When you hear the word "Ghana," your first
thought is likely to be the modern-day country of that name. However, when the Republic
of Ghana adopted that name in 1957 upon its declaration of independence from Great Britain,
it wasn't drawing from its own history; rather, the representatives of the three constituent
colonies which formed the nation, each with their own distinct ethnic groups, cultures, and
histories, looked back to the distant past for a name they could all unite under. This was the
name of the Ghana Empire, a great West African Empire with origins in antiquity. But what
do we know about this empire? In this video, we'll explore the history of the Empire of Ghana,
or as they would have called themselves, Wagadu. The Empire of Wagadu, located mostly in what is now Western
Mali and Southeastern Mauritania, is possibly the earliest West African empire we
know by name, most likely founded in the third or fourth century CE. At the peak of its strength
from the ninth to eleventh centuries CE, Wagadu held authority from the lower Senegal river in the
west to the bend of the Niger River in the east, and served as a major trading power in the
surrounding region. There's a lot we don't know for sure about Wagadu, as they left
no written records of their own. However, oral traditions from the surrounding
regions, archaeology, and sources written by Arab contemporaries, who often interacted
with Wagadu commercially or diplomatically, all give us glimpses into this powerful state.
One of the royal titles of the Emperor of Wagadu was "Ghana," probably meaning "war king." In
Arab sources, states were commonly referred to either by the name of their capital, the name
of their people, or the name of their ruler, and in this case, it was the latter, hence why
many people now know Wagadu as "the Ghana Empire.” Wagadu was situated within a region called
the Sahel, a transitional zone between the vast desert of the Sahara and the forest zone
of the West African Coast. The Sahel isn't too shabby of a spot to set up shop; consisting
mostly of savannah, with more trees as you get further south and fewer as you go north, this
area is fairly well suited for rearing grazing livestock like cattle and goats. Additionally, the
area is crossed by several major rivers and many smaller tributaries, allowing for irrigation,
fishing, and riverine navigation. Today much of Wagadu's territory lies within the Sahara due
to the expansion of the desert, but this is only because the desert has been gradually growing for
the past few thousand years. At the time of the empire there were more inland waterways stretching
through this area and greener conditions. These conditions had allowed the Western Sahel to
develop agriculture independently by no later than 3,500 BCE, possibly closer to 6,000 BCE
(D'Andrea and Casey 2002, 160). The area also had a longstanding pastoralist tradition, with
complex cattle-rearing cultures present from about 4,000 BCE, and an urban tradition going back
to the Tichitt Culture of 2200 BCE. Unfortunately, we don't know much about this period due to
a combination of he lack of writing in West Africa or the surrounding areas at the time and
relatively limited archaeological attention, but that background provides context
for the eventual emergence of Wagadu. We don't know exactly when Wagadu was founded.
It's possible that it was founded close to the time it was first recorded in Arabic sources
in 773 CE, but most scholars place the date of founding between 200 and 500 CE, based on a
combination of archaeological data and the Arab claim that 22 Kings ruled over the Empire prior
to the foundations of Islam. The reasons for Wagadu's expansion lay in new trade connections
which were beginning to develop around 300 CE, enabled by the recent introduction of camels to
the Sahara (McDougall 2019). Wagadu's location in the Sahel put in in a perfect position to profit
off trade; see, the desert in the north was home to salt flats, as well as to caravans plugged into
broader trade routes linking North Africa up to West Asia, Europe, and indirectly to more distant
regions. In the south, meanwhile, you had several major sources of gold in the vaguely defined area
of “Wangara.” For this gold to get into the Saharan trade networks, it needed to be carried
several hundred kilometers by donkey to Wagadu, where it could then be traded for salt - a vital
resource not only for flavoring and preserving food, but for human survival. The gold miners
wanted that salt, and the caravans wanted gold; Wagadu used its powerful military to expand
across a large stretch of the intermediary region, allowing them to monopolize the trade between
them. With this, they grew incredibly wealthy off of tariffs and purchases made by travelling
merchants as they stopped in to participate in the salt-gold trade, as well as to trade
for other goods like silk, beads, ivory, animal hides, copper, and enslaved people (Ehret
2002, 309-310). Goods, or at least salt and gold, were taxed both when entering the empire and when
leaving it, so the king profited off of visiting merchants whether they came to buy or sell. The
King also became wealthy off of local gold mining; while miners were able to keep the gold dust
they retrieved, any nuggets were turned over to the king, whose personal fortunes grew
vast through this practice. By around 800, Arab sources begin to refer to Wagadu as "the land
of gold," and in 977 the Arab writer ibn Hawqal wrote that the King of Wagadu was "the richest on
the Earth because of his gold." (Mauny 1954, 201) Our understanding of how Wagadu was governed is
fairly vague, but the Arabic sources do give us some hints. Writing in 889 or 890, al-Ya'qubi
stated that the emperor was "very powerful," and that "under his authority are a number of
kings," telling us that the Empire most likely included many vassal states. Al-Bakri gives us
further details when describing the Ghana's court: "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 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 that hardly ever leave the place where
the king is, guarding him. Around their necks they wear collars of gold and silver studded
with a number of balls of the same metals." In this quote, we can perhaps see how
the Ghana kept his vassals in-line; the presence of the sons of lesser kings resembles
practices seen in states such as the Roman, Inca, and Ottoman Empires, where the rulers of conquered
people were often made to send their sons to the capital so that they could either be used as
leverage to ensure compliance, or raised to be useful puppets to the Empire. In Wagadu's case,
it was most likely the former, as the Empire and presumably many of its neighbors operated on
system of matrilineal patriarchy, where rather than kings being succeeded by their own sons, they
would be succeeded by the sons of their sisters. Al-Bakri tells us that the capital of Wagadu was
actually made up of two large towns six miles apart from each other, connected by a continuously
inhabited area. One of these towns was inhabited by Muslims, and was described as being large and
possessing 12 mosques, as well as having salaried imams, muezzins, jurists, and scholars. He labels
the other town as "the king's town" and gives its name as "Al-Ghaba," meaning "the forest" in
Arabic. He states that this town contained one mosque for the Muslims arriving at the king's
court to pray at, as well as many domed buildings and enclosed groves with religious significance,
in which the king's prisons were also contained. Based on later sources, it is generally believed
that the capital of Ghana was the city of Koumbi Saleh - this is never directly stated in any
of our sources, but can be pieced together from a few bits of evidence. The 17th-19th century
Tarikh al-fattash claims that the Mali Empire was preceded by the "Kayamaga Dynasty," ruling
from "Koumbi." "Kayamaga" sounds an awful lot like "Kaya Maghan," meaning "Lord of Gold,"
another known title for kings of Wagadu. Another 17th-century text, the Tarikh al-Sudan, makes a
similar claim, but refers to the capital of the "Qayamagha" dynasty as "the city of Ghana," a
term frequently used for the capital of Wagadu in earlier sources as well. Taken together, these
make it seem awfully probable that these sources are referring to the Wagadu Empire, and that
the city of Ghana and Koumbi were therefore one and the same. However, it isn't conclusive,
and some scholars question this identification; the Bambara Epic of Sumanguru Kante identifies
Koumbi and Wagadu as two different entities, and as of yet, we haven't found any sites matching
descriptions of the King's Town of Al-Ghaba, with its many burial mounds and domed buildings.
Additionally, some of the Arab accounts give contradictory information about the capital
city; for example, in the 12th century al-Idrisi described the capital of Wagadu as being
positioned on a riverbank, on a hill that would become an island when the river flooded.
This doesn't remotely match with the details of Koumbi Saleh, but it's possible that al-Idrisi
was presenting his own assumptions as fact, mixing up the capital of Wagadu with some other city, or
that by his time the capital had been moved. This latter possibility is supported by another of
al-Idrisi's claims, that the royal palace was built in 1116 or 1117 CE. With this in mind,
we can say that Wagadu's capital may not have always been Koumbi Saleh, but that Koumbi Saleh
is a decent candidate for one capital of Wagadu. Several archaeological digs have been performed at
Koumbi Saleh, and while nothing has been found to conclusively identify it as the capital of Wagadu,
certain details certainly line up with Arab accounts. Carbon dating suggests that the town
was occupied from the 9th to the 14th centuries, and while that range is a bit late for Wagadu
as a whole, it makes sense for the Muslim town. Archaeologists have yet to find any sites that can
be identified with Al-Ghaba, so if Koumbi Saleh was part of the Capital, it makes sense that
it would be the Muslim section specifically. Al-Bakri described the capital as being located on
a plain, which more or less matches Koumbi Saleh; the main section of the town is slightly elevated,
but overall, the area is quite flat. In contrast to the territory a bit further south, this part
of the Sahel has local stone deposits, so rather than the mudbrick architecture characteristic
of Mali and Songhai, in the upper section of Koumbi the houses were mostly made of stones bound
together with adobe. This lines up with al-Bakri's description of the houses in this area being
made of stone. Based on the amount of debris, it's likely that some of these buildings had
multiple stories, though their rooms were fairly narrow. The city was quite dense, with
only narrow streets separating most buildings, except for a wide avenue running east to
west through the center of town. A large mosque has been found in a central position in
this avenue, while the western end of the main avenue opens up into an area believed to have
served as a marketplace. The southwest seems to have been largely reserved for more temporary
structures, with only a few stone buildings. The upper section of the city was roughly 700
by 700 meters, while the lower section in the southwest was roughly 500 by 700 meters. It's been
estimated that the town housed about 15-20,000 people, a very large population for a Saharan
town, though given the wetter conditions of the time the many wells of the area were apparently
enough to supply them. Wells aren't exactly the most unusual characteristic, but I will note
that al-Bakri drew specific attention to the wells of the Muslim town of the capital, which he
said provided "sweet water." Two large cemeteries have been found outside of the city, and there's
one prominent monumental tomb with large pillars, which contains three coffins made of shale
slabs, all unfortunately broken into prior to excavations. This tomb closely resembles
certain Amazigh tombs from the Northern Sahara, which makes a lot of sense if we assume
that many of the Muslims who settled in this region would have come across the
Sahara with trade caravans. However, it also bares resemblance to tumuli tombs al-Bakri
described the kings of Wagadu being buried in, pointing to a blend of local and foreign
influences in the tomb's construction. Many stone plaques bearing Quranic inscriptions
have also been found at the site, attesting to the Islamic influence on this town, though these
artifacts may date to after the time of Wagadu. The religious makeup of Wagadu changed
over time. In our earliest sources, Wagadu was unsurprisingly associated with
a local form of paganism, seemingly with animist elements. We might know a little bit
about the mythology of this religion based on later Soninke oral traditions. According
to one version of one of these narratives, the prosperity of Wagadu was granted by
the mystical, seven-headed serpent Bida, who would bring agricultural abundance and cause
it to rain gold nuggets in exchange for the annual sacrifice of a young girl. One year, the girl
chosen for sacrifice was rescued by her fiancé, who slew the serpent. Before he died, the serpent
cursed the land, bringing about the downfall of Wagadu. It's possible that this myth could in
some way reflect religious beliefs in Wagadu, as Arab accounts report the worship of mystical
snakes in a nearby society. Serpent worship also appears in several native religions from farther
south, and while we can't assume any connection, it's not out of the question that the worship of
snakes could be a feature of ancestral Niger-Congo religion, ancestral to the religions of both the
forest Kingdoms and Wagadu. The motif of a giant serpent which demands sacrifice being slain also
appears as a possible allegory for the conversion of a society to Islam in a Hausa founding legend,
and something similar could be going on here, considering the common association between
Wagadu's conversion to Islam and its fall, which we'll talk about more later. This is all
entirely speculative, though; we have no idea how recently this story was composed, or whether
it drew at all from classical Soninke culture. Most of what we can confidently say
about Wagadu's original religion is therefore confined to practices,
rather than beliefs. Several Arab sources make reference to idol worship,
so chances are that the people of Wagadu represented gods or spirits in sculptures or
carvings. Al-Bakri further tells us that,
"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…"
Al-Bakri also provides some further
information on royal burial practices:
"When their king dies they construct over the
place where his tomb will be an enormous dome of saj wood. Then they bring him on a bed
covered with a few carpets and cushions and place him beside the dome. At his side they
place his ornaments, his weapons, and the vessels from which he used to eat and drink, filled with
various kinds of food and beverages. They place there too the men who used to serve his meals.
They close the door of the dome and cover it with mats and furnishings. Then the people assemble,
who heap earth upon it until if becomes like a big hillock and dig a ditch around it until
the mound can be reached only at one place." Christopher Ehret argues that, while much of
Wagadu's culture was Niger-Congo in origin and connected to practices from further
south, the practice of burying attendants with the king was part of a Sudanic
sacral tradition, likely introduced into Wagadu's culture through contact with
the Songhai people of Gao (Ehret 310-311). By the time of al-Bakri's writings around 1068,
Wagadu also had a prominent Muslim population. In addition to the previously discussed subdivision
of the capital dedicated entirely to Muslim inhabitants, al-Bakri tells us that the king's
interpreters, the official in charge of his treasury, and the majority of his ministers
were all Muslim. We also see the application of different expectations based on religion:
while among followers of the king's religion only the king and his heir were allowed to wear
sewn clothes, this rule did not apply to Muslims, and followers of the king's religion knelt
down and sprinkled dust on their heads when coming before the king, where Muslims
simply greeted him by clapping their hands. Al-Bakri's mention of the large number of Muslims
among the king's officials serves to illustrate the increasing influence of Muslims in
the royal court of 11th century Wagadu, and shortly after al-Bakri's time, the Ghana
himself would convert to Islam. Writing in 1154, al-Idrisi regarded the country as Islamic,
although we can assume there was still some pagan presence. Al-Zuhri also regarded Ghana as
a Muslim country around the same time, stating: "They turned Muslim in the days of Lamtuna and
became good Muslims. Today they are Muslims and have scholars, lawyers, and Quran readers, and
have become pre-eminent in these fields. Some of their chief leaders have come to Al-Andalus. They
have traveled to Mecca and made the pilgrimage and visited the prophet's tomb and returned to
their land to spend large sums on the Jihad." It's most probable that the growing prominence
of Islam in Wagadu's society was largely a result of their trading connections across
the Sahara, as well as to surrounding Sahelian states with large Muslim presences, such as the
kingdom of Takrur in modern Senegal, a possible vassal state of Wagadu which had converted to
Islam in the 1030s, and the kingdom of Kawkaw, a neighboring power seated in what would become
Gao. Connections to Islamic trading partners would have brought Muslim migrants and ideas
into Wagadu from as early as the 8th century, with various people within the empire embracing
the faith either due to genuine belief or in the hopes of securing better trading relationships.
However, there's one more factor that is often associated with the conversion of Wagadu
to Islam, as well as to the empire's fall. Around the 1030s, a new religious movement
emerged among the Amazigh peoples of the Western Maghreb. These were the Almoravids,
who held to a strict form of Islam. After winning over the Sanhaja Amazigh in the
1050s, they formed an Almoravid Dynasty, and launched campaigns to weed out the more lax
forms of Islam they saw around them. They captured the major trading city of Awdaghust, which had
long had close relations with Wagadu, in 1055, placing their southern border up against Wagadu.
Additionally, they formed an alliance with the Kingdom of Takrur, whose king was sympathetic
to their strict interpretation of Islam. According to Arab historical accounts, the
Almoravids managed to conquer Wagadu's capital in 1076 after a decade long struggle. This
conquest was credited with sending Wagadu into a decline which would end with its eventual
conquest by other West African powers. However, some scholars have argued that it's a
mistake to take this narrative at face value; in their 1982 article "The Conquest that
Never Was," David Conrad and Humphrey Fisher argue that no Arabic sources unambiguously
and reliably detail a conquest of Wagadu, instead largely providing vague or questionable
accounts. As they point out, most Arab sources which reference an Almoravid conquest were written
centuries after the fact. The primary account of the supposed conquest comes from al-Zuhri,
writing in the mid-12th century, about 80 years after the period in question, and in addition
to getting some details wrong - flipping two digits of the date and possibly misidentifying
the Almoravid leader's tribe of origin, for example - he actually never explicitly mentions a
conquest. Speaking of Wagadu, al-Zuhri stated,
"[…] The people of this country
professed paganism until the year 469/1076-7 when Yahya bin Abu Bakr the
amir of Masufa made his appearance."
No mention of an actual conquest in this early
account, just an "appearance." Later al-Zuhri gives some more details about the presence
of Almoravids in the territory of Wagadu, but the terms he uses can be interpreted in
contradictory ways, either as the Almoravids ruling over Wagadu or being subservient to it.
The first explicit mention of a conquest doesn't come until al-Maqrizi, writing in the late-14th to
early-15th century. Conrad and Fisher also point out that, despite later Arab authors pointing to
the Almoravid invasion as sparking a major decline in Wagadu's prosperity, in the work of al-Idrisi,
no indication is presented that the Wagadu of his time had declined since the time of al-Bakri;
indeed, he noted the capital city as the most prosperous in the Sahel. Al-Zuhri also wrote that
Wagadu called on the Almoravids for military aid against their rivals in Tadimakka, which sounds
a lot more like Wagadu was an independent ally of the Almoravids, rather than a subject state.
Along with these textual points, other scholars have pointed to a lack of archaeological evidence
of any major violence or rupture in Koumbi Saleh at the supposed time of the conquest,
casting further doubt on its historicity. However, other scholars such as Sheryl
Berkhalter have pushed back against these arguments with their own textual analysis,
and as we've already discussed, Koumbi Saleh may not even have been the capital of Wagadu,
so the lack of signs of conquest there doesn't necessarily prove anything. Amira Bennison has
argued that we simply don’t have enough evidence to say for certain what happened. Overall then,
we can certainly not rule out the possibility of an Almoravid conquest of Wagadu, but we also
probably shouldn't accept it as established fact. It may instead be the case that the Almoravids
influenced Wagadu religiously, but not militarily, perhaps motivating the conversion of the king
to Islam, but not necessarily subordinating him. Given the fact that, as we've discussed,
Wagadu already had a strong Islamic presence in both the general population and the government,
an Almoravid invasion is certainly not necessary for explaining how the Empire became Islamic.
Add to this the fact that al-Zuhri claimed that Tadimakka “turned Muslim” after their conflict
against Wagadu and their Almoravid allies, despite the fact that they’d already been Muslim
prior, and it doesn’t seem like too much of a leap to suggest that “becoming Muslim” therefore refers
to an adoption of Almoravid doctrine in both cases. Additionally, we can't uncritically accept
that Almoravid influence, military or otherwise, resulted in a decline of Wagadu, as this
supposed decline was only noted well after 1076. Regardless of whether or not it had anything to
do with the Almoravids, Wagadu certainly did begin waning in power after that period. Aside from
potential conflict with Amazigh states to the north, Wagadu experienced environmental
issues as the Sahara continued to dry, resulting in less water for crops, livestock,
and people. It's likely that Wagadu's core territories experienced marked population
decline as people resettled further south, and with a declining population, the Empire
lost its hold on outlying territories. In the eleventh century, the Kingdom of Sosso
began rising to prominence to Wagadu's south. In addition to controlling many of the major
gold mines of this area, Sosso's lands included major iron producing areas, and a diverse range of
environments including Sahelian woodland savanna, mountainous territory with pastures and farmland,
and rainforest lands in the south. This diversity put Sosso in a strong economic position, bolstered
by the Kingdom's reputation for producing fine cotton cloth. Being further south, Sosso was
unaffected by the desertification impacting Wagadu, and with its advantageous economic
position, Sosso seemingly rose to take Wagadu's place as the strongest power of the western Sahel
from the 12th century. At its height, the Sosso Empire had conquered much of Wagadu's territory,
seemingly reducing the Ghana to vassalage based on the writings of ibn Khaldun and Malian oral
history. According to the Epic of Sunjata, a semi-mythical oral narrative about the founding of
the Mali Empire, Sosso would be defeated by Malian forces sometime in the early-mid 13th century.
The Ghana would for a time be a subordinate king within the Mali Empire, before disappearing from
records. With this, the Wagadu Empire was well and truly gone, replaced by its better-known
successor, the Empire of Mali (Ehret 324). There's still much we don't know about
Wagadu. Some things have yet to be uncovered, and others will simply never be known. However,
what we do know makes Wagadu a fascinating state with massive significance to the history of
West Africa. It was the first known Empire to take advantage of a position in the Western Sahel
to grow prosperous off of the salt-gold trade, but not the last, with the empires of Sosso, Mali,
and Songhai each in turn following the same path. Mali is among Africa's best known empires in large
part due to the vast wealth of their kings, but those kings gained their wealth by following the
playbook of Wagadu's kings, the "Lords of Gold." With Wagadu's power, antiquity, and relevance to
African history as a whole, it's no surprise that in 1957 the former Gold Coast colonies would
choose to unite under the name of "Ghana." Thank you for watching everybody! If you
enjoyed the video, please consider sharing it around so that more people can learn
about this fascinating empire. If you want to see some more African history from me,
consider checking out my video on the Kingdom of Benin next. And don't forget to check out
the rest of the Untold Black History playlist, linked below. I've been Soma,
and I'll see you next time!
