Djenne djenn: Did you mean...?

A terracotta figurine depicting a cavalry warrior of the Mali Empire (1240-1645 CE). 13th-15th century CE. (National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C.)

Timbuktu (Timbuctoo) is a city in Mali, West Africa which was an important trade centre of the Mali Empire which flourished between the 13th and 15th centuries. The city, founded c. 1100, gained wealth from access to and control of the trade...

Salt from the Sahara desert was one of the major trade goods of ancient West Africa where very little naturally occurring deposits of the mineral could be found. Transported via camel caravans and by boat along such rivers as the Niger and...

Following the conquest of North Africa by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century CE, Islam spread throughout West Africa via merchants, traders, scholars, and missionaries, that is largely through peaceful means whereby African rulers either tolerated...

West Africa was one of the world's greatest producers of gold in the Middle Ages. Trade in the metal went back to antiquity but when the camel caravans of the Sahara linked North Africa to the savannah interior, the trade really took off...

This broken figure of glazed terracotta is one of many old sculptures made of fired clay found since the 1970s around the modern city of Djenné in Mali. It dates from perhaps the 1300-1600s CE. Artists modeled the figures free-handed. They...