to the non-Muslim kings of Gana. Beginning with the fifteenth century the lucrative Trans-Saharan gold-trade shifted from the desert to the Atlantic Ocean. Like all trading systems, commerce across the Sahara involved goods moving in both directions; from the Mediterranean to the Sudan and returning from the Sudan north to the sea coast, often with the same caravan. This trek of thousands of men and camels took forty-five days to reach the southern destination. The exports out of sub-Saharan Africa—mainly gold and slaves—rather than the goods traded southbound, gave TransSaharan trade its place in history. What Sudanic buyers received were rather average wares that had cost their sellers relatively little, certainly in comparison with what returned from the south, the finest gold-dust, which remained the most important commodity of this trade, about one ton per year between approximately A.D. 750-1500. The list of goods desired by and delivered to the south included fabric, weapons, horses, ceramics, perfume, coral, amber, spices (including salt), tools, copper rods, household items, and glassware, as well as glass beads. Yaqut, the well-known Islamic