Important towns develop along the trade routes.…

Important towns develop along the trade routes.

The easiest, though not the shortest, routes between Ghana and Sijilmasa are from Koumbi Saleh through Aoudaghast, Oualata, Tichit, and Ouadane.

These towns along the route grow to be important commercial as well as political centers.

Aoudaghast, with its population of five thousand to six thousand, is a big town with a large mosque and several smaller ones, surrounded by large cultivated areas under irrigation, as described by the Arab chronicler Al Bakri in the eleventh-century.