Ghana Empire (Wagadu)

Origins

Ancient Ghana was a West African state centred in the Sahel north of the upper Niger and Senegal rivers, in what is now southeastern Mauritania and western Mali. It has no connection to the modern Republic of Ghana beyond the name. Its people, mostly Mande-speaking Soninke, called their land Wagadu; "Ghana" appears to come from a royal title meaning king, which Arabic writers applied to the country.

When it began is uncertain. One tradition places its origins as early as the 4th century CE, and World History Encyclopedia suggests the 6th century as possible, but neither date is confirmed. What is documented is that Arabic geographers were writing about it by the 8th century, and by around 800 it was already wealthy and powerful.

Gold, salt and trade

Ghana's wealth rested on its position between the salt and trade goods of the Sahara and North Africa and the gold of the lands to the south. The Metropolitan Museum of Art links the state's rise to the beginnings of the trans-Saharan gold trade, made possible by camel caravans. Soninke rulers kept the location of the Bambuk goldfields hidden from Muslim traders, and the king claimed gold nuggets for himself while gold dust circulated in trade. Goods passing through the kingdom were taxed. By about 1050 Ghana controlled Audaghost, a Berber trading town on the desert edge.

Court and capital

Much of what is known comes from the 11th-century Andalusian geographer al-Bakri. He described a capital divided into a Muslim merchants' town and a royal town some distance away, and a court glittering with gold: gold-embroidered caps, gold-mounted shields and swords, even dogs with gold and silver collars. Muslim merchants served the non-Muslim king as officials and interpreters. Archaeologists tentatively identify the 11th-century capital with Koumbi Saleh in southern Mauritania, though the capital is thought to have moved more than once.

Decline and the Almoravid question

Ghana declined from the later 11th century. Older histories, and Britannica today, say the Almoravids, a militant Muslim Berber movement, seized the capital in 1076 and disrupted the trade on which the kingdom depended. Historians David Conrad and Humphrey Fisher challenged this in 1982, finding no source that unambiguously describes such a conquest; they traced the 1076 date to a single doubtful passage. Pekka Masonen and Fisher later argued the "conquest" became accepted largely through repetition in secondary works. Most accounts agree, however, that drought, internal conflict and shifting trade routes toward new goldfields weakened the state.

By the late 12th century Ghana had lost control of the gold trade. The Sosso (Susu) kingdom took over much of its territory and occupied the capital in the early 1200s. In 1240 Sundiata Keita of Mali took the old capital, and Ghana's remaining lands became part of the Mali Empire.