Medieval Silver Production Around Sijilmâsa, Morocco

Abstract

Sijilmâsa (south-east Morocco) was one of the most strategic cities in a far-reaching exchange network, that is, the Trans-Saharan trade, linking the Maghreb with West Africa during the medieval period (from the 8 th to the 15 th century CE). It was also one of the most important gold and silver monetary workshops at the time. If gold came from West Africa, we know from written sources that silver was produced in Morocco, although archaeological evidence of silver mining and smelting has remained elusive. Thanks to a thorough analysis of the lead isotopic data from silver mining districts in Morocco and from ores and slags of our study, we were able to refine the tracing of our materials and provide tangible evidence of medieval mining in the close hinterland of Sijilmâsa city.

Geological and Mining Constraints on Historical Mine Production: The Case of Early Medieval Lead-Silver Mining at Melle, France

“…Alternative silver sources also must be considered. Externally, there was abundant opportunity for the Carolingians to obtain silver through trade with their neighbours: many areas controlled by Islamic polities have well-documented Early Medieval silver mining including Spain (Riart, Martínez, and Echevarria, 2007), Morocco (Baron, Souhassou and Fauvelle, 2020), Yemen (Merkel, et al, 2016), probably the broader Arabian Peninsula (Heck, 2010;Morony, 2019), Iran (Kovalev, 2014) and certainly numerous major fields in Central Asia which had prodigious output in various cycles from the 4 th to the 11 th century AD (Morony, 2019;Blanchard, 2001). In at least some of these last-mentioned areas there is emerging evidence for exploitation of very rich "dry silver" ores containing discrete silver minerals or native silver (Merkel, 2021), thus enabling much higher production of silver for equivalent tonnage of ore mined, compared to galena-dominated deposits like Melle.…”

assay and refining of gold in the post-medieval Islamic world: Potential and reality

“…Given the various possible sources of the traces of lead, potentially being associated with the copper or silver, and if from the silver once again being potentially associated with the silver ore or the cupellation processes used to refine it, the silver in the remainder of the jewellery items could represent either the original intrinsic content, separate additions or a mixture of the two. Any added silver is likely to have originated in the Americas, which was the predominant source in the post-medieval world, but more local sources are possible (Baron et al 2020).…”

Recherches archéologiques sur les mines et la métallurgie de l’argent à Imiter (Maroc)

“…De 2011 à 2014, en marge du programme archéologique « Sijilmâsa (Maroc): ville, oasis, carrefour » dévolu à la fouille de la cité islamique de Sijilmâsa 1 , un volet paléométallurgique s'est donné pour objectif d'étudier la production des métaux dans l'environnement de la ville médiévale. Des prospections menées par une équipe pluridisciplinaire ont ainsi été conduites jusqu'à une centaine de kilomètres de rayon autour du site archéologique de Sijilmâsa et ont fait l'objet, le cas échéant, d'analyses géologiques, minéralogiques, géochimiques, et d'opérations archéologiques (Milot et al 2018; Baron et al 2020). L'ambition de ce volet de recherche était double: d'une part documenter la dimension « industrielle » de la relation de Sijilmâsa à son paysage; d'autre part s'émanciper du paradigme historique qui a longtemps indexé le destin de Sijilmâsa (et plus généralement des villes islamiques de la bordure septentrionale du Sahara) aux aléas du commerce de l'or venu des régions ouest-africaines (Devisse 1990).…”