Taghaza

Taghaza was a salt-mining settlement in the western Sahara, surrounded by a barren expanse of sand and salt flats. Its slabs of salt were carried south by camel caravan and exchanged in the markets of the Niger. In 1352 the traveller Ibn Battuta found houses built from blocks of salt and roofed with camel skins; food had to be brought from far away, while enslaved workers dug the precious mineral.

Control of the mines became a point of conflict between Songhai and Morocco in the sixteenth century. Moroccan forces seized Taghaza, and after the conquest of Songhai in 1591 the old mining settlement was abandoned. Salt production shifted to Taoudenni, farther southeast and closer to Timbuktu, but the ruins of Taghaza recalled the importance of this unlikely desert town in trans-Saharan trade.