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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

Ghislaine Lydon
Ghislaine Lydon
Affiliation:
UCLA History Department, 6265 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA E-mail: lydon@history.ucla.edu
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Abstract

Organizing trans-Saharan camel caravans was a complicated business requiring skills, stamina, resources, and human capital. This article focuses on the contractual world of caravanning in the nineteenth and early twentieth century based on interviews with retired caravanners, original trade records, and legal sources mined in private family archives. It surveys the different contractual agreements that featured commonly in this ‘paper economy’, which was based on a reliance on literacy and Islamic law. It is argued that contracts were key instruments for accounting and accountability even between traders with kinship ties and other sources of solidarity, and that they were often the only channel for women to engage in long-distance trade via proxy.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 89 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 ‘Abd al-Ramān 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 Muammad Wuld Aamdī, Tīshīt, Mauritania, MA1, fatwā issued by Muammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Sbā‘ī on entrusted trade goods, lines 3–7.

3 Ibid., lines 9–10 (emphasis mine).

4 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.Google Scholar 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 Lydon, G., ‘Islamic legal culture and slave-ownership contests in nineteenth-century Sahara’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 40, 3, 2007, pp. 391–439Google Scholar, and Lydon, G., ‘Slavery, exchange and Islamic law: a glimpse from the archives of Mali and Mauritania’,African Economic History 33, 2005, pp. 115–46.Google Scholar

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8 Austen, ‘Marginalization’, p. 331.

9 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.Google Scholar 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).

10 Anders, Bjørkelo,Prelude to the Mahidiya: peasants and traders in the Shendi region, 1821–1885, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989Google Scholar; 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; and idem, ‘Islamic contracts in economic transactions in the Sudan’ (unpublished paper).

11 Diadié Haïdara, Les Juifs de Tombouctou, Bamako: Editions Donniya, 1999; 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.Google Scholar

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13 Ulrich, Harmann, ‘The dead ostrich: life and trade in Ghadames (Libya) in the nineteenth century’, Die Welt des Islams, 38, 1, 1998, pp. 9–94Google Scholar, 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.

14 See Lydon, G., On trans-Saharan trails: Islamic law, trade networks and cross-cultural exchange in western Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar, forthcoming, chapters 1, 3, and 6; and idem, ‘A paper economy of faith without faith in paper: a contribution for understanding Islamic institutional history’ (submitted).

15 Robert, Lopez and Irving, Raymond,Medieval trade in the Mediterranean world, New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1955, especially 155–289Google Scholar; S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean society, vol. 1, ‘Economic foundations’, and idem, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973.

16 For a discussion of the paper trade, see G. Lydon, ‘Inkwells of the Sahara: reflections on the transmission of Islamic knowledge in Bilād al-Shinqī‘, in Scott Reese, ed., The transmission of knowledge in Islamic Africa, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004; and idem, On trans-Saharan trails, chapter 2.

17 Qur’ān (2:282–3). For a discussion of these verses, see Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails, chapter 6.

18 Ahsan Khan, Nyazee Imran, Islamic law of business organisation and partnerships, Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1999, p. 31Google Scholar, citing al-Sarakhsī's al-Mabsū, vol. 30, p. 155.

19 On the place of oral testimony in Islamic law, see Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails, chapters 6 and 7; and idem, ‘A paper economy’.

20 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).

21 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’). For a discussion of women's participation in the caravan economy, see Lydon,On trans-Saharan trails, Chapters 5 and 6.

22 Here the term ‘brother’ could refer to both kin and co-religionary.

23 Family archives of ‘Abd al-Mu'min, Tīshīt, Mauritania, AM 9, agency contract formulary. For a contract formula describing a joint-liability contract (mufāwaa), 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.Google Scholar

24 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.

25 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).

26 Naomi, Lamoreaux, ‘Constructing firms: partnerships and alternative contractual arrangements in early nineteenth-century American business’, Business and Economic History, 24, 2, 1995, p. 47.Google Scholar

27 Avner, Greif, ‘Contract enforceability and economic institutions in early trade: the Maghribi traders’ coalition’, American Economic Review, 83, 3, 1993, pp. 525–48Google Scholar; idem, ‘The fundamental problem of exchange: a research agenda in historical institutional analysis’, European Review of Economic History, 4, 3, 2000, pp. 265–9; see also his Institutions and the path to the modern economy, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

28 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).Google Scholar

29 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; idem, ‘At the origins of the western commenda: Islam, Israel, Byzantium’, Speculum, 37, 2, 1962, pp. 198–207; idem, Partnership and profit in medieval Islam, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970.

30 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.

31 Udovitch, ‘At the origins of the western commenda’, p. 196, citing the Muwaa of Mālik ibn Anas. See Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails, chapter 6 for a discussion of Mālik ibn Anās’ legal manual, the Muwaa.

32 Qur’ān (73:20) or (62:10). This commenda-type contract (discussed shortly) was called the muārabā in all Sunni legal doctrines except in the Mālikī tradition, where it was simply known as the qirā. See Udovitch, Partnership, pp. 174–5 and Kuran, ‘Islamic commercial crisis’, pp. 414–46.

33 Udovitch, ‘Origins’, pp. 198–9.

34 For excellent discussions of the commenda and its evolution, see Hickson and Turner, ‘Partnership’, and Udovitch, ‘At the origins of the western commenda’.

35 Udovitch, Partnership, p. 172.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid., p. 147. This proportionality question for inputs and shares was known as the takāfu, which placed emphasis on the question of equilibrium and fairness.

38 N. Seignette, Code musulman par Khalil, rîte mâlikite – statut réel, Alger: Constantine, 1878, pp. 211–24; Mohammad, Hashim Kamali, Islamic commercial law: an analysis of futures and options, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 176–7.Google Scholar

39 Udovitch, ‘Origins’, pp. 196–202.

40 Udovitch, Partnership, p. 155; and ‘Labor Partnerships’, p. 64, n. 2.

41 Udovitch, Partnership, p. 76.

42 Kuran, ‘Islamic commercial crisis’, pp. 420–1.

43 Udovitch, Partnership, p. 23, and Khan Nyazee, Islamic law, p. 193.

44 For a discussion of usury in Muslim Africa, see Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails, chapter 6.

45 Lopez and Raymond,Medieval trade, pp. 174–9.

46 Williamson, ‘Transparency’, p. 4.

47 Family archives of Fāil al-Sharīf, Tīshīt, Mauritania (henceforth FAFS), FS 2, fatwā on Wakāla al-Mufāwaā, 1304 AH (1887 CE).

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid.

50 Archives of Ahl ammuny, former qāī, Shinqīi, Mauritania, family documents of Limām wuld Arwīlī (henceforth AAH-LA), LA 21, wakāla al-mufāwaa 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.

51 Sīdi Khalīl's Mukhtaar, cited in Seignette, Code, pp. 191–8.

52 Udovitch, Partnership, p. 24. Sīdī Khalīl devotes an entire chapter to discussing the rules of partnership companies (see n. 51).

53 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.

54 Institut Mauritanien de Recherche Scientifique, Nouakchott, Arabic manuscript department, 2747, ‘Abdallah b. Dāddāh, ukm al-sharika.

55 Ibid.

56 Family archives of Mūlāy al-Mahdī, Shinqīi, Mauritania, MM6, partnership dissolution.

57 AAH-LA, LA 36A and B, wakāla al-sharika.

58 Interviews with Mūlāy Bāhah wuld Mūlāy ‘Abdallah wuld Mūlāy Amad, Timbuktu, 24 April 1998; with Muammadu wuld Aamdi, Tīshīt, 16 April 1997; with ‘Abdaramān wuld Muammad al-anshī, Shinqīi, 28 February 1997; and with Muammad al-anshi wuld Muammad Sali, Nouakchott, 25 June 1997.

59 AAH-LA, LA 4, agent contract between Munīna mint Arraybī b. ‘Aly and ‘Aly Fāl b. Muammad Arāl b. Muammad 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.

60 AAH-LA, LA 29, wakāla contract between Sāla and his sister al-uriyya. The mithqāl is discussed below, p. 107.

61 Family archives of Dāddah wuld Idda, Tīshīt, Mauritania (henceforth FADI), DI 7, debt acquittal through a wakāla contract between Maryam mint Amayda and Amad wuld Idda, 1322 AH (1904).

62 Family archives of Damān wuld Bayrūk, Guelmīm, Morocco (henceforth FADB), agency contract, 1342 AH (1924 CE).

63 FADB, DB 16, wakāla contract, 1307 AH (1889–90).

64 Family archives of Daīdī wuld al-‘Arabī wuld Mūlāy ‘Aly, Aār, Mauritania (henceforth FADMA), AMA 6, hidden salt statement of two trade agents.

65 AAH-LA, LA 2, letter from Aīsha mint Amad to Limām b. Arwīlī.

66 See note 2.

67 Udovitch, Partnership, p. 188.

68 Greif, ‘Fundamental problem’, pp. 267–8.

69 Yahya Ould El-Bara, Al-Fiqh and Al-Majmū‘āt al-Kubrā fī Fatāwī wa Nawāzil Ahl‘Arb wa Janūb ‘Arb Al-ara, vol. 5 (forthcoming).

70 Ibid., fatwā by Sīdi ‘Abdallah b. al-ājj Ibrāhīm, no. 77.

71 FAFS, FS 7, commercial letter of complaint.

72 In all likelihood, the ‘aqādīm was of servile origin. For a discussion of enslaved caravan workers, see Lydon, ‘Slavery’, and ‘Islamic legal culture’.

73 Family archives of Shaykh Bū ‘Asriyya, Tīshīt, Mauritania, BA1, fatwā on the death of an ‘aqādīm by Shaykh Amad b. al-Saghīr, copied by ‘Andallah b, ajār.

74 Family Archives of Sharīf Shaykhnā Bū Amad, Tīshīt, Mauritania, SBA 3, fatwā of Shaykh Sīdi ‘Abayda b. Muammad al-aghīr b. Anbūja, c. 1840s.

75 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.

76 Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails, chapter 6.

77 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).

78 FADB, DB 17c, qar contract, 1244 AH (1829 CE).

79 FADB, DB 4, debt contract between Zayn al-‘Adīn b. al-Sūdāni al-Sbā ‘ī and Shaykh b. Bayrūk, 1281 AH (1864 CE).

80 AAH-LA, LA 38, debt contract, 1298 AH (1881 CE).

81 Udovitch (Partnerships, p. 9, n. 22) only mentions lease contracts in a footnote.

82 Family archives of ‘Abdarahmān b. Muammad al-anshī, Shinqīi, Mauritania, MH 4, salt lease contract by Muammad 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).

83 Interviews with ‘Abdaramān b. Muammad al-anshī, Shinqīi, 1 October 1997, and Muammad al-anshī wuld Muammad Sali, Nouakchott, 25 June 1997.

84 FADI, DI 13, salt lease contract by ‘Abubakar b. al-Mukhtār al-Sharīf, 1329 AH (1911 CE).

85 Family archives of Amad wuld al-Zayn, Tīshīt, Mauritania (henceforth FAAZ), AZ 4, commercial correspondence from Muammad b. Muammad al-Sharīf to Muammad Zayn, 1322 AH (1905 CE).

86 FADI, DI 4, cancellation of lease contract.

87 Seignette, Code, pp. 173–5. See also discussion of this mechanism in Lydon, On trans-Saharan trails, chapter 6.

88 FADMA, AMA 7, third party debt recovery strategy.

89 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.

90 FAAZ, AZ 4, commercial correspondence, 1322 AH (1905 CE).

91 FADI, DI 6b, deposit contract with amallah wuld Idda.

92 AAH-LA, LA 12–17,kunnāsh of Limām wuld Arwālī.

93 Interview with Muammad al-Amīn b. Mūlāy Ghāly, Nouakchott 2 June 1998.

94 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 Shinqīi, who succeeded her late husband. (Family archives of Muammad al-Amīn b. Mūlāy Ghāly, Nouakchott, Commercial Registry of Sidi Muammad wuld Mūlāy ‘Aly and Khadayja mint amādu ‘Umār.)

95 Interview with Abdarramān wuld Muammad al-anshi, Shinqīi, 29 February 1997. Ulrich Harmann consulted similar documents written by nineteenth-century Libyan traders from Ghadamès, which also seem to bear the same takīra (‘The dead ostrich’, p. 12, n. 15, and pp. 17–18).

96 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 Shinqīi mudd was approximately 2.5 kg. The largest was the Tishīt mudd, which measured about 4.5 kg.

97 Family archives of ‘Abdarramān wuld Muammad wuld Amad wuld Muammad al-anshī, Shinqīi, Mauritania, MH 14, caravan shopping list.

98 FADB, DB 9, letter detailing slave trade loan contract.

99 FADMA, AMA 14, letter from Muammad al-Amīn wuld Awbilla to al-‘Arabī wuld Mūlāy ‘Aly, 1333 AH (1915 CE).

100 Family records of Buhay family, Shinqīi, letter from Muammad Sālim in Timbuktu to his brother Ibrāhīm in Shinqīi, c. 1870s. The letter is dated by the statement regarding Amadu, the son of jihad leader al-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.Google Scholar

101 Udovitch, ‘Credit’, p. 262.

102 See full quotation above, p. 97.

103 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.