ABSTRACT
When kafu traders accessed regional and international markets during the eighteenth century, success came through the salt exchanges and the slave commerce, and not the gold trade. Together with Bamako's Islamized and Mande-hinterland trading elites, Niare traders supplied slaves both to the desert-side and Atlantic commerce, the faama/ja-tigiw-Titi Niare himself-pursuing the trade. Following the signifiers of commercial prosperity, Islamized clients sought Bamako's markets from as far afield as the Kaarta, Sokolo and the middle Niger towns, the Wassulu, Kankan and the Mande, and the northeast Mar-ka towns, such as Banamba and Tuba, as well as the Beledugu towns. Bozo families also exchanged crocodile skins, fish, and grains in upriver markets, especially those in the Mande, where the grain trade had been operationalized at least since the fourteenth century. Shipping desert-side animals on Bozo or Somono craft to the east bank in search of wider markets, should Bamako be experiencing a poor season, was a breeder's nightmare.
