Caravans were temporary associations of merchants who joined together to make the difficult journey under the leadership of a hired caravan leader using camels rented from the nomadic bedouins who lived in the desert. They often included one thousand to five thousand camels and hundreds of people. Typically, a third of the camels carried food and water for the caravan as a whole.
The success of a caravan depended on the caravan leader, who was typically a desert bedouin. Paid either in cash or as shares of the merchants’ profit, a caravan leader was responsible for navigating the route from watering place to watering place, managing relationships with the desert population–who could quickly turn from service providers to marauders–and supervise the daily work of loading, unloading, and feeding the camels. He had a paid team of laborers, scouts, healers and occasionally a Muslim clergyman to provide services, all generally members of the same bedouin tribe as the leader.
Oases were the critical element. They were resting places where the caravan could find food, water, and fresh camels–the medieval equivalent of the truck stop. Some of the larger oases held regular markets during the caravan season, which typically ran from October to March in order to avoid the worst heat. The failure of a caravan to reach an oasis could mean disaster not only to the caravan but to those who lived at the oasis and depended on the trans-Saharan trade for their survival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz0ZHjnsZDE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kn3JnAtKVU
I can only vaguely remember the movies with the caravan and the Sahara as the setting; that's what excited my fantasies of traveling by caravan across the desert, and of course Ella Fitzgerald's song.
I think my fantasy has faded; it's gotten lost with the shifting sands.