Cowries were shells obtained from the Indian Ocean and imported into the Western Sudan as early as the eleventh century. A large quantity was found among the goods of a caravan lost in the Sahara, discovered in 1960 and dated to the twelfth century. Yet the evidence for their earliest function remains uncertain: al-Bakri did not list cowries among the currencies used for exchange, raising the possibility that they initially circulated as ornaments or charms.

The first explicit mention of cowries as currency came from al-‘Umari, writing in the 1340s, who stated that transactions in the land of Takrur, identified here with Mali, were conducted in cowries. During the following decade, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa observed buying and selling with cowries at Gao. By the first half of the fourteenth century, therefore, cowries had become an established medium of exchange in Mali.

Their adoption was linked to state policy and to the needs of an expanding market economy. Cowries were durable, difficult to counterfeit, and useful for purchases of provisions, while their small units made them suitable as small change. Their value nevertheless fluctuated with supply: one gold dinar bought 40,000 cowries in the Maldive Islands, but only 1,150 in Mali; in early seventeenth-century Timbuktu, the rate was 500 cowries to one dinar.

The circulation of cowries also generated profits for the traders who transported them to Mali. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa visited both their source in the Maldive Islands and their final destination in the capital of Mali, revealing the long-distance commercial chain behind this apparently simple currency. The passage leaves open the precise mechanism by which cowries were introduced, while emphasizing the economic incentives of their importation.