Empires of the Plains of West Africa arise

Empires on the plans would rise and fall, but mostly ascend because of the increase in agriculture, iron, religion, and ethnicity. Trading with Europeans helped bring Iron to Africa and the knowledge on how to use iron properly. Western Sudan went through the agricultural revolution because of the introduction of iron tools. The iron tools allowed the people to produce a surplus of food necessary for settlement and building.

With agriculture underway to produce the surplus of food and the settlement of people, was followed with the increase of needs. The need to conduct and continue trading, the environment needed security. So out of these empires, grew boundaries that were ruled by a monarch. The monarch was responsible for overseeing commercial, ethnic, political, and religious preservation and insures the prosperity of the people.

Within these empires, trade could be conducted safely. The regulation of the trade could bring a person economic resource, political power, and riches. Rulers and their elites could retain and purchase goods like cloth, hardware, horses, salt, and books. Some Sudanese rulers adopted Islam while the kings didn’t not adopt Islam, they were allowed to merge together for commercial and political transactions. The King retained control over ivory, gold, and slaves. Not all empires where Islamic states, but Islam in the empires of the plains did become the court religion, this was the result of the relationship between Muslim merchants of the trans-Saharan trade and the ruling African elite with whom the negotiated the commercial transactions with these empires. But, outside the monarch and his elite where the cultivators and herdsman who were isolated in the countryside and villages that went on to worship all the African religious rituals and African gods to ensure individual and social prosperity by following their traditional African religious beliefs.