Tadmekka

Tadmekka, also known as Essouk, was a trading town in the southern Sahara north of the Niger bend. Stone buildings and Islamic cemeteries mark a place where merchants from the desert and the western Sudan met. Its name, meaning “like Mecca”, reflects the importance of Islam in the town.

Tadmekka flourished during the early centuries of trans-Saharan commerce, drawing traders from beyond the surrounding desert. Archaeologists have found moulds used to cast gold and evidence of goods brought from North Africa, revealing its place in networks that carried precious metal across the desert. Arabic inscriptions in its cemeteries date from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. The town’s remains recall a prosperous meeting place in a landscape of rocky valleys and scarce water.

The later city of Kidal lies here.