Contracting caravans: partnership and profit in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century trans-Saharan trade

Journal of Global History

Volumn 3, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 89-113

  Lydon, Ghislaine ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950190259     PISSN: 17400228     EISSN: 17400236     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1740022808002453     Document Type: Review

References (112)

1. 'Abd al-Rah{dot below}m̄an Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqqadimah: an introduction to history, trans. Franz Rosenthal, ed. N. J. Dawood, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967, pp. 809 and 342 (emphasis mine)
2. Family archives of Muh{dot below}ammad wuld Ah{dot below}amdī, Tīshīt, Mauritania, MA1, fatwā issued by Muh{dot below}ammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Sbā'ī on entrusted trade goods, lines 3-7
3. For a recent discussion of trans-Saharan trade based primarily on published European sources, see Sebastian Prange, '"Trust in God-but tie your camel first." The economic organization of trans-Saharan slave trade between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries', Journal of Global History, 1, 2, 2006, pp. 219-39
4. See also the seminal work of E. Ann McDougall, including her 'Salt, Saharans and the trans-Saharan slave trade: nineteenth century developments', in E. Savage, ed., The human commodity: perspectives on the trans-Saharan slave trade, London: Frank Cass and Co., 1992, pp. 61-88
5. On the subject of slaves in the desert economy, see G. Lydon, 'Islamic legal culture and slave-ownership contests in nineteenth-century Sahara', International Journal of African Historical Studies, 40, 3, 2007, pp. 391-439
6. and G. Lydon, 'Slavery, exchange and Islamic law: a glimpse from the archives of Mali and Mauritania', African Economic History 33, 2005, pp. 115-46
7. On literacy in the Muslim world, see Nelly Hanna, 'Literacy and the "Great Divide" in the Islamic World', Journal of Global History, 2, 2, 2007, pp. 175-93
8. Richard Bulliet, The camel and the wheel, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990
9. Ralph Austen 'Marginalization, stagnation and growth: trans-Saharan caravan trade, 1500-1900', in James Tracy, ed., The rise of merchant empires: long-distance trade in the early modern world, 1350-1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 311-50
10. Ralph Austen and Dennis Cordell, 'Trade, transportation and expanding economic networks: Saharan caravan commerce in the era of European expansion', in Alusine Jalloh and Toyin Falola, eds., Black business and economic power, Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2003, pp. 80-113
11. Austen, 'Marginalization', p. 331
12. On the history of literacy and educational reform in the Jewish Diaspora and its role in endowing Jews with a comparative advantage in skilled urban professions, see Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, 'Jewish occupational selection: education, restrictions or minorities?', Journal of Economic History, 65, 4, 2005, pp. 922-48
13. For the first examination of the relevant historical records, see S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean society: the Jewish communities of the world as portrayed by the Cairo Geniza, vol. 5: 'The individual', Berkeley, CA, 1999 (abridged; first published 1988)
14. Anders Bjørkelo, Prelude to the Mahidiya: peasants and traders in the Shendi region, 1821-1885, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989
15. idem, 'Credit, loans and obligations in the nineteenth-century Sudan', in Geir Atle Ersland et al., eds., Festskrift til Historisk institutts 40-års jubileum 1997, Historisk institutt Skrifter nr. 2, Bergen, pp. 167-84
16. and idem, 'Islamic contracts in economic transactions in the Sudan' (unpublished paper)
17. Diadié Haïdara, Les Juifs de Tombouctou, Bamako: Editions Donniya, 1999
18. John Hunwick, 'Islamic financial institutions: theoretical structures and aspects of their application in sub-Saharan Africa', in Endres Stiansen and Jane Guyer, eds., Credit, currencies and culture: African financial institutions in historical perspective, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999, pp. 72-99
19. Mohamed Ennaji and Paul Pascon, Le Makhzen et le Sous al-Aqsa: la correspondance politique de la maison d'Iligh (1821-1894), Paris: CNRS, 1988
20. Ann McDougall, 'Conceptualising the Sahara: the world of nineteenth-century Beyrouk commerce', Journal of North African Studies, 10, 2005, pp. 369-86
21. Ulrich Harmann, 'The dead ostrich: life and trade in Ghadames (Libya) in the nineteenth century', Die Welt des Islams, 38, 1, 1998, pp. 9-94, based on Bashīr Qāsim b. Yūsha', Ghadāmis: Wathā'iq Tijāriyya wa Tā'rikhīya wa Ijtimā'iya, 1228-1312, Tripoli: Markaz jihād al-libiyīn lil-dirāsāt al-tā'rikhīya, 1983
22. See G. Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails: Islamic law, trade networks and cross-cultural exchange in western Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, chapters 1, 3, and 6
23. and idem, 'A paper economy of faith without faith in paper: a contribution for understanding Islamic institutional history' (submitted)
24. Robert Lopez and Irving Raymond, Medieval trade in the Mediterranean world, New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1955, especially 155-289
25. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean society, vol. 1, 'Economic foundations', and idem, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973
26. For a discussion of the paper trade, see G. Lydon, 'Inkwells of the Sahara: reflections on the transmission of Islamic knowledge in Bilād al-Shinqīt{dot below}i', in Scott Reese, ed., The transmission of knowledge in Islamic Africa, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004
27. and idem, On trans-Saharan trails, chapter 2
28. Qurs'ān (2:282-3). For a discussion of these verses, see Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails, chapter 6
29. Ahsan Khan Nyazee Imran, Islamic law of business organisation and partnerships, Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1999, p. 31, citing al-Sarakhsī's al-Mabsūt, vol. 30, p. 155
30. On the place of oral testimony in Islamic law, see Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails, chapters 6 and 7
31. and idem, 'A paper economy'
32. Typically, an inadvertent scribble on a contract was cause for a special explanatory in-text note such as 'and what is in the second sentence is not of consequence' (Family records of Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Khalīl, IK 3, sales contract, 1864)
33. An early exception is the work of Hilmar Krueger on twelfth-century Genoese trade in North African, based on contractual evidence. See his 'Genoese trade with northwest Africa in the twelfth century.' Speculum 8 (1933), especially pp. 385, 392 (where he states that a certain trader needed the contractual consent of his wife to engage in a transaction, and that 'women and minors often made investments'), and 'The wares of exchange in the Genoese-African traffic of the twelfth century.' Speculum 12 (1937), p. 63 (where mention is made of Malbika 'the woman who transacted more business than any other woman in Genoa')
34. Here the term 'brother' could refer to both kin and co-religionary
35. Family archives of 'Abd al-Mu'min, Tīshīt, Mauritania, AM 9, agency contract formulary. For a contract formula describing a joint-liability contract (mufāwad{dot below}a), see Abraham Udovitch, 'Credit as a means of investment in medieval Islamic trade', Journal of the American Oriental Society, 87, 3, 1967, pp. 260-1
36. Charles R. Hickson and John D. Turner, 'Partnership' in J. J. McCusker et al., eds., Encyclopedia of world trade since 1450, New York, NY: Macmillan Reference, 2005
37. Dean Williamson, 'Transparency, contract selection and the maritime trade of Venetian Crete, 1303-1352', Social Science Research Network, July 2002, http://ssrn.com/abstract=320800 (consulted 17 February 2008)
38. Naomi Lamoreaux, 'Constructing firms: partnerships and alternative contractual arrangements in early nineteenth-century American business', Business and Economic History, 24, 2, 1995, p. 47
39. Avner Greif, 'Contract enforceability and economic institutions in early trade: the Maghribi traders' coalition', American Economic Review, 83, 3, 1993, pp. 525-48
40. idem, 'The fundamental problem of exchange: a research agenda in historical institutional analysis', European Review of Economic History, 4, 3, 2000, pp. 265-9
41. see also his Institutions and the path to the modern economy, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006
42. Timur Kuran, 'The Islamic commercial crisis: institutional roots of economic underdevelopment in the Middle East', Journal of Economic History, 63, 2, 2003, pp. 418 and 420 (emphasis mine)
43. Abraham Udovitch, 'Credit'; idem, 'Labor partnerships in early Islamic law', Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, 10, 1, 1967, pp. 64-78
44. idem, 'At the origins of the western commenda: Islam, Israel, Byzantium', Speculum, 37, 2, 1962, pp. 198-207
45. idem, Partnership and profit in medieval Islam, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970
46. Udovitch examined fragments of Jewish partnership agreements drawn from the Geniza Archives ('Theory and practice of Islamic law: some evidence from Geniza', Studia Islamica, 32, 1970, pp. 289-303). Similarly, Greif derived evidence from the medieval trade correspondence of the Geniza and other sources (Institutions, pp. 285-7). Bjørkelo (in 'Credit' and 'Islamic contracts') provides a very useful discussion of contracts prevailing in nineteenth-century Sudan, without attempting to measure the record against Islamic contractual law
47. Udovitch, 'At the origins of the western commenda', p. 196, citing the Muwat{dot below}t{dot below}a of Mālik ibn Anas. See Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails, chapter 6 for a discussion of Mālik ibn Anās' legal manual, the Muwat{dot below}t{dot below}a
48. Qur'ān (73:20) or (62:10). This commenda-type contract (discussed shortly) was called the mudārabā in all Sunni legal doctrines except in the Mālikī tradition, where it was simply known as the qirād. See Udovitch, Partnership, pp. 174-5 and Kuran, 'Islamic commercial crisis', pp. 414-46
49. Udovitch, 'Origins', pp. 198-9
50. For excellent discussions of the commenda and its evolution, see Hickson and Turner, 'Partnership', and Udovitch, 'At the origins of the western commenda'
51. Udovitch, Partnership, p. 172
52. N. Seignette, Code musulman par Khalil, rîte mâlikite - statut réel, Alger: Constantine, 1878, pp. 211-24
53. Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Islamic commercial law: an analysis of futures and options, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 176-7
54. Udovitch, 'Origins', pp. 196-202
55. and 'Labor Partnerships', p. 64, n. 2
56. Kuran, 'Islamic commercial crisis', pp. 420-1
57. and Khan Nyazee, Islamic law, p. 193
58. Lopez and Raymond, Medieval trade, pp. 174-9
59. Williamson, 'Transparency', p. 4
60. Family archives of Fādil al-Sharīf, Tīshīt, Mauritania (henceforth FAFS), FS 2, fatwā on Wakāla al-Mufāwadā, 1304 AH (1887 CE)
61. Archives of Ahl H{dot below}ammuny, former qādī, Shinqīt{dot below}i Mauritania, family documents of Limām wuld Arwīlī (henceforth AAH-LA), LA 21, wakāla al-mufāwad{dot below} a contract, 1355 AH (1936 CE). As in most such cases, the acceptable profit margin was not specified, and therefore was probably left to the discretion of the trading partner
62. Sīdi Khalīl's Mukhtas{dot below}ar, cited in Seignette, Code, pp. 191-8
63. Udovitch, Partnership, p. 24. Sīdī Khalīl devotes an entire chapter to discussing the rules of partnership companies (see n. 51)
64. It is worth noting that Ulrich Harmann makes mention of a sharika agreement dating from the 1880s between a Ghadamāsī trader from Libya and another from Timbuktu: 'The dead ostrich', p. 29, n. 125
65. Institut Mauritanien de Recherche Scientifique, Nouakchott, Arabic manuscript department, 2747, 'Abdallah b. Dāddāh, H{dot below}ukm al-sharika
66. Family archives of Mūlāy al-Mahdī, Shinqīt{dot below}i, Mauritania, MM6, partnership dissolution
67. AAH-LA, LA 36A and B, wakāla al-sharika
68. Interviews with Mūlāy Bāhah wuld Mūlāy 'Abdallah wuld Mūlāy Ah{dot below}mad, Timbuktu, 24 April 1998; with Muh{dot below}ammadu wuld Ah{dot below}amdi, Tīshīt, 16 April 1997
69. with 'Abdarah{dot below}mān wuld Muh{dot below}ammad al-H{dot below}anshī, Shinqīt{dot below}i, 28 February 1997
70. and withMuh{dot below}ammad al-H{dot below}anshi wuld Muh{dot below}ammad Salih{dot below},Nouakchott, 25 June 1997
71. AAH-LA, LA 4, agent contract between Munīna mint Arraybī b. 'Aly and 'Aly Fāl b. Muh{dot below}ammad Arāl b. Muh{dot below}ammad al-'Abd, 25 Rabi'a al-nabawī 1250 AH (1834 CE). AAH-LA, LA 12, 1165 AH (1752 CE) is a similar case of a woman hiring her brother to collect her inheritance from her husband
72. AAH-LA, LA 29, wakāla contract between Sālah{dot below} and his sister al-H{dot below}uriyya. The mithqāl is discussed below, p. 107
73. Family archives of Dāddah wuld Idda, Tīshīt, Mauritania (henceforth FADI), DI 7, debt acquittal through a wakāla contract between Maryam mint Ah{dot below}mayda and Ah{dot below}mad wuld Idda, 1322 AH (1904)
74. Family archives of Dah{dot below}mān wuld Bayrūk, Guelmīm, Morocco (henceforth FADB), agency contract, 1342 AH (1924 CE)
75. FADB, DB 16, wakāla contract, 1307 AH (1889-90)
76. Family archives of Daīdī wuld al-'Arabī wuld Mūlāy 'Aly, At{dot below}ār, Mauritania (henceforth FADMA), AMA 6, hidden salt statement of two trade agents
77. AAH-LA, LA 2, letter from Aīsha mint Ah{dot below}mad to Limām b. Arwīlī
78. See note 2
79. Greif, 'Fundamental problem', pp. 267-8
80. Yahya Ould El-Bara, Al-Fiqh and Al-Majmū'āt al-Kubrā fī Fatāwī wa Nawāzil Ahl'Arb wa Janūb 'Arb Al-S{dot below}ah{dot below}ra, vol. 5 (forthcoming)
81. FAFS, FS 7, commercial letter of complaint
82. In all likelihood, the 'aqādīm was of servile origin. For a discussion of enslaved caravan workers, see Lydon, 'Slavery', and 'Islamic legal culture'
83. Family archives of Shaykh Bū 'Asriyya, Tīshīt, Mauritania, BA1, fatwā on the death of an 'aqādīm by Shaykh Ah{dot below}mad b. al-Saghīr, copied by 'Andallah b, H{dot below}ajār
84. Family Archives of Sharīf Shaykhnā Bū Ah{dot below}mad, Tīshīt, Mauritania, SBA 3, fatwā of Shaykh Sīdi 'Abayda b. Muh{dot below}ammad al-S{dot below}aghīr b. Anbūja, c. 1840s
85. For a discussion of Nyamina, a thriving trans-Saharan/Sahelien market until the Umarian occupation in the late 1850s, see Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails, chapter 3
86. It is interesting to note that debt cases were also the most commonly debated in the early nineteenth-century legal literature of the north-eastern United States (Lamoreaux, 'Constructing firms', p. 52)
87. FADB, DB 17c, qard{dot below} contract, 1244 AH (1829 CE)
88. FADB, DB 4, debt contract between Zayn al-'Adīn b. al-Sūdāni al-Sbā 'ī and Shaykh b. Bayrūk, 1281 AH (1864 CE)
89. AAH-LA, LA 38, debt contract, 1298 AH (1881 CE)
90. Udovitch (Partnerships, p. 9, n. 22) only mentions lease contracts in a footnote
91. Family archives of 'Abdarahmān b. Muh{dot below}ammad al-H{dot below}anshī, Shinqīt{dot below}i, Mauritania, MH 4, salt lease contract by Muh{dot below}ammad al-Mukhtār b. 'Amar; FAFS, FS 7, agency contract; FADI, DI 13, salt lease contract by 'Abubakar b. al-Mukhtār al-Sharīf, 1329 AH (1911 CE)
92. Interviews with 'Abdarah{dot below}mān b. Muh{dot below}ammad al-H{dot below}anshī, Shinqīt{dot below}i, 1 October 1997, and Muh{dot below}ammad al-H{dot below}anshī wuld Muh{dot below}ammad Salih{dot below}, Nouakchott, 25 June 1997
93. FADI, DI 13, salt lease contract by 'Abubakar b. al-Mukhtār al-Sharīf, 1329 AH (1911 CE)
94. Family archives of Ah{dot below}mad wuld al-Zayn, Tīshīt, Mauritania (henceforth FAAZ), AZ 4, commercial correspondence from Muh{dot below}ammad b. Muh{dot below}ammad al-Sharīf to Muh{dot below}ammad Zayn, 1322 AH (1905 CE)
95. FADI, DI 4, cancellation of lease contract
96. Seignette, Code, pp. 173-5
97. FADMA, AMA 7, third party debt recovery strategy
98. Remie Olivia Constable discusses the storage services offered by caravanserai lodges and funduqs in her monumental study, Housing the stranger in the Mediterranean world: lodging, trade, and travel in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003. On the importance of storage, see also Polly Hill, 'Landlords and brokers: a west African trading system (with a note on Kumasi butchers)', Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 6, 1966, pp. 349-65
99. FAAZ, AZ 4, commercial correspondence, 1322 AH (1905 CE)
100. FADI, DI 6b, deposit contract with H{dot below}mallah wuld Idda
101. AAH-LA, LA 12-17, kunnāsh of Limām wuld Arwālī
102. Interview with Muh{dot below}ammad al-Amīn b. Mūlāy Ghāly, Nouakchott 2 June 1998
103. For example, she collected money owed to a Tikna trader who was out of town. The trader was Sidi wuld Buhay, the head of the Tikna community in Shinqīt{dot below}i, who succeeded her late husband. (Family archives of Muh{dot below}ammad al-Amīn b. Mūlāy Ghāly, Nouakchott, Commercial Registry of Sidi Muh{dot below}ammad wuld Mūlāy 'Aly and Khadayja mint H{dot below}amādu 'Umār.)
104. Interview with Abdarrah{dot below}mān wuld Muh{dot below}ammad al-H{dot below}anshi, Shinqīt{dot below}i, 29 February 1997. Ulrich Harmann consulted similar documents written by nineteenth-century Libyan traders from Ghadamès, which also seem to bear the same tad{line below}kīra ('The dead ostrich', p. 12, n. 15, and pp. 17-18)
105. As explained in Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails, chapter 6, a mudd was a measure of cereal and other dry goods such as henna and dates. Each region had a different measurement for the mudd. The Shinqīt{dot below}i mudd was approximately 2.5 kg. The largest was the Tishīt mudd, which measured about 4.5 kg
106. Family archives of 'Abdarrah{dot below}mān wuld Muh{dot below}ammad wuld Ah{dot below}mad wuld Muh{dot below}ammad al-H{dot below}anshī, Shinqīt{dot below}i, Mauritania, MH 14, caravan shopping list
107. FADB, DB 9, letter detailing slave trade loan contract
108. FADMA, AMA 14, letter from Muh{dot below}ammad al-Amīn wuld Awbilla to al-'Arabī wuld Mūlāy 'Aly, 1333 AH (1915 CE)
109. Family records of Buhay family, Shinqīt{dot below}i, letter from Muh{dot below}ammad Sālim in Timbuktu to his brother Ibrāhīm in Shinqīt{dot below}i, c. 1870s. The letter is dated by the statement regarding Ah{dot below}madu, the son of jihad: eader al-H{dot below}ājj 'Umar Tāl, joining the French. See David Robinson and John Hanson, After the jihad: the reign of Ahmad al-Kabir in the western Sudan, Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1991
110. Udovitch, 'Credit', p. 262
111. See full quotation above, p. 97
112. For a discussion of trans-Saharan trade in the colonial period, see G. Lydon, 'On trans-Saharan trails: trade networks and cross-cultural exchange in western Africa, 1840s-1930s', PhD thesis, Michigan State University, 2000, chapters 6 and 7