Kingdom of Ghana
Document 1
The city of Ghana consists of two towns situated on a plain. One of these towns, which is
inhabited by Muslims, is large and possesses twelve mosques, in which they assemble for the
Friday prayer. There are salaried imams and muezzins, as well as jurists and scholars. In the
environs are wells with sweet water, from which they drink and with which they grow vegetables.
The king’s town is six miles distant from this one…
Between these two towns are continuous habitations. …In the king’s town, and not far from his
court of justice, is a mosque where the Muslims who arrive at his court pray. Around the king’s
town are domed buildings and groves and thickets where the sorcerers of these people, men in
charge of the religious cult, live. In them too are their idols and the tombs of their kings. These
woods are guarded and none may enter them and know what is there…. The king’s interpreters,
the official in charge of his treasury and the majority of his ministers are Muslims. Among the
people who follow the king’s religion only he and his heir apparent (who is the son of his sister)
may wear sewn clothes. All other people wear robes of cotton, silk, or brocade, according o their
means. All of them shave their beards, and women shave their heads. The king adorns himself
like a woman (wearing necklaces) round his neck and (bracelets) on his forearms, and he puts on
a high cap decorated with gold and wrapped in a turban of fine cotton. He sits in audience or to
hear grievances against officials in a domed pavilion around which stand ten horses covered with
gold-embroidered materials. Behind the king stand ten pages holding shields and swords
decorated with gold, and on his right are the sons of the (vassel) kings of his country wearing
splendid garments and their hair plaited with gold. The governor of the city sits on the ground
before the king and around him are ministers seated likewise. At the door of the pavilion are dogs
of excellent pedigree who hardly ever leave the place where the king is, guarding him. Round
their necks they wear collars of gold and silver studded with a number of balls of the same
metals. The audience is announced by the beating of a drum which they call duba made from a
long hollow log. When the people who profess the same
religion as the king approach him they fall on their knees and sprinkle dust on their head, for this
is their way of greeting him. As for the Muslims, they greet him only by clapping their hands….
Their religion is paganism and the worship of idols….
On every donkey-load of salt when it is brought into the country their king levies one golden dinar
and two dinars when it is sent out. … The best gold is found in his land comes from the town of
Ghiyaru, which is eighteen days’ traveling distance from the king’s town over a country inhabited
by tribes of the Sudan whose dwellings are continuous…
The king of Ghana when he calls up his army, can put 200,000 men into the field, more than
40,000 of them archers.
From a description written by al-Bakri, a member of a prominent Spanish Arab family who lived during the 11th century. Retrieved from Boston
University School of Global Studies, www.bu.edu
Document 2
Gold Trade and the Kingdom of Ancient Ghana
Around the fifth century, thanks to the availability of the camel, Berber-speaking people began
crossing the Sahara Desert. From the eighth century onward, annual trade caravans followed
routes later described by Arabic authors with minute attention to detail. Gold, sought from the
western and central Sudan, was the main commodity of the trans -Saharan trade. The traffic in
gold was spurred by the demand for and supply of coinage. The rise of the Soninke empire of Ghana
appears to be related to the beginnings of the trans-Saharan gold trade in the fifth century.
From the seventh to the eleventh century, trans -Saharan trade linked the Mediterranean economies
that demanded gold—and could supply salt—to the sub-Saharan economies, where gold was
abundant. In the eighth and ninth centuries, Arab merchan ts operating in southern Moroccan
towns such as Sijilmasa bought gold from the Berbers, and financed more caravans. These
commercial transactions encouraged further conversion of the Berbers to Islam. Increased demand for
gold in the North Islamic states, which sought the raw metal for minting, prompted scholarly attention to Mali
and Ghana, the latter referred to as the “Land of Gold.” The Soninke managed to keep the source of their gold
secret from Muslim traders. Yet gold production and trade were important activities that undoubtedly
mobilized hundreds of thousands of African people.
By 1050 A.D., Ghana was strong enough to assume control of the Islamic Berber town of
Audaghost. By the end of the twelfth century, however, Ghana had lost its domination o f the
western Sudan gold trade. Trans-Saharan routes began to bypass Audaghost, expanding instead
toward the newly opened Bure goldfield. Soso, the southern chiefdom of the Soninke, gained
control of Ghana as well as the Malinke, the latter eventually libe rated by Sundiata Keita, who
founded the Mali empire. Mali rulers did not encourage gold producers to convert to Islam, since
prospecting and production of the metal traditionally depended on a number of beliefs and magical practices
that were alien to Islam. In the fourteenth century, cowrie shells were introduced from the eastern coast as
local currency, but gold and salt remained the principal mediums of long-distance trade.
The flow of sub-Saharan gold to the northeast probably occurred in a steady but small stream.
Mansa Musa’s arrival in Cairo carrying a ton of the metal (1324 –25) caused the market in gold to
crash, suggesting that the average supply was not as great. Undoubtedly, some of this African
gold was also used in Western gold coins. African gold was indeed so famous worldwide that a
Spanish map of 1375 represents the king of Mali holding a gold nugget. Gold remained the principal
product in the trans-Saharan trade, followed by kola nuts and slaves. The Moroccan scholar Leo Africanus,
who visited Songhai in 1510 and 1513, observed that the governor of Timbuktu owned many articles of gold,
and that the coin of Timbuktu was made of gold without any stamp or superscription.
Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “T he Trans-Saharan Gold Trade (Seventh –Fourteenth Centuries).”
In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 –.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gold/hd_gold.htm (October 2000)
Document 3
Thanks to the introduction of the camel into the Sahara and its increasing availability and use
in Roman times in the first centuries CE, trans-Saharan trade routes (north-south) became
feasible, allowing African societies in the Sahel access to the markets of the Mediterranean
Sea. As these routes grew more profitable, cities such as Djenne and Gao arose, and in time
more complex and powerful territorial states appeared, with Ghana being the first of them.
The people who formed the Ghana kingdom were the Soninke, a subgroup of the Mandespeaking family. They called their kingdom Wagadu, but we know it as Ghana, the name the
Arabs later gave it. The kingdom’s golden age began around 800 CE and lasted for nearly
three centuries. Ghana’s capital changed several times but the last and most famous of them
was Kumbi (or Koumbi Saleh), founded in the 4th century CE. It became the
biggest city south of the Sahara, with some 15,000 inhabitants at its peak.
The trading activities that constituted the backbone of Ghana’s economy were the sale
of gold, kola nuts (later to be the “secret ingredient” of Coca-Cola), and ivory to cities along
the Mediterranean, in exchange for salt. The Soninke were intermediaries, as they did not
control the sources of most of these products, which came from further south, while the
actual transport of the goods to the north was completed by nomadic, camel-riding Berbers.
Ghana’s prosperity relied heavily on the Berber caravans, which were organized independently
by Berber chiefs and merchants: they were the only link to the outside world. This relationship
was tenuous, though, as the Berbers usually complimented their income with raids on civilized
lands. Only the mutual interest in trade profit kept the relationship stable, and indeed it
worked for centuries.
However, as Ghana grew richer and expanded its territorial base, tensions with various tribes
of Berber merchants grew as well. The Berbers resented the increasing power of trading
cities, dominated by the Soninke. With the conquest by Ghana of the independent and
important city-state of Audaghost, relations became much more hostile. At the dawn of the
11th century, the Berbers, who used to be the masters of Audaghost’s commerce, repeatedly
attempted to free the city from Ghana’s control.
In the mid-11th century CE, the Almoravid dynasty of Morroco began to attract large numbers
of Berbers, thus providing a more solid form of organization and unity to the otherwise
conflicting Berber clans. The Almoravids became powerful enough to launch conquest
campaigns abroad. To the north they invaded Spain (Al-Andalus), defeating the Caliphate of
Córdoba. To the south, the Almoravids brought havoc to Ghana, even conquering the capital
city, Kumbi, in 1076 CE. Although Ghana was eventually able to expel the invaders, the
damage was staggering. Ghana's networks of trade were significantly and negatively affected
(Audaghost quickly lost all importance, for example), but also the introduction of the Berbers
pasturing flocks in what used to be agricultural land initiated a terrible process of
desertification.
Ghana would not recover its former glory and the following decades saw further decline as
subject peoples broke free from the kingdom’s control. In 1203 CE, Kumbi was taken by one
of their former subject peoples: the Susu. In 1240 CE, the kingdom collapsed when the Kumbi
was devastated yet again and the heart of Ghana was annexed by the rising Empire of Mali.
From an article titled “Ghana” by Rodrigo Quijada Plubins, published in the Ancient History Encyclopedia (www.ancient.eu) on March 11, 2013.
Document 4
In the seventh and eighth centuries C.E. Islam began to spread across Northern Africa.
The religion reached the Kingdom of Ghana in the ninth and tenth centuries when Saharan traders
introduced their new religion to the region. The royal court of Ghana, however, did not convert to
Islam and retained traditional religious practices throughout the city. Recognizing the importance
of placating the Muslim Saharan traders, the King of Ghana allowed them to engage in trade and
create their own city ten kilometers from the emperor's town.
The empire's capital was built at Kumbi Saleh on the edge of the Sahara in a region called
the Sahel. The capital was formed from two distinct cities that were originally situated six miles
apart. As populations increased, the two cities merged into one. While technically merged into one
single city, both sides of the city retained a distinct character. One half of the city, called the El
Ghaba section, was considered the spiritual center of the Kingdom of Ghana. It was home to the
royal palace, as well as other wealthy residents of the town. Most homes in the El Ghaba section
were built from wood and stone, while poorer sections of the town contained houses made of
wood and clay. Flanked on all sides by a stone wall, the El Ghaba side of town also contained a
sacred grove of trees that was used in religious ceremonies. The other section of the town, whose
name has not been preserved in historical record, was considered a trading center. It functioned
as the business district of the town and was inhabited almost entirely
by Arab and Berber merchants. Due to the fact that Islam was the prominent religion on this side
of the town, more than a dozen mosques were located within the trading center. At its height
Kumbi Saleh boasted a population of over 30,000 inhabitants.
The Kingdom of Ghana was able to retain its position in Western Africa by collecting tribute and
taxes from its citizens. There were two distinct types of taxes that were paid the royal treasury:
import and export tax and production tax. The import and export tax was paid by traders for the
right to bring commodities in or out of Kumbi Saleh. The second tax, the production tax, was
applied to the production of gold.
"Kingdom of Ghana." New World Encyclopedia, published 19 Jun 2014, www.newworldencyclopedia.org
Document 5
Document 6
Gold sun mask from the kingdom of Ghana