The ICMA is sponsoring the 2026 Keynote at the Canadian Conference of Medieval Art Historians (CCMAH)
Sarah Guérin
‘Gold of the Blacks’: Aureate Ambitions and the Eighth Crusade
Friday 27 March 2026 at 5:15pm
Art Gallery of Ontario
Toronto, Canada
The Eighth Crusade of 1270 still puzzles historians. Instead of Jerusalem, vulnerable Acre, or even Mamluk Egypt, the troupes of Louis IX quixotically headed for Hafsid Tunisia, where the saintly king died of dysentery on African soil. I argue that Louis’s ambitions were fuelled by the desire to control Tunis as an outlet of gold coming across the Sahara from West Africa, gold which was transforming the economy, arts, and material culture of Europe at this time. This talk will present evidence of the French kings and princes' knowledge that the gold obtained in Tunis came indeed from south of the Sahara, from a region called “The Land of the Blacks,” Bilad al-Sudan in the Arabic sources. Furthermore, the political jostling that led up to the 1270 Crusade included not only Louis IX, Charles of Anjou, and Hafsid emir al-Mustanstir, but also the head of an Ayyubid force roaming the Sahara in search of gold, Qarâqush, and the second-generation black king of Kanem, whose territories were situated on the shores of Lake Chad, named in the emic sources as Mai Dunama Dabbalemi. I argue that the struggle to control West African gold bullion thus occupied rulers from across Afro-Eurasia in the mid-thirteenth century.
Registration for the conference can be found by clicking HERE.