Taghaza

Taghaza () or Teghaza is an abandoned salt-mining centre located in a salt pan in the desert region of northern Mali. It was an important source of rock salt for West Africa up to the end of the 16th century when it was abandoned and replaced by the salt-pan at Taoudenni which lies to the southeast. Salt from the Taghaza mines formed an important part of the long distance trans-Saharan trade. The salt pan is located south of Sijilmasa (in Morocco), north-northwest of Timbuktu (in Mali) and north-northeast of Oualata (in Mauritania).

==Early Arabic sources== thumb|right|305px|Trade routes of the Western Sahara Desert c. 1000-1500. Goldfields are indicated by light brown shading: Bambuk, Bure, Lobi, and Akan. The Taghaza mines are first mentioned by name (as Taghara) in around 1275 by the geographer al Qazwini who spent most of his life in Iraq but obtained information from a traveller who had visited the Sudan. He wrote that the town was situated south of the Maghreb near the ocean and that the ramparts, walls and roofs of the buildings were made of salt which was mined by slaves of the Masufa, a Berber tribe, and exported to the Sudan by a caravan that came once a year. A similar description had been given earlier by Al-Bakri in 1068 for the salt mines at a place that he called Tantatal, situated twenty days from Sijilmasa. It is possible these were the same mines.