SIJILMASA (flourished 8th–14th century)

Around Sijilmasa there are deposits of gold and silver. The gold is found like plants, and it is said that the wind blows it away. ⁸
—Ahmad al-Ya‘qubi, 9th century

Founded in the ninth century, Sijilmasa sits along the northern edge of the Sahara Desert in southeastern Morocco, adjacent to present-day Rissani. It lies in the Tafilalt Oasis, a basin of alluvial soils. Sijilmasa was a vital link in the African gold trade. Its mint struck gold coins as early as the tenth century, and evidence strongly suggests that West African gold passed through the area by the fourth century. While much of Sijilmasa was abandoned in the late fourteenth century, parts of the city, such as the great mosque, were used until the turn of the twentieth century.

Between 1988 and 1998 the Moroccan-American Project at Sijilmasa (MAPS) undertook six archaeological missions at Sijilmasa. Their excavations have revealed the remains of a citadel, an ore-processing site, a mosque, and an elite residence where a small gold filigree ring was found.⁹ A caravanserai (a roadside inn where caravans could rest overnight), Souk Ben Akla, was located three miles west of the city on the banks of the Rheris River.

Sijilmasa was a sizeable and wealthy urban center in its heyday. The Andalusian historian and geographer Abu ‘Ubayd al-Bakri (d. 1094) described the city as “a wall with twelve gates. Within are beautiful houses, many having gardens, magnificent public buildings, a mosque that is solidly built, and baths that are poorly built.”¹⁰

This fragment of painted plaster bears a portion of an inscription from the Qur’an that would have read in full, “On no soul doth God place a burden greater than it can bear. It gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns.” It was found at the site of an elite residence of the ninth or tenth century. Just a century or two later, a mosque was built on the same location.

This gold ring is one of only a few gold objects to have survived from medieval Saharan Africa, and it is important material evidence of Sijilmasa’s link to Saharan trade. A goldsmith made the ring by soldering thin flattened strips of gold in an undulating pattern to upper and lower bands. The ring was found in an elite residence and dates to an extended period of development of the city by local Amazigh rulers, the Bani Midrar.

The gold-working technique resembles that of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Amazigh jewelry from the Sahara and Anti-Atlas Mountains.

Vast amounts of glazed and unglazed ceramic fragments—the remains of bowls, jugs, lamps, storage containers, and other items essential to daily life—have been excavated at sites north and south of the Sahara. This glazed and inscribed vase, from the eleventh century, is one of the best preserved ceramic objects excavated from Sijilmasa.

Found west of the remains of Sijilmasa’s grand mosque, the vase bears a decorative inscription reading “al-Baraka” (the blessing) followed by “Allah” (God) or “al-yawman” (prosperity).

To hear more about the research and excavation of the site of Sijilmasa, watch interviews with archaeologists Abdallah Fili and Ron Messier.