| Africa Antiqua | |
| 1 | Arid Nurse of Lions | 1 |
| 2 | Carbuncles and Gold | 13 |
| 3 | Romans and Garamantes | 28 |
| Sahara and Sudan | |
| 4 | The Tuareg and Other Peoples of the Sahara | 45 |
| 5 | Peoples of the Sudan | 50 |
| 6 | The Arabs | 56 |
| Medieval Empires | |
| 7 | The Almoravids | 67 |
| 8 | The Gold of Ghana | 79 |
| 9 | Mansa Musa of Mali | 85 |
| 10 | Ibn Battuta: a Fourteenth Century Traveller in the Sudan | 91 |
| The Golden Trade | |
| 11 | The Crescent and the Cross | 98 |
| 12 | The Quest for Gold | 108 |
| 13 | The Discovery of Guinea | 112 |
| 14 | Wangara | 119 |
| The Rise and Fall of the Songhai Empire | |
| 15 | The Songhai | 132 |
| 16 | Leo Africanus: an Early Sixteenth-Century Traveller in the Sudan | 142 |
| 17 | Mulai Ahmad al-Mansur | 154 |
| 18 | Taghaza | 160 |
| 19 | The Desert Army | 164 |
| 20 | The Invasion of the Sudan | 173 |
| 21 | The Fall of Songhai | 183 |
| 22 | Adh-Dhahabi | 195 |
| Nineteenth-Century Revolutions | |
| 23 | The European Penetration of the Interior | 207 |
| 24 | Bornu, Hausa, and the Fulani Empire of Sokoto | 223 |
| 25 | The Last of the Caravans | 236 |
| References | 252 |
| Select Bibliography | 269 |
| Bibliographical Essay | 273 |
| Index | 279 |