Conceptualising the Sahara: The world of nineteenth-century Beyrouk commerce

This article derives from work done several years ago in the context of a grant project on ‘A Family Affair’ – basically a study of how Saharan ‘families’, broadly defined, organised their interests in the trans-Saharan trade. While I have published an important piece from this project based on oral material, I have yet to exploit the micro-filmed/photocopied documentation. My scanned files are now ready to work with and I want to begin. An important portion of the files relates specifically to something called the ‘Beyrouk Registers’ – a series of commercial accountings (‘registers’) revealing the interests of an important southern Moroccan family, the Beyrouk. Some have argued that these registers represent a model of the trans-Saharan trade both in terms of content (arrangement of credit, commodities, personalities) and of organisation (networking, social categories, theories thereof). Indeed, the family itself has been credited with controlling, if not constituting, the ‘essence’ of this trade in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. I’m more skeptical of both the model and the content of the ‘registers’. My skepticism derives from my experiences in doing fieldwork in southern Morocco (specifically Goulimine, the ‘home’ of the Beyrouk), my close examination of these ‘registers’ in comparison with other source materials (notably those of Paul Pascon on the ‘House of Illigh’ – also southern Morocco) and my consideration of what I believe these registers really can tell us in the context of recent work on the topic of trans-Saharan trade. In addition, I draw on comparable materials from other Saharan sources, concerning other Saharan families as well as very different materials (oral as well as written) which collectively will help us ‘situate’ the Beyrouk and their registers more realistically in Saharan history. I believe the article is the first step in challenging our current conceptualisation of both desert commerce and desert society. In short, we are now positioned to look at questions around ‘knowing’ with respect to the trans-Saharan trade from a number of different conceptual frameworks, as well as a number of different topical ‘focii’. It is precisely because we are beginning to ‘know’ more that we are also beginning to understand how much more, still, the trans-Saharan trade has to tell us about Saharan society.