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Sahara

desert on the African continent

7 dated entries naming Sahara, drawn from 7 separate years between 668 CE and 1965 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

Also written as Sahara Desert in the source articles; Wikipedia redirects those to the same subject, so their entries are on this page.

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7th century

  • 668Arab forces conquer the Garamantes in the Sahara desert (Libya).source
  • 700The African slave trade through the Sahara is so extensive that the town of Zawila (Tunisia) is established.source

8th century

  • 757The city of Sijilmasa (modern Morocco) is founded by the Miknasa, a Zenata Berber tribe. They adopt Kharijism-Islam, and establish the Emirate of Sijilmasa in the northern Sahara. It becomes a wealthy trading center as the western end-point of the Trans-Saharan trade.source

11th century

  • 1054The Almoravids retake the trading center of Aoudaghost from the Ghana Empire. Repeated Almoravid incursions, aimed at seizing control of the trans-Saharan gold trade, disrupt Ghana's dominance of the trade routes.source

20th century

  • 1933April 11 – Aviator Bill Lancaster takes off from Lympne in England, in an attempt to make a speed record to the Cape of Good Hope, but vanishes (his body is not found in the Sahara Desert until 1962).source
  • 1960February 13 – Gerboise Bleue: France tests its first atomic bomb, in the Sahara Desert of Algeria.source
  • 1965November 26 – At the Hammaguir launch facility in the Sahara Desert, France launches a Diamant A rocket with its first satellite, Astérix-1 on board, becoming the third country to enter outer space.source

Named in the same entries