Mali establishes a sea route

So the the Mansa Abubakari (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Bakr_II) desired to find the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and sailed off. It's unknown where he and his second Atlantic expedition ended up, with theories abound. Rather than debate that, what if the Mansa established a sea route hugging the W/African Coast line directly to Morocco and eventually Iberia. The primary trade good the Mali desired was salt which was mined in the Sahara and is much closer than the salt mines of North Africa/the Mediterranean world but how would this affect trade relations between the Mediterranean world and W/Africa in the coming centuries should a regular oceanic trade route develop from Mali to the Straits of Gibraltar?

His reign was circa the early 1300's (1310s possibly?) which is just shy of a decade or so before gun powder begins to permeate the Muslim world and Medieval Europe, how would things change if the knowledge and technology of how to make these weapons permeated via the sea route? Also naval technology of the era as well to further Mansa Abubakari's and possibly later Mali naval expeditions?

For context: it seems the North African & Arab explorers had attempted sea-route explorations to find the mouth of the Senegal river which they knew as the West Nile around 1100's.
 
The problem with Mali as a naval trading power is that it has no port infrastructure. While theoretically the empire of the Mande people extended through Wolof/present-day Senegal to the Atlantic coast, that area wasn't urbanized and there was no actual port that the people there could use to trade - the main settlement there was Morfil, which was an island city on a river feeding into the Atlantic, but it doesn't seem to have been all that big. Moreover, the traditional route for overland trade between the Sahel and the Maghreb was the overland route through the Sahara, which was fairly reliably controlled by nomadic Berbers and Tuaregs and resulted in gold and slaves traveling north to Sijilmasa and salt traveling south to Aoudaghost and Timbuktu. So long as the trade route overland is working fine, I can't see the Mali Empire rushing to get ships into the water. More challenging is that even building shipyards in Senegal doesn't necessarily help; the gold largely came from the Akan goldfields, which aren't in Senegal, but further south of the Niger.

You could theoretically spark naval trade with Mali by inserting a hostile force in the Sahara that gives merchants an impetus to go around the problem - maybe a resurgence of Kharijite ideology among the nomadic Berbers, or the emergence of a surprisingly strong Tuareg warlord/group that exacts draconian tithes on caravans crossing the desert - but doing a naval tradition as Mali is tougher because of the lack of Atlantic ports.
 
The problem with Mali as a naval trading power is that it has no port infrastructure. While theoretically the empire of the Mande people extended through Wolof/present-day Senegal to the Atlantic coast, that area wasn't urbanized and there was no actual port that the people there could use to trade - the main settlement there was Morfil, which was an island city on a river feeding into the Atlantic, but it doesn't seem to have been all that big. Moreover, the traditional route for overland trade between the Sahel and the Maghreb was the overland route through the Sahara, which was fairly reliably controlled by nomadic Berbers and Tuaregs and resulted in gold and slaves traveling north to Sijilmasa and salt traveling south to Aoudaghost and Timbuktu. So long as the trade route overland is working fine, I can't see the Mali Empire rushing to get ships into the water. More challenging is that even building shipyards in Senegal doesn't necessarily help; the gold largely came from the Akan goldfields, which aren't in Senegal, but further south of the Niger.

You could theoretically spark naval trade with Mali by inserting a hostile force in the Sahara that gives merchants an impetus to go around the problem - maybe a resurgence of Kharijite ideology among the nomadic Berbers, or the emergence of a surprisingly strong Tuareg warlord/group that exacts draconian tithes on caravans crossing the desert - but doing a naval tradition as Mali is tougher because of the lack of Atlantic ports.

Valid points, that being said the goal isn't necessarily to make Mali a naval power. Couldn't a successful navigation from Mali to the straits prompt traders in the straits to explore that route? While there are no geo-political reasons (as you said) to the develop such a route, economic reasons could serve as impetus and we have a successful trip by no other than the Mansa himself showing that such a route is viable/doable. The actual economics of whether such a sea route would be sustainable/profitable to a larger degree than the existing at the time wouldn't be known, but there would be incentive in terms of cutting out the middle men.

On the matter of the Senegal & the gold fields, I'm aware of the gold coming from south of the Niger river, I had included that in the prompt the show that even without economic reasons there was a desire to explore the region and in this scenario we have a King/Emperor of a realm beyond the Senegal river arriving with a fleet in North Africa. Surely this could re-kindle the interest in exploring those realms via routes, possibly a sea one as the King just made a successful one.

If such a route then proved profitable; could we see the development of a port in the region in response? Guiers Lake had/has outflow into the senegal and could possibly serve as a sight of an inland port. Also it seems the region is suitable for sugar cultivation and it could also be introduced into the region as a secondary effect as well.
 
A problem is that the journey from Mali to Gibraltar is quite long, and goes along some very difficult and barren coastline. The problem of it being against the current as well has been mentioned. You can sail out into the Atlantic and take advantage of the winds, but that means navigational challenges. The trip is obviously not impossible, but... it is not a trip for amateurs. By which I mean that its not likely that you can establish a maritime tradition by starting with a for-advanced-players route. I think you'd need Mali to develop maritime traditions organically by starting with less challenging trips and moving upwards.

Now, Mali at the time was probably the richest empire in the world, so it would be possible to just import sailors and shipwrights and throw money at it, but you'd need a good motivation and decades of work.

Maybe if some non-Islamic power grows and takes control of the Saharan overland trade and pilgrimages, but I am not sure who that could be, at this time. Maybe the Kisalian/Kabambians ? I think they were animists.
 
Ah! When nature works against you! I'm guessing it wouldn't matter how close to the coastline the ships clung, these winds would affect them either way?

Would it be possible for the Malians to figure that route themselves or was their shipbuilding technology too primitive to sail into deeper ocean?

I have absolutely no idea, my only knowledge on this topic is that navigating beyond the Bojador became only possible with the development of the volta do mar technique.
 
I have absolutely no idea, my only knowledge on this topic is that navigating beyond the Bojador became only possible with the development of the volta do mar technique.

Hmm.. this is problematic. Assuming Mansa Abubakari reach Bojador itself, this scenario would need luck of someone being near there when he ran aground (provided he survives). I can't find anything on Bojador's history prior to documentation of the Portuguese arrivals so I can't say whether or not the region had any evidence of settlers or prolonged human presence.
 
Would it be possible for the Malians to figure that route themselves or was their shipbuilding technology too primitive to sail into deeper ocean?

I find this characterisation problematic. What ships the Malians had may or may not necessarily have been as large or manoeuvrable as their contemporaries in the Mediterranean, they surely would've been able to navigate the coast line, with political entities which had significant coast lines existed at the time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waalo). The traditional fishing boat of the region is the Pirogue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirogue).

It appears that it wasn't until about the 1400s that boats capable of navigating beyond the continental shelf were developed in the Mediterranean world, the first being the Caravel, which was developed to solve the issue of the cape of Bojador. Prior to this point and even after boats used were primarily coastal boats (more specifically limited to sailing/navigating the continental shelf) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_ships) not designed for the deeper ocean sailing; important examples include the Galley (primarily propulsion/rowing based ship) & the Balinger. Primitive, I believe is far too dismissive of a characterisation.

As to the Malians figuring out the sea route themselves, that's the point of the expedition and it's aftermath. As we've already discussed, it's a question of whether they have the persistence or motivation to keep trying after coming across the obstacle given that they already have a reliable land trade route and may not find anything of value to them. Portugal had geo-political and later economic reasons that pushed it's naval expeditions, Mali on the other hand did not.
 
They could make a coastal route, building outposts across the west coast of North-West Africa to Morocco.

It'd be interesting if the Malians used such a scheme to attack Morocco while the Moroccans lunch their expedition through the Sahara during their war, a pretty funny scenario...
 
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