Ghana Empire (Wagadu): West Africa's First Great Gold Empire

The Ghana Empire, known to its Soninke founders as Wagadu, was the first great state of the West African Sahel known from written records. From roughly the 8th to the 11th century its kings controlled the flow of gold from the forests and river valleys of West Africa to the caravans that crossed the Sahara, and Arab geographers called it the land of gold. It lay far from the modern country of Ghana, which borrowed its name in 1957 as a symbol of African achievement.

Name and location

The people who built the empire were the Soninke, speakers of a Mande language who still live in Mali, Mauritania and Senegal. They called their country Wagadu. The word Ghana was a title of the ruler, often interpreted as meaning war chief, and Arab writers used it for the kingdom as a whole.

The heart of the empire lay in the Sahel, the belt of dry grassland south of the Sahara, between the upper Senegal and middle Niger rivers. This is now south-eastern Mauritania and western Mali. At its height Ghana’s influence stretched from the Senegal River in the west towards the Niger bend in the east, with tributary chiefdoms on its edges.

Origins

When Ghana began is uncertain. Soninke oral tradition traces the kingdom to an ancestor named Dinga and tells of a long line of kings before the coming of Islam. Some later chronicles from Timbuktu claim the kingdom had dozens of kings before the Islamic era, but these figures cannot be checked.

Archaeology shows that settled farming communities and towns had developed in the region long before Arab writers mentioned it. Sites such as Dhar Tichitt in Mauritania had stone-built villages by the 2nd millennium BC, and Jenne-Jeno on the Niger was a town by the early centuries AD. The rise of camel caravans across the Sahara from the 8th century gave a Sahelian state that controlled the gold supply enormous new wealth.

The first written mention comes from the Arab astronomer al-Fazari, writing in the late 8th century, who referred to Ghana as the land of gold. By the 9th century the geographer al-Ya’qubi described its king as very powerful, with gold mines in his country.

Gold and the trans-Saharan trade

Ghana’s wealth rested on its position between two worlds. To the south lay the goldfields of Bambuk, between the Senegal and Faleme rivers, and later Bure on the upper Niger. To the north lay the Sahara and, beyond it, the cities of North Africa, where demand for gold was high. The trans-Saharan trade linked the two.

The kings of Ghana did not usually control the goldfields directly. Instead they controlled the markets where gold changed hands, and the routes through which it travelled. Merchants from North Africa brought salt, copper, cloth, glass beads, dried fruit and other goods. Salt was especially valued in the Sahel and the forest zone, where it was scarce.

According to al-Bakri, the king levied a duty of one gold dinar on every donkey-load of salt entering the country and two dinars on every load leaving it. All gold nuggets found in the kingdom belonged to the king, while the people could keep gold dust. Al-Bakri explained that this rule stopped gold from becoming too plentiful and losing its value.

The capital in al-Bakri’s account

The most detailed description of Ghana comes from the Andalusian geographer al-Bakri, who completed his Book of Routes and Realms in Cordoba in 1068. He never visited West Africa but gathered information from merchants and earlier writers. His account of Ghana is one of the most important sources for medieval African history.

Al-Bakri described a capital of two towns about six miles apart. One was the town of the Muslim merchants, with twelve mosques, imams, muezzins and scholars. The other was the king’s town, which contained the royal palace, domed buildings and sacred groves where priests of the traditional religion lived and where kings were buried.

The ruler at the time was Tunka Manin, who had come to the throne in 1062–1063. He had succeeded his maternal uncle, Basi, because succession passed through the king’s sister’s son. Al-Bakri described the king holding court in a domed pavilion, surrounded by horses covered in gold cloth, dogs wearing gold and silver collars, and the sons of vassal kings with gold woven into their hair.

The king was not a Muslim, but he employed Muslims as ministers, interpreters and treasurers. Al-Bakri also reported that the king could put 200,000 warriors into the field, 40,000 of them archers. Historians treat this figure as a large exaggeration, but it reflects the empire’s reputation for power.

Koumbi Saleh

Most historians identify the merchants’ town described by al-Bakri with Koumbi Saleh, a large ruined site in south-eastern Mauritania. French archaeologists began work there in 1914, and larger excavations took place from the 1940s to the 1970s.

The excavators found stone houses of two or more storeys, a large mosque, streets, cemeteries and imported goods, including glass weights and North African pottery. The town may have held 15,000 to 20,000 people at its peak, though such estimates are uncertain. The king’s town has not yet been located with certainty.

Islam and the Almoravids

Islam reached Ghana through the merchants and scholars who travelled with the caravans. For a long time the kings kept the traditional religion while welcoming Muslims at court, a pattern found in several West African states.

In the mid-11th century a militant reform movement, the Almoravids, rose among the Sanhaja Berbers of the western Sahara. In 1054–1055 they captured Awdaghust, a wealthy Berber trading town that paid allegiance to Ghana. Later Arabic writers, such as al-Zuhri in the 12th century and Ibn Khaldun in the 14th, wrote that Ghana itself was conquered or converted around 1076.

This “Almoravid conquest” was long presented as a sudden, violent end to the empire. In 1982–1983 the historians David Conrad and Humphrey Fisher argued that there was no evidence for a single military conquest. Many scholars now think relations between Ghana and the Almoravids mixed conflict with alliance, and that the conversion of the ruling family was gradual. The debate is covered in the article on the Almoravids and Ghana in 1076.

Decline and fall

Whatever happened in 1076, Ghana’s power faded over the following century. In 1154 the geographer al-Idrisi still described Ghana as a large and wealthy kingdom with a Muslim ruler, but its control of the gold trade was slipping.

Several causes are suggested. The Sahel was becoming drier, which may have reduced farming and grazing around the capital. New goldfields at Bure and new trade routes further east favoured other states. Former vassal states grew stronger and broke away.

In the early 13th century the Sosso kingdom, led by Sumaoro Kante, took over much of Ghana’s territory. Sumaoro was in turn defeated by Sundiata Keita, founder of the Mali Empire, around 1235. By about 1240 the remains of Ghana had been absorbed into Mali, which inherited its role as the great gold power of West Africa.

Myths and facts

• Myth: the Ghana Empire was in modern Ghana. Fact: the medieval empire lay several hundred kilometres to the north-west, in Mauritania and Mali. The Gold Coast colony chose the name at independence in 1957 as a link to a great African past.
• Myth: the empire ended suddenly in 1076. Fact: the idea of a single Almoravid conquest is disputed, and Ghana survived, in weakened form, into the 13th century.
• Myth: Ghana’s kings owned the gold mines. Fact: they mostly controlled the trade and taxed it, while the mines lay in lands to the south.

The legend of Wagadu

Soninke oral tradition tells that Wagadu’s prosperity was protected by a great serpent, Bida, which demanded the sacrifice of a young woman every year in return for rains of gold. When a young man named Mamadi killed the serpent to save his beloved, the gold rains ceased, drought fell on the land and the Soninke scattered.

The legend is not history, but some scholars suggest it may preserve memories of drought, the movement of gold sources away from the region, and the dispersal of the Soninke people across West Africa.

By the numbers

Timeline

• Late 8th century: Al-Fazari mentions Ghana as the land of gold.
• 889–890: Al-Ya’qubi describes the powerful king of Ghana.
• 1054–1055: The Almoravids capture Awdaghust.
• 1062–1063: Tunka Manin becomes king.
• 1068: Al-Bakri completes his description of Ghana.
• c. 1076: Later sources report the conquest or conversion of Ghana by the Almoravids.
• 1154: Al-Idrisi describes Ghana with a Muslim ruler.
• c. 1235: Sundiata Keita defeats Sumaoro Kante of Sosso.
• c. 1240: Ghana is absorbed into the Mali Empire.

Why it matters

The Ghana Empire was the first of the great Sahelian states, followed by Mali and Songhay. It showed how control of trade, rather than conquest alone, could create a powerful African kingdom. Through the gold it sent north, it was also part of the economy of the medieval Islamic and European worlds, and its name remains a symbol of West African history today.