Research Paper on:
Sub Saharan Gold Trade and Islam

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
a number of factors. Africa, of course, was originally a continent with a diversity of peoples and religions. With the influx of other cultures came the arrival of  religions and lifeways like Islam whose primary goal in the continent became the religious and cultural conversion of the indigenous African peoples who inhabited the continent. The cultural exchange  was greatly speeded by the Islamic desire for yet another African resource, gold. It can be contended, in fact, that cross cultural contact greatly increased as a result of  the Islamic and African participation in the trans-Saharan gold trade and that this increased contact led not only to the spread of Islam among the indigenous peoples of Africa but  also a diversity of positive and negative impacts to those peoples. Most of the literature agrees that the trans-Saharan gold trade flourished between  800 and 1100 AD. The literature also agrees that this was period was a time of great change in many aspects of African culture. Black kingdoms emerged in  western Africa and products such as kola nuts and slaves were traded along with gold for cloth, utensils, and salt. Many of the cultural impacts resulting from the extensive  trade which characterized the period revolved around controlling the trade routes and products. One of the most definitive impacts of the  sub-Saharan gold trade was the emergence of many great African empires. These empires emerged as a result of new needs. Ghana, for example, emerged to control the traded  routes which extended between present day Morocco in north Africa, Lake Chad and Nubia, and the coastal forests of western Africa. Islam began to exert a more pronounced role