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 towns and cities of West Africa were responsible for dealing with currency exchange and credit. Cowries were bulky and difficult to transport, and hence landlords vouched for sales and purchases of commodities, taking a commission on sales but also safeguarding both commodities and cash. Landlords were therefore essential to the operation of trade because of the vagaries of currency supplies and liquidity. They also warehoused the goods of long-distance trade, provisioned caravans, and provided other services to itinerant merchants, including feeding them and tending livestock.53
In addition to this dispersed commercial structure, the interior of West Africa was also held together through the transhumance migrations of Fulbe cattle herders and desert nomads, particularly the Tuareg and the Maure, which also helped integrate West Africa. Like the merchants, these nomadic peoples also relied on Islam as a means of unification, drawing on the Islamic legal system to regulate community relationships and to settle disputes in the absence of centralized states.54 Although the Fulbe originated in the Senegal River valley, they came to monopolize cattle rearing across all of West Africa by the sixteenth century. Cattle were moved across the open savanna in a generally northerly and southerly pattern to follow pastures and available supplies of water, and in the course of this transhumance they gradually drifted eastward as far as Lake Chad and eventually even farther east. The Toronkawa, to which the family of ʿUthmān dan Fodio belonged, settled in the Hausa region before the eighteenth century, for example. Because they traced their origins to the Senegal valley, as other Fulbe did, they could rely on clan ties, linguistic compatibility, and other cultural traits to reinforce an ongoing interaction. The Fulbe leadership thereby amassed considerable resources that derived from the retention of common traditions arising from this economic niche. The elite controlled the herds of cattle, horses, goats, and sheep but also invested in landed estates that relied on slave labor to produce agricultural products and provide bases of operations for nomadic herds.
Similarly, desert nomads, whose dominance of tracts of land in the Sahara and the Sahel was based on the rearing of camel herds but also other livestock, followed their own transhumance patterns of migration. In the course of moving herds in search of water and pasture, they also took advantage of the transport capacity of the camels to move commodities to market, particularly various types of salt processed at desert and Sahelian locations, grain (especially sorghum and millet), textiles, leather goods, agricultural tools, and other commodities, including kola nuts. Like the Fulbe, the desert nomads also invested heavily in agriculture through the establishment of slave estates on often marginal lands that could be very productive in good seasons but risked poor harvests in years of little rain. Hence the Kel Gress, Itisen, and Kel Ewey, among other Tuareg, established economic corridors of trade and production that fed desert salt into savanna markets and moved agricultural output from areas of surplus to markets. They hired out transport services while their camel herds remained in the savanna during the long dry season. The nomads also supplied camels for trans-Saharan trade, which usually followed a relay network that involved other nomads who lived farther north in the Sahara to connect with Morocco and the Ottoman domains of the Mediterranean. These networks also facilitated the pilgrimage to Mecca and the Hijaz. The rearing of donkeys and horses was equally important; the donkeys were needed for transport, sometimes over considerable distances, while horses formed the military backbone of the many warlords who controlled the savanna.
This desert-side economy based on transhumance thereby encouraged migration and interaction over considerable distances, which meant that the cultural unity of West Africa was far more secure than the fragmentation of the political landscape might suggest. After the collapse of Songhay in 1591–92, the many walled towns across West Africa allowed local elites to hold sway over limited tracts of territory. Despite the criticisms of Muslim intellectuals that these elites did not promote Islam sufficiently and oppressed the peasantry, in fact, these states provided security for local peasant production of grain, cotton, and other agricultural commodities. The manufacture of textiles and the curing of leather goods enabled regional industrial output for markets that encompassed most of West Africa and even stretched across the Sahara. Ecologically, trade and production followed a gradient from desert to rain forest; the presence of tsetse flies limited where livestock were to be found, and the seasonal fluctuations in rainfall guaranteed a symbiosis between nomads and sedentary farmers.
The friction that inevitably existed in this political economy pitted the rulers of towns and states against the heads of the nomadic livestock herders because of claims to taxation and efforts to avoid exactions by nomadic herders. Wherever Fulbe clan leaders and desert nomads established agricultural estates, it was necessary to work out arrangements with warlords who controlled the territory. When these arrangements broke down, nomads could migrate, but in doing so, they might lose control of slaves who were settled on the land in any particular state. The risks of raiding, confiscation, and outright theft were therefore a constant impediment to political unification and consequently exacerbated the cultural divisions between nomads and sedentary populations. Once again, adherence to Islam became a means of addressing this friction, particularly when the call to jihād was directed at transforming the political landscape.
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